I am not celebrating the firing of Ryan Jespersen from 630 CHED this week. These are tough times and it is never a good thing to see somebody losing their job.
That said, I am not shedding any tears for Jespersen either. Ryan Jespersen is a victim of the same cancel culture that he gleefully fed when Don Cherry was fired from Sportsnet.
When I pointed out that the cancellation of free speech and expression was not something to aspire to during the Cherry controversy, Jespersen responded to my tweet with the snide response below.
Indeed Mr. Jespersen. You found that out rather clearly this week didn’t you?
All Cherry had to say was “you people” in a segment and the baying leftist mobs went hysteric in their efforts to paint Don Cherry as the second coming of Hitler. It led to the end of a career which had spanned decades. Jespersen was among the mob with his little torch and pitchfork and was busily creating the rationale for Cherry’s cancelation.
Ahh yes. If only you had heeded your own advice Jespersen. You may have still been employed today.
What the fools feeding the cancel culture mob just don’t seem capable of understanding is that it is inevitable that the mob will eventually turn against them. Just ask Wendy Mesley.
This is creating a dull, vanilla world of mainstream media where personalities fear to step out of the crowd to speak something for fear of something being read into their statements.
I don’t think Jespersen is a racist by any means and I don’t think his chimpanzee comment directed at Councilor Mike Nickel’s staff was intended as a racial slur just as I don’t think Cherry was out to smear all immigrants when he said “you people”. That doesn’t matter to the baying mob which will read the worst into any statement and relentlessly react on social media.
In reality, I suspect that the firing of both Jespersen and Cherry had more to do with internal economics than with anything they said. Mainstream media is losing money on all levels and they are desperately trying to stem the bleeding. Cherry was doubtless one of the most expensive personalities that Sportsnet had and ratings were plummeting at CHED while Jespersen held the prime daytime slot. Their statements simply gave their employers the excuse to give them the boot.
Christopher Bataluk dug out the CHED ratings below.
Losing a third of listeners in two years is nothing less than a catastrophe. Jesperson may not have been solely responsible for that drop but he sure as hell wasn’t drawing in new traffic. The station clearly needs some heavy restructuring and Jesperson provided them with the justification to fire him and open up their main slot for something new. Rest assured, if ratings were climbing or even static, Jesperson would still have a job.
We need diverse voices out there even if we don’t agree with them all. Jesperson says he isn’t going away and I do hope that he finds a platform in new media.
I do also hope that Jesperson has learned what a monster “cancel culture” really is. It’s irrational, cruel and uncompromising. Feeding it will only lead to your own demise eventually.
Every time Jespersen covered for any of the 770 crew down in Calgary I changed the channel. Progressives are great at pointing the finger and crying outrage now if only they could see their weakness in not grasping unintended consequences as they say Good for the Goose Good for the Gander!
This is an unfortunate consequence of the extremism found in Alberta today. I liked listening to Ryan most days… I would bounce between Edmonton and Calgary talk… aka Daniel vs Rayn sometimes when lucky I would listen to both via there on demand programs.
Ryan was not a raging Leftist Progressive like the Right would have you believe. Nor was he a new Hitler for the 21st century as the Left would have you believe. He was an extremely strong Centrist. Tragically, he seemed to think his middle of the road view actually put his opinion of himself and his beliefs above all others. Especially, regarding people he was strongly against. His radio show was always moderate. Looking at both sides, but over the years is lost it’s a dive of let’s dive into issues,, but a I am going to tell you the issues. Most strongly politically. It was when he stepped wrong with the Premier of AB and took him to task on another nationally syndicated radio program. I think that was the tipping point of him starting to preach the gospel of Ryan. He had quite good segments like when he brought in people to talk about the Middle East. But sadly they were few and far between… then he would devote his Friday’s more often than not to his friends on air for a round table echo chamber of the daily complaints.
I am going to miss Ryan. He was human and faliable just like the rest of us. Ryan if your reading this have a “Drinkie Pooo” on me… Jamison right? Been 5 years I can’t remember myself.
It looked to me like Don Cherry implied that immigrants came to “our” country. This implies that even after arrival and citizenship it was not “their” country. Read what he said: “You people that come here, whatever it is, you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that,”
To me that was clearly an insult to immigrants and implied they were getting something for free (OUR milk and honey). They were not part of “us”. But since Don Cherry was paid to be controversial I don’t think he should have been fired for that. It was an offensive comment but I say, let those without sin cast the first stone.
Ryan Jespersen I believe was indicating that Mike Nicols had assistants write his social media. As you say it was not racist.