Don Imus makes no excuses for his offensive remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, but says: “I deserved a second chance.”
He’s 14 months into that second chance, trying to make the most of it. The new “Imus in the Morning” has key differences from the old one in tone and is certainly different visually, with the addition of two comedians who are black, Karith Foster and Tony Powell.
“What happened is what should have happened,” Imus said in an interview. “So much good has come out of what happened. I really do think it’s like an alcoholic, which I am, and a drug addict, which I am. You’re presented with the unique opportunity to be a better person than you had been. I consider this situation to be analogous to that, almost identical to that.”
Imus, 68, works now for the ABC Radio Networks and rural RFD-TV after being fired by CBS Radio and MSNBC in spring 2007 for referring to the Rutgers women as “nappy- headed hos.” His show has the same mixture of interviews and cantankerous commentary on what he calls the “freak show,” the world of politics and media.
The hard-edged, ethnically based humor is largely gone. The innocents, like female basketball players who didn’t ask or deserve to be part of his world, are now off-limits.
One of his bosses, RFD chief executive Patrick Gottsch, described the changes simply: “He’s not making stupid remarks anymore.”
But he’s not doing a TV show, just simulcasting a radio show. After early indications that the enforced layoff cost him listeners, Imus is approaching the average of 2.25 million people who tune it at least once a week, about what it was before, said Michael Harrison, publisher of the trade journal Talkers magazine.
Harrison estimates that Imus is on about the same or even more radio stations than he was before, but said his influence has dwindled — “you don’t hear about him as much as you did.”
Dennis Baxter, who runs KCAA radio in San Bernardino, Calif., brought back Imus’ show last year, but only after talking with members of the local black community about how it might be received. He finds the show much the same, but said Imus is “a little bit toned down” and “a little more respectful of people.” “He’s not going over the edge maybe as much,” Baxter said.
Imus resists the idea that he has less of an edge.
“In some cases we do stuff that’s more edgy,” he said. “There are things that are said on the program that would not be said if we didn’t have two African-Americans there. As far as the cruder material, that is the stuff we have eliminated totally.”
