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RSSWhat should happen to Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross now?
Oct 31
Famous People, Life, Media No Comments
Well, for those that haven’t been around the past couple of days, or just haven’t generally heard the news stories about Ross/Brand, this is a summary of what happened, and what I think should happen about it.
On the 18th October, Russell Brand with guest presenter Jonathan Ross presented a radio show on BBC Radio 2, which had be pre-recorded two days earlier. A really good timeline of events can be found here. Basically, the two presenters prank called actor Andrew Sachs and left a bunch of obscene messages on his answerphone about his granddaughter, who Brand claimed to have slept with. Since then there has been over 30,000 complaints sent to the BBC and Ofcom about the broadcast, Brand has resigned, Ross has been suspended for 12 weeks, and BBC Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas has quit.
In my opinion, this should never have happened in the first place. The BBC have a job to restrict pre-recorded content, and had 2 days to do so, but they didn’t… there should be stronger restrictions in place I believe. Ok – so they may have thought the show was funny, and a great laugh, but they team at the radio station should remember that their content should cater for all because of being license funded, and this clearly offended some… had this been broadcast on a commercial station such as Fox FM, there problem would be nowhere near as bad.
Although, having said all that, if I were to have listened to the show, I think I would have just laughed and enjoyed the show – thats just who I am. The Radio 2 team made a mistake – it’s over, learn for another time. Ross/Brand have clearly paid a fair price (suspension and resignation) and now things should just move on.
I was also interested to hear that only two complaints were received on the day of broadcast, and only a few more the following day. Infact, 9 days after the broadcast, there was only 1500 or so complaints. Only when the story hit mainstream news media, both print, e-media, and broadcasting, did the number really start to dramatically go up – which if I’m honest is a bit pathetic knowing that people are either reminded to complain, or complaining when the only hear about the news story. Quite honestly, those sort of people can just listen to something else if what they listened to they don’t like.
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