Corey: Did you think that this [Satellite Radio] would be as liberating?
Bubba: No. I didn’t know how liberal it was gonna’ be. You can talk about it but before you implement the format, until you do something, until you live and breathe and implement a show, I didn’t think it would be this liberating because spontaneity...becomes more liberating. As you’re in here executing the format and you’re able to go a little bit further you don’t have to worry about dumping people as much. Ya know, you still have to be cognizant of some parameters and you just can’t cuss for cussing’ sake. And you still can’t be dirty to be dirty. You gotta’ balance it with some political agenda...and some sports and some other male-skewing stuff. You just can’t have "T ‘n A" all the time.
But, God it’s just so nice not to get warm-lined and hot-lined and go to the General Manager’s office - and have Program Directors worry about average quarter-hour maintenance and TSL and what the Arbitron trends are gonna’ be next month. I mean, I cannot explain, unless you’re in Satellite Radio, how fun and how much pressure - the only pressure we have on us now, Corey, is to do deliver a great show and to get subscriptions. That’s pressure-packed but it’s not nearly as much as the bullshit we had to deal with on regular radio.
Corey: You know I assume it’s probably like when you first got into radio. I know what I did. I was so happy being in radio that I would do it for free… I would do every job there was and I enjoyed every moment of it. Is it like that again?
Bubba: It is fun again. I had probably one of the top five men, influential men in radio in my studio last night. And he came to our studio last night and watched - he’s a good friend of mine. And he came to our studio last night and watched and said "What you’re were doing last night and the buzz and electricity in that building before, during, and after the show was what it used to be like back in the WLS days."
Back when people really used to go to radio stations and walk in the building and have people dressed up in goofy outfits. You have groupies outside the building trying to see a glimpse of the station van what it used to be until Clear Channel and CBS sterilized and now worried about voice importation and profitization [sic] and interior decorators worried about the décor - all corporate crap. It is so fun! This is what it used to be like when the old Boss Jocks were spinnin’ 45s and doing really "boss-jockey" type radio and that’s the kind of fun were having.
Corey: So, do you think there are any lines to cross? How far will you go?
Bubba: Yes, I do censor myself and Howard and I and some of the management - we’ve talked about some of the lines we’re not going to cross. I don’t think there’s necessarily those rules, I just think for a corporately traded company listed as a…fortune 500 company or whatever the hell we are. There’s some things we don’t need to be doing. In my opinion, we have no competition but we only have one other company that’s competing against us.
Our product is far better doing what we’re doing right now. We don’t even have to take it to the live sex acts just a little “T ‘n A” and girls kissing and what Howard did with Jenna Jameson a few days ago and what I did last night with the girls with the panties. That is just sixteen-thousand percent more than you can find anywhere else. I don’t think you need to take it to the twenty-thousandth percentile level.
Corey: Do you think that SIRIUS is concerned that at some point the FCC will say “Hey, you know what since we allocated these frequencies we might want a control that a little bit more and impose some standards.” Is that a fear somewhere?
Bubba: No, you can’t super-fragment just us. We have a whole bunch of other people - we're in this same business – cable television, HBO, books, Penthouse – so I mean it’s just not a SIRIUS Satellite issue at this juncture. So, it’s not just us going to be screwed. It’s going to be a whole lot of people as powerful or in some cases just as powerful as we are even a bigger genre.
Secondly, there’s one little thing - I think Americans at the end of the day are screwed with all these regulations and things shoved down our throat. I think they would throw a fit and then there’s a thing called the First Amendment - Congress shall make no law… here’s the kicker, Corey: honestly, unlike terrestrial radio that just laid down to the Federal government, I promise you - I promise you - that Mel Karmazin would take this thing to the Supreme Court and all the things I mentioned, HBO and Playboy and Penthouse - they're not going to lay down when this right is supposedly shoved down our throat.
(Continued...)
