Radio Live and Roast Busters

The Herald reports:

Vodafone, Telecom, Countdown and Briscoes have suspended all RadioLive advertising today while Mad Butcher ads have been pulled from Willie Jackson and John Tamihere’s show as the fallout from the Roast Busters scandal continues.

Four other advertisers pulled their campaigns from the station or show yesterday.

Mad Butcher chief executive Michael Morton confirmed he had instructed advertising be removed from the Willie and JT Show to elsewhere in the RadioLive schedule immediately. Mr Morton said he would review the matter with MediaWorks next week.

Telecom said in a statement that following the “offensive comments” made by the hosts, its media buying agency was taking action to remove all Telecom advertising from RadioLive.

It came a short time after Vodafone tweeted confirmation it had suspended all advertising with the station until further notice.

Briscoes posted on Facebook this morning that it had immediately pulled all advertising from the Willie & JT, and “this morning we have cancelled all our advertising with RadioLive until further notice,” the post said.

“We are not a company that wants to be in any way associated with the unacceptable actions of these presenters.”

The original comments by Willie and JT were pretty appalling, but survivable. But the nature of their so called apology made it worse, and then their dispute with Hoonon when they claimed his comment that 17 year old men should look after drunk 14 year old girls, not rape them, was him reflecting his middle class values was just over the top. Being anti-rape is not just a middle class value, and they time and time again have ended up appearing to be defending the young men involved.