Tim Wildmon
AFA president
May 2003 – I was eating at a local steakhouse the other day and a server walked by my table. I called her over.
“Excuse me, Miss, can you turn that music down really low or better yet, turn it off?” I said. She was about 20 years of age. She looked at me like she didn’t understand what the problem was.
“It’s just a CD we play, Sir….”
She didn’t really know what to say, bless her heart.
“Tell me that song will go off in a few seconds,” I said. “Look at my hand,” I said to her as I held it up. “See how it’s shaking? Look at that. I can hardly keep my food on my fork, my heart is racing and my head is pounding because of that CD. This music is not conducive to digestion. People need something calm and relaxing when they eat.”
Sermon over. I let her go on about her business.
I was talking about some garbage rap song blaring over the restaurant sound system. It was awful. No, it was more than awful, it was gosh-awful. Sounded like what little I’ve heard of rapper Eminem. Someone please, bring back fingernails on the chalkboard.
I am getting older.
Even as a teenager I wasn’t much into rebellious or hard driving music like a lot of my friends who were turned on to KISS, Aerosmith and the like. My first eight-track was Barry Manilow. “Oh, Mandy.” Why she “came and she gave without taking,” I’m still not quite sure. Had to be 1974. My first vinyl album was James “You’ve Got A Friend” Taylor. Got it from Santa Claus in 1976. My first concert was John Denver in Memphis at the old Mid-South Coliseum in 1977. I was on a Rocky Mountain High that night.
I turned 40 on March 6, and I have been thinking about pop culture lately and how things have changed since the ’70s.
Probably the biggest difference since those days is the expansion of cable television. In the ’70s you had only the three major networks and public television. Now you have 70 channels and can’t decide what you want to watch. Television has also become more graphic, more obnoxious, and voyeuristic and often times inane in nature. I am talking primarily about prime-time entertainment programming. The major networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox – are on the verge of allowing nudity. Disney/ABC’s NYPD Blue had an episode this spring with a nude woman from behind, and then had her turning surprised into the glare of a six-year-old boy who had come into the scene. This is only going to get worse with the profanity, the violence, and sex on network TV. Because of this I think more and more people will be turning to cable or turning the TV off altogether.
Another thing I’ve observed since the ’70s is fewer and fewer women want to be stay-at-home moms. When I was a kid, almost all our moms were homemakers. In my mind it’s best for children when their mother is at home while they are growing up. I know that doesn’t fit well with today’s modern way of thinking, but I believe it. Too bad divorce and other financial strains have forced into the workplace many women who would like to be at home giving their utmost and full-time attention to their families.
Something else media-related that has changed our culture I think for the positive the last 33 years, is the proliferation of news/talk and Christian radio stations and networks. And conservatives have dominated talk radio with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage and now Sean Hannity. I believe conservatives had felt shut out of the mainstream media before the advent of political/social issues talk radio and now they listen to these shows and others by the tens of millions each week. It is also the reason the Fox News Channel has seen phenomenal growth in its ratings the last couple of years.
Christian radio also has taken off – some good, some not so good – with the development of networks like the 200-station-strong American Family Radio network which I work for. AFR began in 1991. The growing Christian networks are almost exclusively theologically evangelical in music and message, hoping to introduce people to the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ and helping to disciple and encourage people who are already believers.
And we don’t play that gosh-awful rap music that mercifully ended so I could get back to eating my steak. And just in case you are wondering, I did tip the server anyway, even though I know she went to the kitchen and mocked me. Fifteen percent. In the ’70s you tipped 10%. Where is this thing going? 
