[cma-l] Sexually explicit songs and others......

[Eddie Stuart]

It's not just explicit songs - I'd use the word "appropriate"

I think that we'd all agree that the Glasgow station who tried to say that the Fword was every day speech and that panini didn't mean a certain body part was having a laugh and were rightly kicked.

However, the danger is that we get knee-jerk reactions that have unintended consequences. Ban Eminem, but then you knock out the song that made Dido famous and is OK.

You really need someone of the right age to vet a lot of rap and similar stuff - I am old enough to saythat I would have probably caught panini - especially given the words around it, but a lot of street slang is just way beyond my ken - both musically (?!!) and lyrically.

We have a lot of Gaelic up here and a wonderful column in yesterdays Aberdeen Press & Journal commented on the ATM in East London using Cockney rhyming slang and asking why the Gaelic Mafia weren't agitating for their version up here. The columnist points out that in Gaelic rhyming slang a withdrawal would be a "cnap" - literally a lump of money, ie a wad of cash. Unfortunately for non-Gaels, the "n" is pronounced here as an "r" and would thus sound like the word that got Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" banned when it was first released.

The English nickname "Bot" caused total hilarity with Gaelic speaking school kids in Stornoway many years ago as they couldn't believe that anyone, let alone a visiting Deputy Headmaster, was openly called "*rse".

Eric Bogle, much loved as an artist by many of our older Presenters, has a song "Guns, Guns, Guns" which is a mickey take on the American way of life. The day after Dunblane or the recent Tomintoul Gamekeeper tragedy, many people and possibly Ofcom would probably regard that song as at least as inapproriate as the Fword!

I wouldn't play "I Predict A Riot" the night that Tottenham burned and hope that everyone else was that sensible. But if you're using an automated playout system out of hours.....?? Do you watch the news and then quickly scan your entire music collection?

So yes, you should certainly vet music and not load/play certain tracks. The Fword is an obvious one. But you also need to stress "appropriateness", not just a very narrow "explicit"

You also need to accept that with the best will in the world, something will go wrong once in a while and have procedures in place to handle it. The Fword is easy, others become more subjective and station specific.

That's my personal opinion, anyway.

Must go now and finish my playlist for tonight - hmm, now which excellent track by my favourite female rock band Fanny shall we start with?

Eddie


> Sorry Martin - and everyone else - but if, as you say, you haven't the the staff or volunteers to pre-check all music that's played, then you should simply not be using anything - or anyone - that you are not prepared to personally guarantee as socially acceptable.
>
> You are leaving yourself wide open to very serious social and litigious action and in my view you should not risk operating a freely-available public service under those conditions.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> *Ian Hickling
> **Partner*
>
> *transplan UK*


---
KCR is the operating name of Keith Community Radio Ltd
KCR broadcasts to the whole of Moray & beyond on 102.8FM
and to the World at http://kcr.fm

---
Keith Community Radio Ltd - The Friendly Sound
Registered in Scotland No.SC173805
Registered Office: 59a Land Street, Keith, Banffshire, AB55 5AN
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/pipermail/cma-l/attachments/20111101/4841e8a1/attachment.html>