Monday, January 28, 2013

1.28.13 Bee-otch of the Day: 106 KHQ and Artimis



Bee-otch of the Day honors are awarded Monday through Thursday, Bee-otch of the Week is awarded Friday on Chuck69.com.


DON'T FORGET TO "LIKE" BEE-OTCH OF THE DAY ON FACEBOOK!
------------------


Name: Arthur "Artimis" Smith
Age: 2x
Occupation: none
Last Seen: somewhere in northern Michigan
Bee-otched For: being a dick

Name: WKHQ
Age: 33
Occupation: Top 40 radio station
Last Seen: Petoskey, MI
Bee-otched For: being hypocritical
---
In the world of radio, the elephants walk by while the owners and managers worry about the peanuts.

Last week, the management of popular Top 40 radio station 106 KHQ formally announced that nighttime jock "Artimis" had been fired. Operations manager Bill Michaels - also the afternoon jock on sister station Lite 96.3 - made a statement on the station's Facebook page that he had been let go over a post he made on his Facebook wall. He claimed that Artimis had crossed the line of station standards, but felt that he was a super talented guy and wished him the best of luck.

So, what was Artimis' offending post? A picture he made with the caption stating that he made a dinosaur in the snow in KHQ's parking lot. Thing was, it looked, well, phallic.

Many of KHQ's fans took to Facebook and either congratulated the station for firing him, or lambasted them for letting him go. One of my Facebook followers from up north hated him, and felt that he was too douchebaggy for the station's image.

Of course, this is 106 KHQ we're talking about. Over twenty years ago, while I was a young kid up north I would listen to their Sunday syndicated shows with Casey Kasem and Shadoe Stevens, they would edit out certain songs from the shows if they were inappropriate for the station. Two examples were Kyper's "Tic-Tac-Toe" and Digital Underground's "The Humpty Dance". KHQ has always worked hard to maintain and preserve a PG-rated image, even in an age where pop music is almost anything but.

While I felt that Artimis is a douche, was firing him the best answer? After all, he's not the first radio jock who's made an inappropriate social media posting and he's not going to be the last, I'm afraid. My point is, KHQ did something hypocritical here. Artimis is standing in unemployment line while the station still plays the snot out of Justin Bieber (showed his ass on Twitter last week), Rihanna (also exposed her ass on Twitter) and Chris Brown (beat the crap out of Rihanna). When a $25,000 per year jock draws a penis in the snow at his station's parking lot, he's canned, but when a millionaire artist shows the world their unmentionables, no biggie.

I've heard that this wasn't Artimis' first offense, either, but bear in mind that KHQ's owner, Trish MacDonald-Garber is somewhat on the right side of the aisle from what I've heard. It might have been reason #1 for his dismissal. IMO, if I owned a radio station and one of my jocks did something like that, I would have talked to him about appropriateness and would even warn him that even if you remove that post, it's still out there. Just because something's lost doesn't mean that it's lost forever. Hell, there's probably old Bee-otch of the Day articles that I wrote over a decade ago that are still out there!

But Artimis is still young, and he'll be back on his feet. KHQ will formally find a replacement and their ratings will stay high for them. Problem solved. Artimis learned his lesson, and he'll be careful next time.

Two Bee-otches with one stone...

----
Got a Bee-otch to nominate? E-mail us @ chuck69dotcom@gmail.com. All suggestions (except for me) are welcome!
Bee-otch of the Day Archives can be seen on http://beeotchoftheday.blogspot.com!
Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!


No comments:

Post a Comment