Jammin’ 95.5 and cyclists meet at the park
Jammin’ 95.5 FM (home of the syndicated cyclist-bashing “Playhouse” program) scheduled a picnic event at Grant Park on Saturday. In the wake of the Playhouse program that allegedly encouraged violence against cyclists, some cyclists wanted to have a presence at the picnic. While this could have gone very badly indeed, it appeared to come off with a minimum of confrontation.
Unfortunately, staffers of 95.5 apparently didn’t appreciate the messages chalked on the park sidewalks exhorting the station to “Let Us Hear The Show”, a reference to the program of 7/13 which has mysteriously become utterly unavailable. What was their response? Did they agree to disagree? Did they take the high ground? Did they take this opportunity to repair the damaged relations between the station and Portland cyclists?
Uh, no. Instead, they destroyed the chalked messages with water bottles and squirtguns.
Guys, just release the damned podcast. It’s remarkably hard to believe you want to apologize, mend bridges, and let bygones be bygones when you continue to refuse to let anyone listen to the recording of what was actually said over the air.
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There was an interesting letter in today’s Oregonian from a pedestrian who crosses one of the downtown bridges every day, and is afraid of getting run over by bicyclists who won’t give the pedestrians the right-of-way.
What is it that would make the cyclists happy? Originally you wanted an apology… it seems the station manager has done that. Now you want the original recording? What’s the point? Wouldn’t that be old news if they’ve already apologized?
The allegation was that P.K., host of the Playhouse, was creating an atmosphere of hostility, and encouraging violence against cyclists. When the cycling community started hearing about it and complaining to the station, they were made fun of. As the heat increased, P.K. insisted that his comments were ‘taken out of context’ and only referred to bikers that were behaving in a certain way.
The apology of the program manager is pretty much a direct result of the number of calls he is getting, and the number of sponsors that are considering dropping their support. That’s his job, after all. But as far as I know, the host of the Playhouse, P.K., has not come out with an apology. There have been discussions about some sort of apology being made, at some point, but I’m not aware of any public apology as of yet. As far as I’m concerned, P.K. still thinks he’s being taken out of context.
And maybe he is. I want the show made public. I want to hear exactly what P.K. was broadcasting in 13 cities nationwide. Cyclists are threatened, injured, and run off the road every day. I would like to know if P.K. was using his platform to encourage that behavior.
And if he was, there should be some meaningful consequence. Imagine if you will, if the Playhouse had been advocating violence against a minority group, or illegal immigrants, or women, on public airwaves. Do you think the public would be as sanguine about the station refusing to release the program? If someone had gone on the air joking about dragging a black man behind a pickup truck, would you be saying ‘what’s the point, they’ve already apologized?’
The response I hear again and again is ‘Well, those bikers, they run red lights, they cut in front of drivers, they piss me off’. (see Oswego’s comment, above). Well, I don’t. I follow the rules of the road. I ride as safely as I possibly can. And yet I’ve had things thrown at me, had cars swerve into the bike lane and almost hit me, had countless epithets shouted at me. Every time I get on my bike, I’m putting a big target on my back. Aaron, did you see this article? http://www.itv.com/news/index_56fb473f42b4037d7f7856796e3bec0c.html
I have the right to go for a ride without wondering if I’m going to come back to my wife and kids. I’m tired of my life being devalued because I choose to ride a bicycle, and if this program in fact was doing just that, I want it made public. I don’t want them to think they can make it go away by erasing a few chalkmarks. And if an FCC sanction is an appropriate response for their behavior, then I want that sanction applied.
If this story is getting old for most folks, I’m happy to stop posting on it. I’ll move it to my own blog. But I don’t want it to go away until a genuine resolution is reached.
More to the point for Aaron - how do you think it would affect you if a radio show host said the same thing about railfans? Watch the guys chasing after either of Portland’s big locomotives (the SP#4449 and the SP&S#700) and how they speed, fail to signal, run stop signs and stoplights, block traffic behind them by pacing the locomotive, cut off other traffic by suddenly pulling onto or off the road, etc. All illegal things, almost exactly the same as the litany of complaints about cyclists. Now imagine one of these railfans getting into a fatal car crash and the radio hosts laughing about it and saying they deserve it for breaking the law. Imagine callers calling in saying that these railfans are out of control, and relating stories of throwing things at their cars and trying to run them off the road.
To cap this off, have the host say “If you’re a railfan, you should know that I exist, that I don’t care about you, and I don’t care about your life.”
Now let’s say you start hearing from your railfan buddies that they’re being harassed since the broadcast. Maybe somebody swears and throws a water bottle at Funnelfan or Steve Eshom. Does an apology make it all better for you? Or would you rather the radio station release the broadcast, so you can prove what was said and submit a complaint to the FCC? The FCC and advertisers are the only way to hold the media outlets responsible. These people influence thousands of people, and the cyclists have no way to air their outlook / position to those same thousands.
-Matt P.