Tag: Jay Severin

WTKK statement on Jay Severin

This now appears on the Web site of WTKK Radio (96.9 FM):

WTKK and Greater Media value an open and vigorous dialogue, but we also adhere to basic principles of civility, common decency and respect for all cultures. We believe Jay’s suspension is the best way to uphold both of these corporate policies. WTKK Management met with Jay Severin and his agent today. He will remain on suspension until further notice.

V.B., who took the afternoon shift today, said he was “filling in for Jay.” Sounds like Severin may be back. And if management means what it says, it also sounds like Severin will be helming a very different show.

The numbers tell the story

Jay Severin has been disappeared from the WTKK home page, though you can still find his blog if you know where to look.

The Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam has the numbers, and they tell a gruesome story. During the first quarter of 2009, Severin dropped to 14th place among 25- to 54-year-old listeners, the most demographically important group. Severin’s WRKO rival, Howie Carr, was in sixth place. Severin had a 3.6 share; Carr, 5.2.

Heslam notes that Severin’s plunge came as radio stations switched to a new method of measuring audience. What’s unclear is whether the old system was artificially inflating Severin’s numbers; the new system is artifically hurting him; or people are just sick of listening to his race-baiting rants.

I love this:

Sources within Greater Media, which owns the station, have told the Herald that management has been dissatisfied with the “hateful” tone his show has taken. One source said Severin had been warned in the past.

So when was this magical period when Severin’s show was not “hateful”? No doubt Greater Media executives thought Severin sounded a whole lot less hateful when he was beating Carr every day. I’m sure one thing they really hate is paying a reported $1 million-plus a year to a host who’s coming in 14th in the ratings.

Lehigh on Severin

Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh, who’s tangled with Jay Severin before, weighs in with a terrific column on Severin’s suspension from WTKK Radio (96.9 FM). I love this:

From the start of his talk-radio career, Severin was just bright enough to be an accomplished charlatan, clever enough to coat his gut-level biases and bigotry with a thin veneer of analysis. But he was neither smart nor knowledgeable enough to add much of value to the public discussion.

On “Beat the Press” this evening, Emily Rooney expressed the view that Severin will be back. Perhaps she’s right. (The segment should pop up on the new BTP Web site over the weekend.) I believe that was Curtis Sliwa I heard filling in for Severin this afternoon, which suggests that management didn’t even have a Plan D in place, never mind a Plan B or C.

Still, I find it hard to believe that management is happy about paying Severin a reported $1 million-plus a year only to lose the ratings battle to WRKO (AM 680) host Howie Carr — who, after all, would now be ‘TKK’s morning host if only he hadn’t signed a contract with ‘RKO that would make Curt Flood weep.

Are these the Severin sound bites?

The Boston Globe posts two brief audio clips of Jay Severin insulting Mexicans. They are utterly unremarkable — pedestrian, humorless, racist crap of the sort that’s been tumbling from his mouth for years.

If WTKK (96.9 FM) managment wants to claim that these are what got him suspended (and we don’t know that), then you’d have to say this is a John DePetro situation. That is, management wants Severin gone and is looking for any convenient excuse.

Brian Flaherty writes that Severin makes more than $1 million a year, although I don’t know who or what his source is. And Flaherty notices something I’ve noticed, too — Severin’s afternoon drive-time rival, Howie Carr of WRKO (AM 680), has been crowing about having the largest talk-radio audience in the afternoon lately, something Severin had bragged about for quite a few years.

More than a million dollars is a lot to pay a talk-show host who is essentially in last place, given that there are only two major-station political talk shows in Boston during afternoon drive.

More: Lance has worse. Vile stuff — though, again, I’ve been hearing this garbage from Severin for years.

WTKK suspends Jay Severin

Jay Severin’s ratings must really be slipping. WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) has suspended him “indefinitely” for making derogatory remarks about Mexicans, according to the Boston Globe’s David Abel. As anyone who has listened to him over the years knows, he couldn’t possibly have been any more offensive this week than he’s been for the past decade.

You have to wonder if this is really about ‘TKK trying to get out from under a contract that makes no sense in the current economic environment. So what did Severin say? Anyone hear it?

At least for the moment, Severin is still featured on ‘TKK’s Web site. (Thanks to Ron Newman.)

More: The Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam doesn’t have Severin’s offending remarks, either, but she does report that ‘TKK was actually using those very same sound bites as promos. That tends to confirm my suspicion that this is all about money. Prediction: If Severin ever returns to ‘TKK, it will be with a new contract for substantially less money. It’s a different world now.

Imus’ judgment

No, Don Imus shouldn’t have said he’d “shoot” Jay Severin — but, based on Jessica Heslam’s account, it sounds like no one ever would have known about it if the Severin camp hadn’t started blabbing. And come on — does Severin actually believe Imus was going to pull out a gun and blow him away if he refused to get off the stage?

The shooting remark aside, you can’t argue with Imus’ judgment.

The anti-Obama right’s latest obsession

Did you know that there is a movement afoot on the right to demand that Barack Obama produce his birth certificate on the grounds that it might prove he’s not a “natural born Citizen,” as the Constitution requires of presidents? I hadn’t heard that one until it came tumbling out of Jay Severin’s careless mouth on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) yesterday.

Anyway, I went to Google Blog Search, entered “Obama ‘birth certificate,'” and got 3,416 returns. Perhaps that’s not indicative of a major groundswell — many of the posts appear to be refutations of the crazier conspiracy theories out there. But the crazier conspiracies are indeed out there, including the notion that he was born in Kenya, and that he’s lying about his date of birth in order to cover that up.

This post on Daily Kos strikes me as smart and comprehensive. And National Review’s Jim Geraghty — a conservative who thinks Obama should produce his birth certificate — nevertheless offers a reasonable and non-hysterical perspective.

Piercing talk radio

Charlie Pierce is on a talk-radio rampage. Last month he went after WTKK (96.9 FM), and specifically Don Imus, Michael Graham, Jay Severin, Laura Ingraham and Michele McPhee, whom he doesn’t actually name, referring to her only as “a woman who sounds like she’s shouting her program off the back porch of a three-decker in Revere.”

Now he’s back, targeting Tom Finneran of WRKO (AM 680) as host of “one of the lamest shows in the history of the electric radio device.”

I can’t say I disagree, except to note that McPhee doesn’t actually shout. It only seems that way.

Boston’s talk devolution

While the focus on the talk-radio wars here and elsewhere has generally been on the dysfunctional station that is WRKO (AM 680), it seems that the real mess may be at WTKK (96.9 FM). Globe columnist Steve Bailey reports that WRKO is charging — and presumably getting — considerably more money for advertising than its rival during the all-important morning and evening commutes.

In the morning, ‘RKO’s Tom Finneran show (on which Bailey appears) is charging $400 for a 60-second ad, compared to $250 for the same ad on the syndicated “Imus in the Morning” program on ‘TKK. In the afternoon, Howie Carr (WRKO) gets $600, while Jay Severin (WTKK) lags at $350.

I imagine this needs to be taken with at least a grain of salt. In the newspaper business, ad-rate cards tend to feature more creative writing than anything you’ll find in the actual paper, and that may be true of radio as well. But Bailey’s numbers make a certain amount of sense.

Finneran, the born-again non-lobbyist, hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, but the aging Imus’ return has essentially been a non-story. I suspect that most of Imus’ few remaining listeners found a new morning routine during his richly earned hiatus, and they’re not going back.

As for the Carr-Severin war, it’s a shame both sides can’t lose — but Carr does manage to bring intelligence, wit and an encyclopedic knowledge of Boston to the table, despite his laziness and his occasional indulgences in homophobic snickering. Severin possesses a large vocabulary, but his ranting, his mindless cheerleading on behalf of Mitt Romney and his mundane-yet-offensive insights into politics are tiresome. I’m not sure why, but Severin has become much less listenable since his return from syndication a couple of years ago. I guess listeners agree with me, given that Severin was beating Carr in the ratings before he left.

WTKK could have solved its drive-time shortcomings. Part of it wasn’t the station’s fault — Howie Carr wanted to switch and become the station’s morning host, but his contract didn’t allow him to do so. If I were running ‘TKK and had somehow found a way to land Carr, I’d have kept him in the afternoon and moved Severin to the less important mid-day slot. Then I’d have moved “Eagan and Braude,” the station’s best program, to morning drive.

Not that they asked me. But you know what? They’d be better off if they had.

One final note. Bailey also reports that the ad rates charged by the sports-talk programs on WEEI, a sister station to ‘RKO, absolutely blow away both ‘RKO and ‘TKK. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger’s famous dictum about academic politics, the infighting between ‘RKO and ‘TKK is so fierce because the stakes are so small.