I am stunned to learn that Entercom has actually done something smart. Republican political consultant Charley Manning has been named to replace Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated noon-to-3 p.m. show on WRKO Radio (AM 680), reports the Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam.
Limbaugh will be moving to Clear Channel’s WXKS (AM 1200), which is loading up on syndicated national shows. Perhaps Entercom can persuade Clear Channel to take Laura Ingraham and Michael Savage off its hands, too.
Congratulations to Manning, a good guy who, I’m sure, will do well.
Boston Herald reporter Jay Fitzgerald has some very good news: WTKK (96.9 FM) is moving Jim Braude and Margery Eagan’s mid-day talk show to morning drive, where it will now be heard Monday to Friday from 7 to 10 a.m. Aging has-been Don Imus’ syndicated program will be relegated to the decidedly unattractive 5-to-7 a.m. slot.
In making the move, WTKK rectifies a mistake that goes back to its failed attempt to lure Howie Carr from WRKO (AM 680) for morning drive. Carr wanted to come over, but he turned out to have the most restrictive contract since Curt Flood; indeed, he was whining about it as recently as yesterday.
Stuck with no Howie, ‘TKK took back Imus, who was returning to the airwaves following his penance for referring to African-American female basketball players as “nappy-headed hos.”
Naturally, a lot of attention will be focused on the duel between Eagan and Braude’s program and ‘RKO’s morning-drive show hosted by Tom Finneran and Todd Feinburg. That shouldn’t be much of a contest. Braude and Eagan are naturals. Finneran has never gotten comfortable behind the microphone, and Feinburg is all plodding, ultraconservative earnestness.
The far more interesting question is whether this is the first of several shoes to drop at ‘TKK. It’s hard to read the tea leaves, but the station has made a statement: Its signature program is now a morning talk show hosted by a liberal, Braude, and a moderate, Eagan, both of whom bring a light touch to the proceedings and are respectful toward and engaging with callers.
Where does that leave WTKK’s right-wing twins, yipping ninny Michael Graham and hatemongering afternoon host Jay Severin?
For the moment, they appear to be OK. Graham’s actually getting an extra hour. As for Severin, maybe I’m parsing this too finely, but I do find it interesting that he’s losing a drive-time hour (6 to 7 p.m.) and gaining a non-drive hour (2 to 3 p.m.). Michele McPhee is moving up a bit, from 6 to 10 p.m., which could be seen as an attempt to expose her to more listeners.
More than anything, Eagan and Braude’s move up is step toward civility on the airwaves — rare at any time, and something we ought to celebrate.
Severin referred questions about the conditions of his return — including whether he took a pay cut — to his agent and attorney, George Tobia. Tobia declined to comment on the conditions, saying simply, “Jay is very excited to be back in the fold on his station. He loves working there and he’s excited about doing a great show for WTKK.”
If the answer was “no,” wouldn’t Severin and Tobia just say “no”?
As have others who have followed the issue from both sides, [El Planeta managing editor Marcela] García speculated that the suspension had as much to do with Severin’s reported $1 million annual salary and his recent drop to 14th in the ratings as with his particular remarks. A spokeswoman for Greater Media Inc., has confirmed that WTKK’s parent company and Severin are in negotiations.
Negotiating over what?
Keep your eye on the big picture. From the beginning, this has sounded more than anything like the story of a troubled media company — and keep in mind that all media companies are troubled — trying to get out of a contract it agreed to in the midst of an entirely different economic climate.
I don’t think we’re going to see any $1 million-a-year local radio hosts anymore. It must be particularly galling for Greater Media to have to pay Severin that much to come in last in his two-person race with WRKO’s Howie Carr.
No doubt Severin’s ratings on Tuesday will be spectacular. We’ll see if he can sustain it.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I know. Reese who? Financially troubled WRKO (AM 680) has decided to replace him with syndicated talker Laura Ingraham, who was dumped recently by WTKK (96.9 FM) to make way for — and no, you really can’t make this stuff up — Curtis Sliwa, of 1980s Guardian Angels fame.
Former Boston radio talk-show host John DePetro, class act that he is, has decided to blame his wife for the book-cooking that resulted in his meteoric — and, as it turns out, fraudulent — climb in the Providence ratings.
“It’s embarrassing all the way around,” DePetro tells Alisha Pina of the Providence Journal. “I don’t have a lot to add. My wife was asked to take part in a radio survey, she did and she shouldn’t have. It was wrong.”
Ratings for DePetro, the morning host on WPRO Radio (AM 630), had showed him zooming from 11th to fourth place recently. Now we know why. The six ratings diaries submitted to Arbitron by Kristen DePetro represented more than 3,800 listeners, according to the ProJo.
DePetro was canned by Boston’s WRKO (AM 680) in November 2006 after he referred to independent gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross as a “fat lesbian.” Worse than that is heard on WRKO every day, of course, but DePetro’s problems were compounded by his minuscule ratings. (DePetro’s bio on the WPRO Web site says that he “left Boston with much fanfare, and returns to Rhode Island as a well known name.”) Looks like he — or at least his wife — tried to fix his ratings problem in Providence, and I mean that in both senses of the word.
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”?
You would have thought that WRKO Radio (AM 680) talk-show host Tom Finneran had learned from his last go-round. Less than three months ago, Finneran was lambasted for signing up to be a lobbyist for the state troopers union. He quickly backed off.
Now, though, Finneran, a former Massachusetts House speaker, has officially registered as a lobbyist, according to the Herald’s Jessica Heslam, and has taken on the Liquor Liability Joint Underwriting Association of Massachusetts as a client. If that sounds a little too obscure to worry about, just consider that Finneran’s new best friends will be very interested whenever there’s talk of new laws regarding underage drinking, drunken driving, liability insurance and the like. According to the organization’s Web site:
LLJUA is a liquor liability insurer of last-resort. To be eligible for coverage from LLJUA, the business owner has to be turned down for coverage in the voluntary market. LLJUA’s liquor liability insurance is available for owners of taverns, hotels, restaurants, social clubs, package stores, caterers and other businesses that sell alcoholic beverages.
So, let’s see. A man staggers out of a bar, wraps his car around a telephone pole and is seriously injured. His family sues the bar, claiming the bartender should have known he was drunk and refused to serve him. Finneran the talk-show host rails against the suit, claiming that the driver should take responsibility for his actions and that tort reform is needed to prevent such frivolous lawsuits. And Finneran the lobbyist pockets another check from the organization that stands to benefit from such “reform.” Got it.
My Northeastern colleague Steve Burgard is rightly appalled (I’m thinking of renaming this blog “Husky Nation”), telling the Globe’s Carolyn Johnson, “For a serious news organization, it would be unthinkable.” Hosting a talk show may not be journalism, but it’s an activity with many resemblances to journalism. Finneran doesn’t owe his tiny band of listeners much, but he does owe them his independence.
You’d like to think that when Finneran’s expressing his opinion in his tortured, rococo syntax that his opinion isn’t bought and paid for. But it is. He should be gone. And perhaps he will be — the Herald account suggests that WRKO management is none too happy about this.
