Seriously. You can’t make this up.
SiriusXM satellite Radio announced Friday that it is creating “Tiger Blood Radio” which will be a 24-hour limited run channel that will be dedicated to news, facts and information about the media madness over the “Two and a Half men” actor Carlos Estevez whose Hollywood name is and has been Charlie Sheen. In recent years, the actor has had a series of high profile drug-induced incidences involving prostitutes, porn stars, destroyed hotel rooms and numerous calls to 911. Charlie has been partying like a rock star.
My radio station co-host Shanon Murray ranted about the media frenzy on last week’s Right of Black show.
I find it quite “Interesting” to note how I and many other advocates have been dealing with SiriusXM for several years now to get some more diversity in its channel lineup to reflect the multiculturual, diverse, multi-ethnic radio audiences and it has been a struggle to get that on and there has been much resistance.
Notwithstanding all of that, the station DOES have capacity and room to capitalize on the public’s interest in watching a derailed train wreck itself.
Granted, SiriusXM has the right to put on whatever programming and channel it wants. When it decided to merge a few years back, in order to get the FCC, FTC, Department of Justice and whoever else had to bless the deal to do so, it agreed to allocate 12 channels to minority programmers, but after the merger it struggled to put the steps in place to get that promise going and kept punting the responsibility back to the FCC. The FCC has limits on what it could do and in the end, in response to threats from conservative think tanks to sue if the FCC were to get involved with what would be the FCC’s involvement with a race-based decision of a private entity, the channel decided last October to broaden the definition of who qualifiies for its set-aside to include anyone who hasn’t already owned and run a radio station. the problem with the NEW definitions is that it no longer is guaranteed to
It took applications last month and was supposed to have let the FCC know by last Wednesday who it selected tentatively to program those channels.
Despite all that and all my funny feeling inside over how the diversity set-aside went down, I still can’t help but give Sirius XM the “side eye” on this “Tiger Radio” decision.
Jay Jay Ghatt is also editor at Techyaya.com, founder of the JayJayGhatt.com and JayJayGhatt.com where she teaches online creators how to navigate digital entrepreneurship and offers Do-It-For-You Blogging Service. She manages her lifestyle sites BellyitchBlog, Jenebaspeaks and JJBraids.com and is the founder of BlackWomenTech.com 200 Black Women in Tech On Twitter. Her biz podcast 10 Minute Podcast is available on iTunes and Player.fm. Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks. Buy her templates over at her legal and business templates on Etsy shop!
