In late March, Village Voice ‘Runnin Scared’ columnist Foster Kamer wrote about the pending deal between Cablevision and Gothamist. The former was slated to buy the latter, and if Gothamist did well, owner Jake Dobkin would get a “performance based earnout”. Cablevision is run by Jimmy Dolan (pictured), who would be the man to sign any performance-based earnout checks, which prompted Kamer to write, “Wonder how Dobkin’s gonna feel with Jimmy Dolan’s cock in his mouth?”
Initially the story cost the Village Voice $20k in ad revenue from the Independent Film Channel. Dolan owns it and pulled ads due to cock-in-mouth-joke-related ire. Though the sum wasn’t that large, Kamer had just started the gig and probably felt a bit hot in the collar about the “mediocre” joke, as he called it.
Today Kamer reports that Dolan’s Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which owns LiveNation, has pulled all of its advertising from the paper. In total the publication has lost $1 million over a penis joke.
Kamer has not — and will not be fired, according to him. At least not yet. And he shouldn’t be — if anything this little foible has done more for the Voice than any other fiasco (read: story) they’ve had published in recent months, years. The story, which now hinges on one man’s inability to take a joke, has undoubtedly brought the publication loads of traffic.
The Voice’s ad sales team has but to resell the space. Yes, this is annoying, but it does not mean the paper will be hurt long term. If anything they are in line for an ad sales boon both from LiveNation’s competitors and anyone else they were turning down for lack of impressions.