Ohio radio station pulls controversial holiday song, and KC station gets complaints

A radio station in Ohio pulled a Christmas oldie from its playlist because some people could be offended by its rakish lyrics — and a Kansas City radio station is catching grief for it.

Cleveland’s WDOK shares the same place on the dial as KCKC-FM, aka KC 102.1.

The Cleveland station pulled “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” because afternoon host Glenn Anderson thought it was inappropriate in the #MeToo era. Mostly, the song, written by Frank Loesser in 1944, is a clever back-and-forth between a man making advances and a resistant woman. But one of her lines, “Say, what’s in this drink?” jumps out in this time of powerful men like Bill Cosby having to pay the consequences of sexual assault.

“It seems very manipulative and wrong,” Anderson wrote in a statement. “The world we live in is extra sensitive now, and people get easily offended, but in a world where #MeToo has finally given women the voice they deserve, the song has no place.”

The story took off. The women on TV’s “The View” thought the reaction was a little too much.

But some people apparently got confused, and that has “led to misdirected complaints” to “Kansas City’s Christmas Station,” which has no plans to yank “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from its all-holiday song rotation, set to run through Dec. 25.

KC 102.1 program director and afternoon host Natalie Rush said the station was inundated over the weekend with messages.

“While we certainly respect the ‘Me Too’ movement and would absolutely look into concerns over lyrics in the music we play, I have not received complaints about this song,” Rush told The Star on Monday. “We continue to play several versions including (one by) Idina Menzel and Michael Buble, and the classic Dean Martin version from the ’50s.”

Incidentally, the Menzel/Buble version changed the line “Say, what’s in this drink?” to “Was that a wink?”

Last year, a radio station in Dallas-Fort Worth pulled all five of its versions of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” out of the Christmas rotation, citing listeners’ concerns over the lyrics.

“I simply must go. (Baby it’s cold outside.)

“The answer is no. (But baby it’s cold outside.)”

This story was originally published December 3, 2018 at 1:41 PM.