While we were tied up writing the review for Tuesday's Matt and Crank show, we did continue to monitor a decent portion of WZBH's programming during the week. We caught anywheres up to two hours each of Matt and Crank, Chris Steele, JJ, Doug Mckenzie, and Captain Blue. We haven't ever listened to Captain Blue before, but he filled in for JJ, who filled in for Chris Steele, who was on vacation. We listened randomly during the time slots of 4:30 pm until midnight and caught Doug McKenzie for most of one afternoon.
These guys over the last month have us convinced that the point of this blog either needs to be changed or the blog no longer serves its purpose. We originally objected to the overall tone of programming on WZBH. Sure, WZBH still has the sexist, racist, Islamaphobic, and homophobic hosts on the morning show, but during the day, promos for the morning show are limited to innocuous clips that are actually sometimes funny. With the exception of JJ's one slip up about man-purses roughly two weeks ago, none of the DJs have uttered anything close to sexist, racist, Islamaphobic, or homophobic commentary that would normally supplement the Matt and Crank promo clips that used to be objectionable.
Chris Steele still hasn't referred to women as "chicks" and this critic can't be sure, but he may have actually been talking about girls, today, and used "girls" in a non-derogatory way. It happened so fast, this critic isn't sure what he heard.
JJ continues his nightly dumbass reports, which all five of us get a real kick out of. We all are now fans of his Wednesday night show where he premieres the new rock coming out. And this critic was shocked to learn that JJ knows basic math. In his nightly dumbass report, he talked about a 29-year-old mother who has practically disowned her 14-year-old daughter because her daughter got pregnant and 29 is just too young to be a grandmother. Computing the complicated math of 29 minus 14 minus 9 months of pregnancy, JJ figured out that the complaining mother was about her daughter's age when she got pregnant. Way to go, JJ! Not bad for a man who's main diet is Coors Light supplemented with the occasional meal of ribs and burgers. Maybe your mathematical whizz is a result of your friends who come over to watch football with you and cook a five course meal during the game. Gay or not, that added nutrition is doing you good. Heck, send those friends over here. This critic hasn't had a good, five course meal since, well, since he left the military.
Captain Blue apparently has this crazy idea that a rock station is supposed to play music, so he played music and spoke very little. When he did speak, it was something worthwhile, like how to win tickets or something or maybe visit the WZBH website for more information. For the bit over an hour one of our critics listened, that critic was just happy to hear nothing but good music.
Our one critic, who was thrilled with Doug McKenzie for playing a Primus song about a week ago, was a bit disappointed in not hearing a song from a past group that would jog his memory of a forgotten favorite. Like Captain Blue, however, Doug McKenzie has the silly notion that a rock station is about the music and he played good music while keeping his commentary to a minimum. The critic, however, did enjoy the bit of historical tidbits of information Doug McKenzie would occassionally mention before playing a song. Not many DJs do that today.
We've already covered Matt and Crank's programming for Tuesday. Our critic, who usually listens and records the segments, sort of took a vacation the rest of the week knowing it would be awhile before we put together Tuesday's review. She did, however, want us to mention a rather good segment that aired this morning about proper FaceBook eittiquette, particularly the proper ettiquette with someone one may be in a relationship with. She only caught a couple of segments of the commentary, but wanted to point out that, for a change, Matt and Crank weren't whining about something or spewing their normal sexist, racist, Islamaphobic, or homophobic rhetoric. She actually enjoyed the discussion.
With all that said and done, all five of us have been texting each other all day about our semi-weekly - ok, weekly and then some if we want to drink beer on other than a Saturday night - get-togethers. Tomorrow night we'll be discussing the future of The Critics Page. Originally, we developed this blog to document the sexist, racist, Islamaphobic, and homophobic commentary emanating from the Matt and Crank Show and being carried throughout the day's programming by airing clips of the offensive commentary and being supplemented by off-hand comments made by the other DJs.
For a couple of months prior to starting this blog, all five of us listened to WZBH as much as we could Monday through Friday and certainly saw the derogatory tone being set. In the last month, that tone seems to have disappeared. We would like to think that maybe JJ and Chris Steel, the two biggest "enablers" we have documented, have read our reviews and decided on their own to sharpen their on-air personas. We would also like to think that maybe the programming director at WZBH took notice of our reviews and decided the inflammatory commentary out of the morning show wasn't appropriate to air throughout the day.
We recognize, however, that really, we're just five drunk rednecks and probably had little, if anything, to do with the changes in the overall programming that we've seen in the last month. Either a lot of other people have been complaining and the changes were in the works before we got around to creating this blog or maybe what we thought we heard wasn't really there once we started documenting the abuses.
Actually, we reject the latter explanation. Promo clips for the Matt and Crank show almost always were inflammatory in some way and usually centered around what it means to be a real man, which usually meant keeping women "in their place." One place where we failed, as critics, is to document, in real numbers, the abuses aired throughout the day compared to what we've heard in the last month. Those numbers would be telling statistics to confirm what we think we're hearing now.
We are, however, faced with a dilemma. Since we view the Matt and Crank morning show as nothing more that a lot of adolescent whining laced with serious sexist, racist, homophobic, and not so much now Islamaphobic messages, even though those messages aren't carried throughout the day, should we continue documenting just the Matt and Crank abuses or accept that radio-star-wannabes will say anything to get noticed?
One thing we do know. The radio clips and reviews will be here twenty years from now. Perhaps Matt and Crank should ponder this thought as they continue to mature and pursue their future careers. After all, wasn't it Christine O'Donnell who was haunted by her witchcraft confessions of twenty years ago? The I-was-just-a-dumb-kid-entertainer excuse didn't work for her....
We're not really sure where to take the blog past this point. Our critic, who usually records the segments from the Matt and Crank Show, is getting tired of the incessant whining. To paraphrase Matt and Crank - losers complain the loudest about what they don't like, but no one applauds that which they do like. We know when they said something along those lines, the comment was an indirect reference to us. Our critic is still trying to figure out how their four hours of daily complaining is any different from the other "losers" who complain so loudly, including what they just complained about. As she text the writer of this review earlier today, "Spring is coming. I want to start my day on happy notes. Do I really have to listen to them every day?"
We'll have a few beers tomorrow night at the round table and figure out what, if anything, we'll do next. We already know that, no, she doesn't haven't to listen to them every day. Please stay tuned....
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