Jammin 95.5 threepeats!

[May 21st, 2003] First it was the "pink taco." Then poking fun at the mentally retarded. Last week, the morning PlayHouse crew at Jammin 95.5 crossed a new threshold in the quest for higher ratings--mutilated corpses--and picked up an unprecedented third Rogue within three months!

Days after Jammin 95.5 FM general manager Tim McNamara suspended the station's PlayHouse crew for exploiting the developmentally disabled, the crew's website (www.radioplayhouse.com) featured a link to images of two killers dismembering their victim.

The accompanying caption describes how a "biker bimbette" conspired to murder her husband by fellating him on the couch while her lover stabbed him in the neck. As depicted in 12 grisly photographs, the pair then proceeded to sever the dead husband's penis and insert it into his mouth.

According to the website, the photos were used as evidence in the trial and the woman and her boyfriend are currently serving 30 years to life.

The photos did not appear on the PlayHouse site. Instead, visitors were offered a link to the images with the description: "GRAPHIC PHOTOS!!! CLICK HERE to see...." Clicking the link transported viewers to a Swedish website called FlashBack, whose creed is "information wants to be free."

WW first learned about the images on Tuesday of last week and downloaded them on Thursday evening. By Friday afternoon, the link had been removed.

PlayHouse host PK declined to discuss the images. "I'm really not gonna comment and get myself in more hot water," he says.

Station manager McNamara told WW he had not seen the images, but he played down their significance. "The traffic on this [site] is so minimal," he says.

There's a good chance that traffic includes a significant number of kids. The station, owned by Paul Allen, courts the lucrative 12- to 24-year-old demographic, and the PlayHouse draws 58,000 listeners ages 12 to 17 in a typical week, according to Arbitron--roughly a quarter of the entire Portland market for that age group.

McNamara vows to keep the PlayHouse crew on a short leash.