From UltimaJock@aol.com  Wed Sep 21 23:53:12 1994
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 94 23:55:49 EDT

LEYKIS, KENTUCKY, HOMOPHOBIA AND ME

This is an article I posted on 21 September 1994 to rec.radio.broadcasting;
I'm also sending it out here because, for obvious reasons, it also concerns a
good many of the folks who hang around THIS neck of the Internet.
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As some of you have heard in the last couple of days, Tom Leykis' Westwood
One show has received its first affiliate cancellation. Not for poor ratings
or violation of FCC or other regulations, mind you---Leykis was cancelled
for, in the words of the Kentucky station's General Manager that issued the
cancellation, being "pro-homo."

Tom, out of general human decency I suppose, refused to identify the 'phobic
GM's station on the air. However, I am curious as to whether or not this
station's GM reads posts on the 'Net. If so, I have an open letter for him.

I, sir, have been in broadcasting since I was 9 years old, which means it's
been almost 25 years since my voice was first heard on a radio station. I
also, sir, have had one long-term emotional and sexual relationship with
another male, in addition to (but not simultaneously with) a 10-year marriage
to one woman and a 2-year engagement with another woman. This, sir, makes me
a bisexual man, which is a fact I do not apologise to anyone for.

I know full well that, because I do not refuse to list on my resume my work
as an entertainment critic for the Wisconsin Light, a
bisexual/lesbian/gay/transgender newspaper in Milwaukee, I have not been
hired by some stations whose management somehow feels my sexual orientation
would have a negative effect on my performance on the job. (Any eavesdropping
PDs or GMs who know better, please note---my answering machine is at
414-233-7580; I am available for broadcast employment at a civilised salary,
rare as that is in this business. :-} ) 
In fact, when I was given a talk program at the now-defunct WXOL Oshkosh, the
station's GM specifically forbade me from discussing one
topic---homosexuality. Said GM felt it was an "anti-Christian" subject; I can
think of a couple of pastors of Metropolitan Community Church congregations
to which this would be puzzling news, to say the least. In any event, it
certainly explains why WXOL, as I just pointed out, is defunct.

The point to all this is that it is chowderheads like you, Mr. Kentucky
General Mismanager, that have made radio the creative wasteland it is in
comparison to 20 years ago. You are so afraid of offending a handful of
bigots that you cannot bring yourself to program something that will appeal
to the enlightened, the opposite end of the linear perspective from those
bigots whose misguided "sensibilities" you want to protect.
It is precisely your line of alleged thought that also accounts for there
being not one female play-by-play or color commentator in any major sport at
any radio station in this country; only one African-American primary anchor
of an evening network newscast in TV history (the late Max Robinson), only
three such female anchors (Pauline Frederick, Barbara Walters and Connie
Chung) and no such Hispanic anchors; thousands of Christmas radio and TV
specials every December but only a handful of Chanukah programs in the same
month; and, most glaringly, NOT ONE solo female, African-American, Hispanic
or openly bisexual/lesbian/gay host in a morning or afternoon drive-time slot
on the overwhelming majority of talk-formatted stations in this country
(undoubtedly including yours, Mr. General Mismanager).

Forgive me if I do not shed tear one for the loss of listenership you have
just earned yourself, Mr. Kentucky Mismanager. But you have that predicted
failiure coming, if for no other reason than your grasp on the realitry of
the make-up of your community's potential audience is every bit as slippery
as the Johnson & Johnson product that bears the abbreviation of your home
state: KY.

Daevid Aachen, Mornings, WRJQ-AM 1570, Appleton WI