A talk powerhouse is shut down

It took Don Imus decades to get to the pinnacle of the radio world, and about a second to utter the five syllables that would ruin him.

After an eight-day media drumbeat and unrelenting pressure from activists, advertisers, a member of CBS Corp.’s own board of directors and its staff, CBS Corp. announced on Thursday afternoon that the “Imus in the Morning” radio program would cease to be broadcast “effective immediately, on a permanent basis.” His MSNBC TV simulcast was canceled the day before.

The firing came after a 75-minute meeting Thursday at CBS’ headquarters in New York, nicknamed “Black Rock.” Civil rights and feminist leaders urged CBS President and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves and four of his executives to take a stand against Imus’ sexist and racist comments.

At one point during the meeting -- which was described variously as “very pleasant,” “emotional” and “tense and confrontational” -- Moonves was asked whether he or his lieutenants had daughters. Yes, Moonves answered, he has a daughter in college.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was at the meeting, said network executives were also asked, “What are your standards? Is referring to women as ‘hos’ or to Hillary Clinton as a ‘bitch’ or saying Venus Williams should be in National Geographic, is this your standard? And if it is, you should declare that, and if not, you have a decision to make.”

And when would Moonves make that decision?

“Soon,” he replied.

Three hours later, the controversy that began April 4 when Imus called the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” had culminated with the decision to end Imus’ CBS radio career. In an e-mail to CBS employees announcing the firing, Moonves reflected on how the controversy had ballooned beyond Imus and cast a spotlight on demeaning speech in general.

“One thing is for certain: This is about a lot more than Imus,” the e-mail read in part. “As has been widely pointed out, Imus has been visited by presidents, senators, important authors and journalists from across the political spectrum. He has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people. In taking him off the air, I believe we take an important and necessary step not just in solving a unique problem, but in changing that culture.”

For Imus, 66, it was an abrupt and unexpected end to a career that was beyond successful by any standard.

His was a powerhouse radio show, generating millions of dollars in revenue, reaching nearly 3 million listeners, and in the process turning him into a very rich man. On the air almost every day for several hours, Imus displayed a dual personality -- one minute he could be a foul-mouthed crank dishing insults and the next an erudite student of history, asking politicians tough questions about their stances. He referred to Arabs as “rag heads” and took Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to task for supporting the Iraq war.

Imus always survived his scrapes with the taste police after making offensive comments about Jews, gays, blacks and others. On talk radio, just about any verbal outrage can be forgiven as long as ratings, revenue and the boss’ reputation aren’t hurt. But this misstep was caught on TV, in the MSNBC simulcast of Imus’ show, and in replays it gained a life of its own.

“Imus in the Morning” aired on about 70 stations -- in Southern California, on KCAA-AM 1050 in San Bernardino. It offered a platform for politicians, pundits and authors pushing books on serious subjects. Imus managed, despite his raunchy humor and puerile sensibility, to turn the show into a kind of clubhouse for the Washington/New York politico-media elite who were comfortable with the “I-Man” and did not criticize him for his outrageous conduct.

“He’s dying for all our sins,” said Talkers Magazine Editor and Publisher Michael Harrison, who did not think Imus should be fired.

Members of the group that met Thursday with CBS and NBC were pleased that Imus was off the air. Besides Jackson, the group included the Rev. Al Sharpton, National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), Marc H. Morial of the National Urban League, Hazel Dukes of the NAACP, the Rev. Charles Steele Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a Rutgers University psychologist and the father of a Rutgers basketball player.

Sharpton at one point cut off a CBS official who suggested that a meeting between Imus and the Rutgers players might be productive, Sharpton said.

“The girls can deal with personal forgiveness,” Sharpton said he told the network executives. “But we can’t put the burden on those girls of deciding standards and making policy for the media of America.”

Gandy said the meeting was “very emotional at times.”

“We made it clear that these were not mere words, that they had an impact and changed people’s lives. We were in the mode of trying to convince them that canceling Imus was the right thing to do.”

CBS executives stressed that their decision wasn’t based on the bottom line. Imus was profitable, but he wasn’t a huge moneymaker for CBS. Revenue to the program was about $18 million to $20 million a year, according to a person familiar with the finances, who added that the profit to CBS was less than $3 million a year.

“This absolutely was not about economics, it was about doing the right thing,” said a senior CBS official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation.

The executive said the decision to fire Imus was not based on the Thursday meeting, though it “factored in to the ultimate decision.” Within CBS there was pressure to fire Imus, including a call for his ouster from Bruce Gordon, a CBS board member and former head of the NAACP.

Imus, who was born in Riverside and got his radio start in 1966 at KUTY in Palmdale, was one of radio’s early “shock jocks.” At Sacramento radio station KXOA, he boosted ratings with pranks such as ordering 1,200 hamburgers. He hit the big time at WNBC in 1971 but, struggling with alcohol and cocaine abuse, he was fired in 1977. After a stint at a Cleveland radio station, he was rehired by WNBC and for a time was a co-worker of Howard Stern. They developed a rivalry that exists to this day.

In the late 1980s, Imus began to do more political content on his show. The radio show became nationally syndicated in 1993, and in 1996 he began simulcasting on MSNBC.

It was the 1992 presidential campaign that put Imus on the political map. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the expected frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, had stumbled badly in Connecticut, where he was trounced by former California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.. Imus invited Clinton onto his show. Clinton, instead of playing up his Yale credentials with Imus -- who wears a cowboy hat and speaks with a folksy twang -- launched into “his good ol’ boy routine,” recalled Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, who has been a regular on Imus’ show.

The future president, said Fineman, “talked about the fact that he drove a pickup truck when he was a kid with Astro Turf in the back

Imus’ roster of regular guests read like a who’s who of media heavies. He chatted with Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell of NBC, Jeff Greenfield of CNN, and Evan Thomas and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek. His guests -- even members of the high-minded commentariat who are quick to call out public figures for racism, sexism and other cultural pathologies -- seemed not to mind Imus’ penchant for nastiness as they pushed their products or themselves, noted H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger, a Vanity Fair contributing editor who profiled Imus last year. “They would never tolerate that type of behavior from anyone in public life,” said Bissinger, “but Imus sells their books.”

All of which led to a lavish lifestyle for the shock jock. He reportedly earned around $10 million a year, and he divided his time between a penthouse on Central Park West, an estate on Long Island Sound and a ranch in New Mexico.

Imus met Thursday with the Rutgers basketball team for about three hours at the New Jersey governor’s mansion in Princeton. (Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine was badly injured in a car accident earlier in the day and did not attend.) Imus left without speaking to reporters, and the team did not immediately issue a statement.

But Imus made it clear elsewhere that he didn’t intend to fade out quietly. He called the “Conway & Whitman” show on Los Angeles radio station KLSX (97.1 FM) Thursday and complained that he had been fired while he was doing a charity show. He vowed: “I plan to be on the radio. I plan to work again. I’m not going to sit around like an old woman.”

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

meg.james@latimes.com

Times staff writers Josh Getlin, Matea Gold and Peter Wallsten contributed to this report.