Tag: WBZ

Those WBZ Radio cuts

I’ve been looking for a point of entry to comment on the recent cutbacks at WBZ Radio (AM 1030), which have claimed talk-show hosts Lovell Dyett, Steve LeVeille and Pat Desmarais, as well as sports reporter Tom Cuddy. It looks like Scott Fybush’s blistering commentary ought to do the trick.

Unfortunately, I never got to hear those shows, as they were on during a time when I simply never listen to talk radio. Sorry to give fuel to CBS’s fire — no doubt the company’s research showed that I was pretty typical.

But live and local ought to be part of any radio station’s mandate. As Garrett says, if CBS doesn’t want to live up to its responsibilities, let it find a buyer who will. (Via Universal Hub.)

More on that Obama cover

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the Obama campaign and its supporters on the left have made way too much of the New Yorker’s satirical cover depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as flag-burning, Osama bin Laden-loving terrorists.

Which puts me at odds with Jon Keller, who included me in a piece on the controversy last night on WBZ-TV (Channel 4).

Howie being Howie

Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr’s snide attack on state Sen. Jim Marzilli today is by the numbers, but it’s worth reading all the way to the last two lines. No, he hasn’t gotten over it. Will Carr get chewed out when he shows up at work this afternoon at WRKO Radio (AM 680), or will this just be waved off as Howie being Howie?

Meanwhile, good Jon Keller commentary on WBZ Radio (AM 1030) this morning on Marzilli’s lawyer, who’s gone way, way beyond the call of duty. While Marzilli himself has made it clear that he’s got some serious problems by checking in to a psychiatric hospital, his lawyer, Terrence Kennedy, has dismissed the charges against Marzilli as “ridiculous.”

That’s pretty offensive. What ever happened to “my client has pleaded not guilty, and beyond that we have no comment”?

More on WBZ

How big a story is the downsizing at WBZ-TV (Channels 4 and 38)? Bigger than the Globe plays it — a small story inside City & Region. [Correction: I’ve been told that it made the front of City & Region in some editions.] But not as big as the Herald seems to think, with a huge front-page package.

With three well-known names — sports anchor Bob Lobel, entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik and on-air news guy Scott Wahle — departing the station, the local-newscast glory days of the 1970s and ’80s are starting to look more and more like the distant past.

Oddly, though, it may be the most retro of the three, Lobel, who still has a future in local television. As Herald columnist Steve Buckley points out, the newscasts have shrunk their sports segments in recent years because the obsessives have left for NESN, ESPN and the like.

If Lobel wants to keep working and doesn’t mind taking a substantial pay cut, he could presumably slide into a prime slot on cable tomorrow. Except when the Red Sox are playing, NESN still resembles a local-access outfit more than it does a professional operation. I like Bob Ryan’s show, but Lobel would really help.

By the way — think Dan Rea has had any second thoughts about moving from television to radio? No, I don’t think so, either.

Finally, the Outraged Liberal has some worthwhile observations on the WBZ cuts and related media matters.

The bell tolls for WBZ

If any broadcast news operation could avoid cuts, you’d like to think it would be WBZ. With two television stations (Channels 4 and 38), a powerhouse news-and-talk (AM 1030) radio station and an unusually good, video-laden Web site, the CBS-owned operation should have been in a strong position.

Unfortunately, 30 people are being let go, according to this Jessica Heslam piece in the Boston Herald. According to a story by Bill Carter in the New York Times, CBS is cutting back nationally, and Boston is being hit harder than just about anywhere.

Dan Rea’s radio days

I’ve got a profile of Dan Rea in the new issue of CommonWealth Magazine. Rea, a longtime television reporter at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), is now the host of the talk show once helmed by the late David Brudnoy and Paul Sullivan at WBZ Radio (AM 1030). “NightSide with Dan Rea” is an oasis of civility in the talk-radio wars. But can it work in today’s caustic environment?

Rea’s got some tough things to say about the state of local TV news, telling me, “It was very clear to me that there was a direction of television news that was not going to be reversed, and I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to continue doing television news as I was doing it.” He added:

Local television news is one of the great purveyors of racism of our time. They don’t understand that. But if you are somebody who lives out in one of the 128 or 495 suburbs, and never have a reason to really interact with people of color, the only time you’re going to see young black males is when they’re being arraigned, they’re being arrested, or they’re dying in the street. We ignore the 99 percent of the kids in that community who are trying to do the right thing, trying to go to school, trying to participate in community programs and athletics.

Rea is probably best known for his years-long efforts on behalf of Joseph Salvati, wrongly convicted of murder because of the false testimony of a government-protected witness.

Crossing the infomercial divide

I watched in slack-jawed amazement last night as WBZ-TV (Channel 4) took up 1:58 of its newscast for this Song of Itself — a gushing tribute to a CBS-branded sports bar to be built at Gillette Stadium. (CBS, of course, is WBZ’s corporate owner.) Yes, WBZ disclosed. Then it oozed. The piece was a truly odious use of airtime.

You know that little plug the Boston Globe gave to a Red Sox DVD that its corporate cousin NESN produced and that I poked fun at? I take it back. Not a problem. Not when a network-affiliate newscast broadcasts a two-minute commercial for a bar that its parent company is opening. I’d rather drink alone.

Dan Rea replaces Paul Sullivan

No surprise, but it’s good news that veteran journalist Dan Rea has been named to replace the late Paul Sullivan as the evening talk-show host on WBZ Radio (AM 1030). Rea will continue in the tradition of Sullivan and his predecessor, the late David Brudnoy — that is, he’ll host a show where the conversation is civil, and where news and interviews take precedence over ideology.

Now, as Brudnoy always said, if we can only get the Bruins off WBZ, we’ll be all set.

(Via Universal Hub and the Herald’s Messenger Blog.)