Faggots and Fudgers - Oh My!

Dear 92 Citi FM,

      I have listened to you since I first discovered FM. Back when you were the only station that really played rock. Hard rock.

As a wide-eyed teenager I'd call in and request you to play some metal, and you would tell me "that can never be played on the radio."

Shadow Davis would some times mock me for what I would call in and request. Eventually he would leave for Toronto, and you were saved by Brian Cook.

      Eventually you would fire him, and then turn to being a "classic rock" radio station saying "we've been playing this since it was new!"

      You lost me for a while, but then you started playing Dee Snyder's House of Hair. While it was only once a week, it let me know that you had seen the error of your ways. You had discovered that Metal, (at least the watered down version) belonged on the radio. Adding in the House of Blues... there was hope, and I started listening to the radio station again. You even started sending me emails, asking me what I felt about the music I heard on your radio station. What's more, you listened to me. You played songs that I had long wanted to hear or that I never dreamed I'd actually hear on the Radio.

      I figured that much of this was probably a result of now being owned by Rogers Media. I was willing to embrace the new corporate overlords as they made the experience with your station much more enjoyable.

::Cue Ominous Music::

      But then things started to change. You acquired a new program director. Suddenly the House of Hair was gone. The metal started disappearing. You acquired a voice tracked DJ. There was immature toilet pranks on the radio. Shadow Davis came back. Then you decided to embrace censorship.

Allow me to share an Article from my local newspaper:

Source: Winnipeg Free Press

Knopfler: rewrote lyric for Canada  The man who wants to be prime minister says we're in dire straits if we start messing around with iconic pop songs.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff told a media scrum covering the Winnipeg stop on his national tour that he doesn't like the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council's censorship of Dire Straits' Grammy Award-winning song, Money for Nothing.

"I thought it was a great song when I first heard it and I still think it's a great song. Though you've got to look back at those lyrics again, they were written for a particular time. But I don't like censorship," he said.

The CBSC ruled the song unfit for radio earlier this week because of the use of the word "faggot" in the lyrics.

Even Dire Straits keyboardist Guy Fletcher weighed in on his personal website, responding to fans' questions by calling the decision "unbelievable" and referencing a conversation with the song's writer, Mark Knopfler.

"Mark tells me that due to the ban, he has now substituted the word faggot for 'fudger'.... for Canada," Fletcher wrote. "I reckon Canada could ban about 75 per cent of all records ever made."

The response from the local radio scene ranged from frustration to anger to resignation.

Matt Cundill, program director for Power 97, said the rock station will play the edited version of the song from now on but his listeners aren't happy about it.

"Most of our audience, which is 40 years old, understands the context of that song. That was part of the fun. That's what old people used to say about MTV," he said. "Money for Nothing is MTV, that's the soundtrack of a generation. It's a song people are very attached to."

Cundill said listeners haven't complained about One In A Million by Guns N' Roses or the Pogues' Fairy Tale in New York, because they're more obscure.

The decision came out of the blue for many radio people, according to Howard Kroeger, a Winnipeg-based radio consultant. He said he's been in the business for three decades and never heard a single complaint about the tune or its lyrics.

"If you want to play the politically correct game, there are tons of songs (with explicit lyrics) that have slipped past the censors over the years," he said, such as Lou Reed's Take A Walk On The Wild Side and Alannis Morisette's You Oughta Know.

Kroeger said he respects the decision by stations in Edmonton and Halifax to put the original version on "repeat" for one consecutive hour.

CITI FM moved in the opposite direction. Scott Armstrong, the station's general manager and program director, says Money for Nothing won't be on its playlist at all anymore.

As a policy, they only present songs as they were originally released on album and they don't play any songs that have been censored.

"We're not prepared to play the edited version that does exist of that song," he said.

David Drake, assistant program director at BOB FM, said his station has been playing the edited version for several years.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

-- with files from Kevin Rollason, The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 15, 2011 C12

I understand the choice of not to play the edited version. I feel that Fudger is more derogatory and explicit then Faggot. However at the end of the day they have chosen to censor Art rather than making a stand. This is Grammy winning song that actually has cultural relevance to when it was written. And now according to 92 it no longer exists.

I was offended when they hired Samantha Stevens, a DJ from Toronto who simply mails in her voice work. (This would be the Voice Tracked reference. AKA ROBO DJ.) The argument is that "voice tracking saves money, and helps keep the radio station alive, saving other local jobs." Winnipeg has no shortage of people who would like to work as a DJ. Seeing as only the lunch time slot is Robo DJ'd, they obviously see the use in keeping local DJ's around. You can't tell me that the money they're "saving" by using Ms. Stevens is the difference between keepin the Radio Station operating, and having to shut its doors.

So goodbye 92. You censor Art. You deny the relevance of Metal. You take away jobs from locals, and export them to Toronto. You are dead to me.