Executive Meddling/Radio
Examples of Executive Meddling in Radio include:
- The Howard Stern Show: Executives were trying to change Stern's vision of his show since his first day on the air. It's generally agreed upon by critics and fans that him fighting and being able to do his show the way he wanted completely changed the way morning radio shows were presented. However, whether or not Stern going through the actual process of fighting these battles was entertaining leads to a case of Broken Base.
- While discussing the constant format battles in his Private Parts biography, he brings up several interesting anecdotes. For a Crowning Moment of Funny, when airing on WNBC, the station required a quick station identification before every commercial, which Howard dutifully agreed to do. But later, his program supervisor came to him and told him that the station wanted him to say "WNBC" with a quasi-Southern drawl, emphasizing the "N", specifically (Something like "W-Ee~ee~en-B-C!"). Naturally, the next day, Stern featured a skit with himself and another cast member playing the role of gay men auditioning for a WNBC program, debating over which of their ridiculously overexaggerated drawls was most suitable.
- Later on, he had a female program manager who was willing to go along with just about any idea he wanted, as long as it was planned out in advance, something he himself admitted was a perfectly reasonable request. If he wanted to have such-and-such skit, great; just pencil it in at X time on Y day, so listeners know to expect it on a regular basis. But at that point, Stern was still in that strange embryo phase between Small Name, Big Ego and Protection From Editors, which led to him arguing that he should be allowed to air skits and segments whenever he felt like it; in this case, he got away with it, but one wonders how many other supervisors there were willing to work with his ideas and get them into a structured format, as opposed to the majority he talks about in the book who were simply looking to hammer the censorship button and make his life hell.
- BBC executives banned The Goon Show from imitating politicians (which was a shame, since Peter Sellers had such voice-acting talent he could imitate pretty much anyone on Earth), and would regularly censor the scripts so nothing overtly political got through. Spike Milligan responded by trying to make the censors' lives as miserable as possible and ranting a lot about the BBC.
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