johndavis said:
Back when Stern was on 105.3, a religious group would take out large ads in the UT telling people not to listen to Clear Channel stations because they broadcast "smut."
Many suspected that Victor bankrolled it. Anyone know if that was true or not?
Yep - Victor worked with Reverend Samuel Fosu-Mensah who had something called "End Radio Air Smut Effectively" (ERASE), started back in 1997. Howard Stern on 91X was Victor's big target - you can read about it here:
http://www.djbrian.net/archive/howard/hs-old.html
Reverend Samuel didn't have a dime to his name and really was just a front man.
This was part of Victor's campaign against Jacor - later Clear Channel - and there were a other fronts.
The ERASE campaign ended up being on the agenda for the El Cajon City Council with a proposed resolution condemning Stern and DSC, then on Rock 105. One of those speaking in favor of the resolution was Phil Ganyon, who was on Victor's payroll as a consultant for many, many years, working things including the anti-Jacor/CC campaign. As one report news noted in 1997:
"Phil Ganyon, an advertising agency owner from Poway, said he was appalled
by the programming that was readily available to children over the radio
airwaves."
The irony of all this was that the nastiest music in town was being played on Victor's Jammin' Z-90. He pretty much only ever listened to the morning show, so later in the day and at night the PD and MD played what they wanted because they knew Victor was not listening then, and if he did listen, he probably couldn't understand the lyrics on hard core rap.
For a time Ganyon would monitor the music (he was about 60 at the time) and would report to Victor. I remember how upset Phil got when he heard Salt 'N Pepa's
Shoop pointing out this was all about having sex (and of course, this song was quite mild compared to some of the stuff that maybe even Ganyon couldn't understand).