The Feisty Station That Defended Carlin’s “Seven Words” Looks Back
Good article touching on some forgotten history about the lineage of the whole ‘decency’ thing on the radio (and television), and the importance George Carlin held not only in the annals of comedy, but in our civic history as a society and what the value and role of speech is in our society. The article also features some comments by Tony Riddle, the former executive director of the Alliance for Community Media, a colleague and friend of mine, now serving as the general manager of WBAI radio in NYC.
As the encomiums for George Carlin have rolled in from stand-up legends, celebrities and scholars, his death at 71 has also been noted at a diminutive, iconic and iconoclastic radio station in Manhattan, WBAI-FM.
Its broadcast of the comedian’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” became a landmark moment in the history of free speech. In a 1978 milestone in the station’s contentious and unruly history, WBAI lost a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that to this day has defined the power of the government over broadcast material it calls indecent.
————–
Now, broadcasting the seven words „would cost us $360,000 per incident “so those seven words would cost us $2.5 million,” Mr. Riddle said, about equal to the station‚s annual budget. “Now we’d be severely limited in taking a chance on protecting people’s free-speech rights.”
————–
The station that for generations has spoken truth to power is incongruously situated on the 10th floor of 120 Wall Street, and smack in the middle of the FM dial, at 99.5. Now in its 48th year, WBAI was both an expression, and ringleader, of the counterculture during its peak in the mid-1960s through the Vietnam War.
Observers have said that in its heyday, its on-air personalities, like Mr. Josephson, Steve Post and Bob Fass, extended the popularity of FM radio and explored the possibilities of the medium.
————–
Mr. Riddle, who joined the station in February, said that “it’s always difficult to run a democracy,” adding that “a lot of people believe in the kind of radio we provide,” since the station does not accept advertising, underwriting or grants.
