Savage Elation II

Sooooo....I read that MSNBC has fired talk show tyrant Michael Savage as he wished a caller would "get AIDS and die".
Like Captain Renault in "Casablanca", MSNBC seems shocked-shocked-shocked to discover their paid conservative provocateur has a harsh hate filled side.
I guess no one thought to play the audio tape demo from his San Francisco radio show eh?
But Savage's dismissal does raise certain issues...operationally speaking...where IS the line in radio/television?
Oh sure we all know about George Carlin's seven deadly words you can't say on TV....but other than that what are the rules?
My thesis is, there are not rules, it's Hobbes' war of all against all out there.
I mean think for a moment, Savage loses his plush TV gig for calling down death on a caller, but Howard Stern marches on despite numerous gruesome on air provocations.
Of course, Savage did have various gay rights organizations gunning for him, that helps to keep the pot boiling...by contrast people seem to have given up on toppling Stern.
So maybe it's a pure power situation...the R.C.C. came down like the proverbial million pound sh*thammer on Opie and Anthony...they had em' dead to rights and had the muscle to make it stick.
Which is fine by me, Opie and Anthony aren't worth the powder necessary to blow them both to hell....
However is anyone else disquieted by the notion that there really aren't any objective standards in play here?
That it is all a loose normative calculus of how much outrage from within and without a network will put up with before dumping a controversial act?
So that what it comes down to on radio and TV, no prior standards and practices just the rule of force?