Posted on 09/24/2007 5:42:37 AM PDT by raccoonradio
(Scott Fybush): *A MASSACHUSETTS judge barred WRKO (680 Boston) Howie Carr from jumping ship to rival talker WTKK (96.9 Boston) last week, but the decision didn't make the host's future much clearer.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Allan van Gessel ruled Wednesday, just hours before Carr was to have started his WTKK morning shift, that while WRKO owner Entercom couldn't enforce the non-compete clause in Carr's contract, it could enforce a clause that allowed WRKO to match any competing offer for Carr's services.
What does "match" mean? There's the seven-million-dollar question as the legal battle keeps plodding along: would merely matching WTKK's paycheck be enough to force Carr to stay with WRKO, or are there other factors at play, too, such as the Red Sox preemptions that have annoyed Carr all summer, not to mention WTKK's FM signal and the conspicuous absence of Carr's nemesis Tom Finneran over at the Greater Media talker.
In any case, WRKO succeeded in barring Carr from his scheduled Thursday morning debut on WTKK, but for now that's the extent of the victory. Carr was already off the air at WRKO last week while the lawsuit was being heard, and he's not rushing back to the WRKO studios now, either, which leaves substitute hosts filling the afternoon slot both there and on the remaining affiliates of Carr's syndicated show.
Over at WTKK, the picture's only marginally brighter. While the station issued a statement saying "we are disappointed that Howie will not be on WTKK tomorrow, but we are hopeful that he will be a part of the Greater Media family in the very near future," there's every reason to expect Entercom to drag the legal wrangling out as long as possible, which leaves WTKK filling its morning drive slot with substitute hosts as well. That's Michael Graham, for the moment, with weekender Michelle McPhee handling Graham's usual 10-noon slot.
WTKK is moving forward in other ways - it has a new website in development, and it's started to use a new logo proclaiming the station as "Boston's Talk Evolution." (Given the political bent of most of the station's hosts, we'd think "Boston's Talk Creation" might be more in order, but we digress.)
yeah Avi was just on for Todd 10-noon; caught a bit of it.
He is well known in Boston talk radio. Back in the 80s
there was a book called Talk Radio And the American
Dream and it focused on Avi, and on Howie’s mentor Jerry
Williams.
Sandy may still be working for ‘RKO in afternoons—she
was the past couple days. She may just keep that job but
if word comes that WTKK _can_ get Howie, she may quit to
take a job offer from them, working with Howie. I think
Howie alleged Sandy would come along for the ride.
It’s 75 degrees in the area right now, as we turn the
page into autumn. How much longer will Howie be off?
“...The forecast calls for 2 to 4 inches in the Boston
area, lesser amounts to the South. Now here’s Todd
Feinburg in for Howie...”
“...You can hear the spring training action from
Fort Myers on our sister station, AM 850. Now here’s
Todd Feinburg in for Howie...”
“...Temperatures could hit 90 as we head into the
July 4th weekend. Todd Feinburg is next, in for Howie,
on WRKO...”
Feinburg again. Will Max be on?
For you timeshifters, I just got a press release from Rogue Amoeba about an app of theirs called Radioshift:
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/radioshift/
Haven’t looked at it yet, though I probably will.
BTW, I still prefer Howie Held Hostage, day xxx. It’s more alliteratively alluring, and all that. :-)
Mac OS X ....
For Windows, I use Total Recorder from http://www.highcriteria.com
RR uses something else.
Can we start a fund to buy-out JS’s contract?
Yes, Michael Graham was in that spot before Jay Severino came back with his tail between his legs. I’d much rather Michael Graham. Totally turned off by JS’s playboy act and his e-nun-ci-ation!
I completely lost it with Jay when he said that he made a huge mistake in 2004. He said that if he had to do it all over again he would vote for John Kerry. Ahmmmm....Jay? It’s called the Supreme Court, look into it. It’s kind of important.
I thought I remember reading that there were several deadlines that were ignored by WRKO to renew Howie’s contract. So if this is true, why are we even at this point if management at WRKO ignored the deadlines?
They claim they managed to match the offer—that they had a certain period of time with which to meet the offer. Yes
Howie had agreed a couple times to extensions (maybe
to extensions in the offer window?) but they did nothing.
As soon as the WTKK offer became public, they then
made their own offer.
Here’s the latest, from today’s Herald:
While another court date has been set, Boston radio host Howie Carr remains a man without a station, for at least this week.
“If this were a country song, this would be about an attempted breakup where the heartache keeps going. Entercom does not want to let Howie go,” said Tom Taylor of radio-info.com.
Last week, Carr’s debut on WTKK (96.9 FM) was thwarted after a Suffolk Superior Court judge said WRKO (680 AM) had the “right to match” WTKK’s offer, which was struck before his WRKO contract ended.
Legal experts say the situation may have been different had WTKK waited to offer Carr its morning-drive show until after his WRKO contract expired last week.
WRKO wants him back on its airwaves. The station continues to advertise Carr’s show in the newspaper and still touts him on the air and on its Web site. Todd Feinburg has taken over Carr’s old afternoon-drive show for this week.
“Howie will not be on WRKO. We do expect him to be on WTKK in the near future,” Carr spokeswoman Nancy Sterling said yesterday.
On WTKK’s Web site, the station posted a statement- its first public comment on Carr - that said it hoped he’d be part of the station’s team in the near future.
Now, legal experts say Carr’s options include appealing the judge’s order, sitting it out, going back to WRKO or having all three parties sit down and talk. The court has set a status review of the case for Oct. 15.
This is the Tue. re-ping of the Not Howie Carr Show
list...way early, but I’ll be “on the road” somewhere
in the Boston area with a friend who is visiting
from Ohio. Take note of the post above (#50) which reproduces an article from the Herald website: It looks like a status
meeting will be held “in court” on Oct 15 and mentions
the diff. possibilities. Would Howie, Entercom, and
Greater Media all meet to settle this?
As for Jay S., it would take a lot of money to buy out
his contract but it’s my hope that maybe eventually Howie
will wind up on WTKK in afternoon drive. Yes, he wants to do mornings and yes Jay is entrenched in “pm drive” but maybe
WTKK would let Jay go at the end of his contract and
move Howie in there (and Howie might find mornings tough
to do, or there’s too much competition, or...)
anyway, welcome to the Tue. ping
HOWIE HELD HOSTAGE/HOWIE ON THE LAM...DAY 7
When he left, he said they'd made him an offer he could refuse -- I gather he was pretty bitter. I guess he picked up a few small stations, and RKO tried to keep up the gardening show with Mel Lausier to do the radio part and some nursery owner (I forget his name) to do the gardening part. But it apparently fizzled, because now I think they have some crap financial show on in that time slot.
Howie may want to do mornings just to croak Tommy Taxes.
Jay lost a lot of credibility with me and it became clear to me he was just trying to increase his number of calls and thus his ratings. Yes, I understand it’s a business and he’s an entertainer but when entertainers say or do anything just to get a rise out of people... well then they are as useless to sincere political discussion as the politicians they are pretending to criticize.
maryz, Paul Parent’s show is on WTKK Sunday mornings from 6-9.
Thanks — I don’t even have a yard myself, but I like listening to him (and sometimes he talks about houseplants!).
I don’t know if Entercom owned WRKO at that time...probably did. The two gardening hosts you’re thinking of are Mo Lauzier
and Jim Zoppo...Paul Parent is on a network of stations
(poss. WTKK and maybe WBOQ on the North Shore) I think
Someone on radio-info.com said that this was all a bunch of
BS and Howie should be able to work where he wants. I agree
but...
(my reply)—
True but the right to match is what the judge felt was valid (see the headline on radio-info’s main page:
“A judge ruled that his non-compete’s not valid, once the contract is up - but that Entercom has a valid “right to match” that’s keeping him from jumping.”) So we could see an appeal or who knows what. I had thought that
maybe there’s a six month period or so (starting last week) where Howie could sit it out and then go to WTKK
but Entercom feels since they “matched” GM’s offer, he’s theirs until Sep of 2012. And as we’ve said before,
does the offer including working conditions like time slot, not being pre-empted by sports, etc.? How about
all the bonus incentives—does Entercom’s counter-offer match that?
Poss. could be settled out of court somehow, but a) Entercom realizes if they let Howie go to WTKK,
GM gets a ratings spike and they get a downturn...and b) GM benefits even without Howie because he’s
no longer on the afternoons on WRKO (during this “benching himself”) because they have less effective
hosts filling in on WRKO and thus Severin won’t be impacted by them all that much.
Free The Howie Carr 1!
Lots of people are turning off WRKO with Howie gone
http://www.savewrko.com/archives/2007/09/have_you_given.php#comments
One comment said “We didn’t leave WRKO, WRKO left us”
(echo of a famed Reagan comment)
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