Thursday, March 30, 2006

Britney Spears Spoofs Clear Channel on "Will and Grace"

Greetings, Music fans!

(One of my goals this week: learn how to use the audio blog feature so I can post more regularly, and on the fly.) (Update: never could get it to work.)

Don'tcha love when art and real life collide with perfect timing?

Kudos, kudos, and more kudos, to the writers of tonight's Will and Grace episode for their brilliant spoof of Clear Channel.
Ahem. Or I should say, for the brilliant spoof of a media conglomerate that has some incidental similarities to media companies like Clear Channel.

The airing of this particular episode was especially timely: Recently Clear Channel fired Indie 103 morning DJ Dicky Barrett from his successful morning show the same day he had, according to Dicky's press release, a "substantial, unauthorized pro-choice on air conversation with a South Dakota DJ and a few callers." According to his press release differences about the show's direction played a role, but in Dicky's words, the pro-choice on air conversation was "the straw that broke the camel's back."

Welcome to America, kids...the Land of free speech. (!)

(Clear Channel maintains Dicky's departure was because his main priority was the Jimmy Kimmel show. Dicky refuted this on L.A. Voice.org, saying in part, "Jimmy is a great guy who supported the Mighty Morning Show...It is unfair to let people think I walked away to put more work into loudly reading twenty to thirty words a night on Jimmy's TV show.")

Ironically, in tonight's episode of Will and Grace, Britney Spears played a right-wing, flag waving (literally) Pro Bush supporter added to Jack's show by the conglomerate. In one scene, to Jack and Will's surprise and horror, she unfurls a huge American flag that covers the gay tolerance rainbow flag that hangs above Jack's talk show set.

In another bit of irony, in real life, Michael Steele, the Clear Channel Program Director responsible for programming decsions relating to Dicky Barrett's Indie 103 morning show, happens to pride himself on breaking Britney Spears' radio career.

Make your own judgements, Music Fans. But it was really bleeping brilliant!

RR :)