Colorado DJs In Trouble Over Dixie Chicks: apparently, they started playing them on the air while the program manager still had them on the ‘banned’ list.

“I gave them an alternative,” says station manager Grant. “Stop it now and they’ll be on suspension, or they can continue playing them and when they come out of the studio they won’t have a job.”

I could not honestly care much less than I already don’t about the Dixie Chicks career, but this is…

Okay, let’s step back: who’s the more ridiculous? The Program Manager for suspending the DJs (or, to go back a bit further, banning the band due to their political affiliation to begin with), or the DJs for risking their jobs over a band that the PM was planning on putting back into the rotation pretty soon anyway?

I just. Can’t. Decide.

After some thought, I'm going to have to go with the DJs. Looked at in the macro, I can understand the PM's original banning move ("I will not play them right now and cause the station any problems with hotheaded yok locals, then bring them back later when people calm down."), nor can I fault a manager enforcing his right to call the shots. (Right or wrong, they were on the banned list, and the DJs WORK FOR HIM.)

That said, the whole situation is ridiculous.

Yup, on all counts.

Various artists go on the Play or No Play lists for a variety of reasons, many of them goofy. It's both indicative of the danger of consolidation of radio stations into fewer hands and of the basic venality of the radio biz, but there you go. If you want to buck the boss and do something to take a stand, or make an ethical (or aesthetic, or political) statement, more power to you -- but expect to get your ass fired. That's true in pretty much all businesses, and I don't see why a radio station would be any different.

I've got to say that I'm all for the Dixie Chicks being sitebanned from the radio.

Well because they suck and are a symptom of the every increasing popness of Country Music.

Bah, I say Bah to them and to pretty much everyone to that side of Randy Travis.

On the XM radio I have one country station programed in, Hank's Place the Honky-Tonk station.

They decided to be all cool and get catty over-seas and there was a backlash, welcome to where everyone else in the world works, a place where if you open your trap at work you might get in trouble for it.

Celebrities love the spotlight and all the glory that comes with it, but they don't remeber that it's thier workplace and the Fan/Consumer are thier bosses and don't piss off the boss with your mouth.