Tag: WRKO

Sliming Scotto

Adam Gaffin’s got the links on how former WRKO Radio (AM 680) talk-show host Scott Allen Miller’s Wikipedia entry was recently vandalized to make him appear as a Satan-worshipper who’s into porcine bestiality.

The idiotic stunt was almost certainly perpetrated by someone at Entercom, WRKO’s parent station, as Brian Maloney discovered by inspecting the digital entrails. Miller, who held his tongue when he was fired to make way for Tom Finneran, responds with class.

At this moment, at least, it looks as though the vandalism has been undone.

DePetro does it again

John DePetro, the ratings-challenged former WRKO Radio (AM 680) talk-show host, is at it again. Ian Donnis explains that DePetro, now back on the air in Providence, blurted out a few remarks in an appearance on MSNBC that indulged in some pretty raw racial stereotypes.

DePetro, of course, was fired by WRKO after he referred to 2006 gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross as a “fat lesbian.” Thus did he show that he had forgotten the first rule of talk radio, which is that you can only get away with stuff like that if you’ve got the numbers.

“Dennis & Callahan” non-update

There is absolutely nothing new on the “Dennis & Callahan” front this morning, so I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The roundup of coverage begins with David Scott. From there, move on to the Herald (here and here), the Globe and, finally, Save WRKO, which pores over a line supposedly excised from the Herald like a Roman priest examining sheep entrails.

For my money, the most insightful commentary today comes from Media Nation’s own Amused but Informed Observer, even though I disagree with him (her?) that this is nothing more than a stunt. For the record — to borrow a wonderful phrase from Curt Schilling — I also disagree with Amused about Scott’s inherent toolness. But there you go.

Entercom’s latest disaster

It’s one thing for Entercom to screw up its fading Boston talk station, WRKO (AM 680). It’s quite another for the company to mess with its highly successful sports operation, WEEI (AM 850). But that’s exactly what has happened.

Boston Sports Media’s David Scott got the scoop late last night, reporting that WEEI’s top-rated morning hosts, John Dennis and Gerry Callahan, have been locked out over a contract dispute. The Herald’s Jessica Heslam and Laurel Sweet follow today with a story that actually leads the paper. (Callahan is also a Herald columnist.)

Now, consider the ill-fated moves that have brought Entercom to this impasse. The big one took place last fall, when the company negotiated a deal with the Red Sox to move most of their games from the sports station to the talk station. Yes, some games are still on WEEI. The schedule is determined, as best as I can tell, by the phase of the moon. Fortunately, those of us who live in Media Nation are able to hear all the games on a non-Entercom affiliate, WBOQ (104.9 FM).

The residual effects: WEEI now has a talented host, Mike Adams, trying to do a sports show that competes with the Red Sox, an impossible task. WRKO’s Howie Carr (like Callahan, a Herald columnist) is said to have been furious over having his show cut short by Sox games, thus helping to precipitate his move — pending the resolution of lawsuits he and Entercom have filed against each other — to rival WTKK (96.9 FM). Finally, both WRKO and WEEI have had their identities fuzzed up (a talk station with the Red Sox? a sports station without the Sox?), which is deadly for marketing.

In the case of “Dennis & Callahan,” there is an additional drama. Callahan has been off the air for months, recovering from what Scott describes as “multiple surgeries to his throat.” Supposedly Callahan was going to return to the airwaves today and explain, finally, what was at the root of his health problems. Scott also writes that “D&C” may not return to WEEI at all:

The final bit of intrigue in this whole complicated mess is the multiple reports we are receiving that D&C are being coveted by a completely separate broadcasting entity that would use the pair as its cornerstone to build a New England regional sports talk network. While some industry insiders are telling us that is a real, viable possibility others are more skeptical and assume it is a ploy on behalf of D&C’s representatives to drive up their clients value on the open market.

Shots can confirm that a regional player fitting the description does have the infrastructure in place to build such a network, but whether or not the group would be able to guarantee the kind of money that Dennis and Callahan are looking for is open to debate.

Personally, I wouldn’t miss “Dennis & Callahan,” which trucks in low-rent populism, homophobia and — in one notorious incident — out-and-out racism. I think you could move the vastly superior “Dale & Holley” show into the morning drive-time slot without missing a beat or a ratings point.

But “D&C” is the number-one radio show among men between the ages of 25 and 54. I wouldn’t think Entercom executives Jason Wolfe and Julie Kahn would want to take the chance of losing them.

Then again, maybe Tom Finneran can do sports.

Virtual Dennis: If you click on the WEEI home page right now, you might see a virtual John Dennis talking up the Jimmy Fund radiothon.

Million Dollar Howie?

Carolyn Johnson reports in the Globe that Howie Carr last year made $790,000 from WRKO Radio (AM 680), the station from which he is now seeking a less-than-amicable divorce. If you figure in what he’s making as a Herald columnist, I’ll bet he’s at $1 million or close to it — and that’s not counting whatever he’s making from his book, “The Brothers Bulger.”

That ought to put things in perspective the next time he goes off on some poor bastard grasping for another $10,000.

Over on Cape Cod Today, Peter Kenney offers some thoughts and insight into the Carr-Cary Pahigian relationship. Kenney gets at something very odd: the propriety of Pahigian, an executive with one radio company, freelancing as an agent and messing with the star property of another radio company.

Howie’s unusual agent

This is way inside baseball, but it’s odd enough to mention. Both the Globe (which quotes me) and the Herald, in reporting on WRKO’s countersuit against Howie Carr, note that Carr’s agent is Cary Pahigian.

But Pahigian is a radio management guy of long standing. As recently as late June, he was oozing sincerity in front of the FCC in his capacity as president and general manager of Saga Communications’ Portland (Maine) Radio Group. He’s still listed in that capacity on Saga’s Web site.

One of Saga’s Maine stations, WGAN (AM 560), carries Carr’s show from 3 to 5 p.m. every weekday. And in the late 1990s, when Pahigian was running a hate radio station on Cape Cod owned by the late auto magnate Ernie Boch, he carried Carr’s show and provided airtime to Carr’s then-sidekick Giles Threadgold.

So clearly there are ties between Carr and Pahigian. Still, it’s pretty unusual for someone to walk both sides of the management-talent divide.

By the way, Howie was still doing his WRKO show yesterday. What a strange situation.

Progressive talk and WRKO

AlanF has posted an entertaining account at the Daily Kos about the recent FCC hearing on localism that was held in Portland, Maine. Alan is with Save Boston’s Progressive Talk, formed last year after Clear Channel dumped syndicated liberal talk shows from two weak-signaled stations and replaced them with Latino programming. He writes:

Although progressive talk attracted a loyal following among those who managed to discover it, Clear Channel switched it off abruptly in 2006, replacing it with a Latino music format (“Rumba”). Despite the fact that Clear Channel suddenly managed to find local staff for Rumba, Rumba has done worse in the ratings than progressive talk. This pattern that has been repeated across the country.

You’d think someone would take a chance on liberal talk in Boston, wouldn’t you? I continue to think that ratings-challenged WRKO (AM 680) ought to give it a try, now that afternoon host Howie Carr is jumping to WTKK (96.9 FM) this fall. Let me play WRKO consultant for a moment and try this out on you:

  • Steal Jim Braude and Margery Eagan from WTKK and put them on in the morning against Carr, who’s slotted to be the ‘TKK morning guy. Braude is the only liberal radio host in Boston; Eagan is a moderate. They’ve also got a breezy style that’s better suited to the morning drive than Howie’s sneering putdowns.
  • Move Tom Finneran from morning to afternoon drive and pair him with a liberal co-host. Instead of competing with the lazy but talented Carr, he’d be competing with the foul-mouthed libertarian Jay Severin. I don’t know who’d win that one, but my guess is that Finneran and company, by focusing on local issues, would at least hold their own.
  • Develop a new local show for the 10 a.m.-to-noon slot to go up against whatever ‘TKK is running. I’m guessing that’s where Michael Graham will land once Howie arrives, and if you can’t compete with Graham’s yipping, upper-octave rants about illegal immigrants, you can’t compete.
  • Now, here’s a tricky one. I’d definitely put syndicated liberal host Ed Schultz in the noon-to-3 p.m. segment. But Schultz works best as a counterweight to Rush Limbaugh, whom ‘RKO would be replacing. I say go with Schultz and hope ‘TKK management is stupid enough to pick up Limbaugh, a ratings monster nationwide but not here.
  • From 7 p.m. on, it doesn’t matter all that much, especially since WRKO carries the Red Sox. I guess I’d run Stephanie Miller‘s syndicated show from 7 to 10 p.m. on nights when the Sox aren’t playing. She’d be up against Bill O’Reilly — not a problem in this market.

Now look at that. I’ve solved all of WRKO’s problems, and it only took me 20 minutes. What do you think, Brian? Next?

Will Howie take the mic?

The Herald’s Jessica Heslam says that Howie Carr, back from vacation, will resume his show on WRKO Radio (AM 680) today at 3 p.m. We’ll see. It’s almost unheard-of for a radio station to allow a disgruntled host who says he’s leaving to remain on the air. I’d guess that it’s equally likely Carr will be kept on ice until his contract situation is resolved.

The subhead on Adam Reilly’s column in the Phoenix today is “Why WRKO should cut Howie loose.” But based on Reilly’s conclusions, it might as well have been “Why cutting Howie loose will be a big honking disaster for WRKO.”

WRKO’s long, painful decline

Because I’m on the wrong side of 50, you’ll have to indulge me for a few moments as I remember what WRKO Radio (AM 680) used to be. Twenty years ago, you had Janet Jeghelian and Ted O’Brien in the morning, Gene Burns during the midday and the late, great Jerry Williams in the afternoon. Jeghelian and O’Brien later gave way to Marjorie Clapprood and Pat Whitley without missing a beat. It was great radio, and you really weren’t tempted to change the station at any point during the day.

Now? Howie Carr is a pipsqueak compared to those towering figures, but at least he has some ties to that golden era. It was Williams, after all, who gave him his start. And Carr is a huge talent, even if he’s squandered it over the years, devolving into a homophobic race-baiter with a lazy show that usually sounds like it took all of five minutes to put together.

Even so, Carr is really all WRKO has. Now, with Carr leaving this October for WTKK (96.9 FM) — a deal we have to assume will come to fruition, despite some contract hassles — the folks at Entercom might as well turn out the lights, especially once baseball season is over.

(Disclosure: I was a regular paid guest on a late-morning show hosted by Whitley a few years ago, and one Saturday picked up a few bucks hosting a liberal program ‘RKO was then running. However, despite what N. thinks, I never had any sort of tryout at ‘RKO or any other radio station.)

The Herald, of course, is firmly in Howie’s camp, as he is the tabloid’s star columnist. But I wonder if Carr will be tempted to stop writing, or at least to cut back. A morning drive-time show typically is more heavily produced than an afternoon show, with guests and interviews. Maybe he thinks he can wing it. But if he’s going to justify the money ‘TKK is paying him, he’ll need to work harder than he has at ‘RKO in recent years.

Still, I’d rather have ‘TKK’s problems than ‘RKO’s. By far the two most important segments of the day are the morning and afternoon commutes. Consider:

  • In the morning, Carr will compete against former Massachusetts House speaker Tom Finneran. As I told the Globe’s Carolyn Johnson, ‘RKO has already done much of ‘TKK’s promotional work by playing Finneran’s hiring earlier this year as a phony feud between the two men. My heart’s with Finneran, but my head is with Carr. Howie is going to beat the overly loquacious Finneran like a drum.
  • In the afternoon, Jay Severin will have a clear field. Severin was actually ahead of Carr in the ratings a few years ago, then left to go national. Severin hasn’t been able to duplicate that feat since his return, but now he’ll have no competition.

As much of a coup as this is for WTKK, I would argue that station managers made a mistake by not giving the morning show to Margery Eagan and Jim Braude, who are on from noon to 3 p.m. Two can be better than one in the morning, and I think they’d do a better job of handling the fast pace, the guest interviews and the like that are characteristic of a good show in that time slot.

And what of the state of talk radio in Boston? Not good. With Paul Sullivan having semi-retired from WBZ (AM 1030) in order to take care of his health, by far the best talk-show host in Boston now is Tom Ashbrook, of “On Point,” on WBUR (90.9 FM). Ashbrook is very good indeed, but “On Point” is more of an interview program than it is a talk show; and because it’s syndicated by NPR, there’s not much local flavor. I’d love to see Christopher Lydon take Sullivan’s slot on WBZ, but, frankly, I can’t imagine its happening.

This would be a great opportunity for WRKO to try liberal talk, despite its long-term commitment to Finneran, a moderate conservative. Pair Finneran with a liberal co-host; run Stephanie Miller‘s and Ed Schultz‘s syndicated shows during the midday; and then come back with a talented liberal local host during the afternoon drive, and ‘RKO would have something with which to counter ‘TKK’s mostly right-wing lineup.

But I suppose that would make too much sense.

Howie Carr photo (cc) by Paul Keleher. Some rights reserved.