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And so Imus ends

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A day after General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) MSNBC stopped simulcasting Imus's radio show, CBS Corp.'s (NYSE: CBS) CBS Radio dropped him as well.

As I posted yesterday, CBS still has the far less polarizing problem of Katie Couric's plagiarizing. But Imus's rapid downfall is consistent with broadcasting's economic model: give away for free content that attracts a big audience and charge corporations a fee to market to those audiences.

CBS's CEO Les Moonves wrapped himself in concern for the challenges facing black women. He said, "There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society."

But as CEO his overriding concern was with keeping his own job -- which means getting CBS's stock price up for Chairman Sumner Redstone. And the Imus controversy caused CBS's economic model to shift rapidly in reverse. Corporate advertisers feared that consumers would stop buying their products if they continued to advertise on Imus's program. So they canceled en masse.

And that loss of advertising made Imus economically unsupportable. The lesson? If other shock jocks on the public airwaves lose their advertisers, they too will see their programs canceled.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns shares of GE.

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Last updated: November 11, 2009: 01:04 PM

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