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.)
Speaking of sales, I wonder where “Blondie” went, so long ago?
Mo Lauzier and Jim Zoppo were teamed to do the gardening show from 6a to 10a, it worked out pretty good, they had a nice rapport,,,,however,,,,like everything else that’s good at RKO, Mo was pulled and the hours for the show were cut to two, Zoppo is on Sunday mornings from 6a to 8a, then one hour of syndicated financial show 8 - 9, then, another hour of local senior financial show from 9 - 10......look at what happened on Saturdays, Ellen O’Brien who I can’t stand had a show from 10 - 1, they’ve now cut her hours to 11-1 to make way for some syndicated health show. Wolfe and Kahn would screw up a free lunch.............
I know — for a long time now I’ve had nothing to listen to after church on Sunday morning (and nothing for the rest of the day — I just don’t turn the radio on on Sundays)! :(
The Wed. re-ping. Here is Howie’s column from today’s
Herald
Don’t You Just HATE It When That Happens?
by Howie Carr
Boston Herald 9/26/07
So 10 days ago I got to be a judge at the Ipswich Lions Club ChowderFest.
Despite some rain early on, the sun came out in the early afternoon, a lot of people showed up, and a good time was had by all, or so I thought.
But last Friday the weekly town paper in Ipswich comes out and there’s a letter to the editor with this headline:
“ChowderFest is no place for hate.”
Would you care which local merchant of hate the concerned citizen was writing about? That H in my name - it doesn’t just stand for Howie anymore.
Let’s go straight to the moonbat missive, by one Meryl Baier, who lives in Ipswich and runs a business, according to her Web site, “making funky and whimsical winter wear for girls of all ages.”
This dear heart was out with her daughter, Raina, looking to enjoy a “wonderful community event” down by the water when she saw . . . the horror. She saw me.
“I was immediately confronted with a booth full of hateful propaganda that was both shocking and disgraceful.”
The hateful propaganda? My bumper stickers that say “Illegal Aliens GO HOME!” I’m telling them to obey the law, and she says that’s shocking and disgraceful. I guess the next time I see a speed-limit or a STOP sign, I can call the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination. It’s just so hateful being told to play by the rules when I don’t want to, dammit.
Back to Raina’s mom: “Where was all of this coming from and WHY was it here?”
It’s just lucky for her that I ran out of my first batch. Those bumper stickers said, “DEPORT ILLEGAL ALIENS,” in even larger type. They would have given her the vapors for sure.
She admitted she doesn’t listen to me (this week, who does?) but somehow she has discerned that she doesn’t agree with my politics. She concedes it’s OK for me to be a “celebrity judge” of chowder (and a very well-qualified one at that, if I do say so myself). But she objects to the Lions Club “allowing (my) staff to bring their agenda to an otherwise benign event and ruin it.”
Ruin it? My bumper stickers ruined the ChowderFest? Ma’am, mine are the best kind of bumper stickers there are. They are free bumper stickers. And by the way, Meryl, if you see my “staff,“ please tell them to identify themselves to me, so at the next ChowderFest I can order them around. I could have sworn I drove there solo.
She does write she’d feel the same way about Al Franken, but somehow I doubt it. The double standards never end with these moonbats. They have the right to, say, invite the likes of Ahmadinejad to Columbia to deny the Holocaust and talk about his gay-free theocracy. Why, that’s free speech, the First Amendment.
But if I say “illegal aliens go home,” that‘s hate speech.
I was pushing my “private agenda” - forget the fact that maybe 75 percent of the American people support the same agenda, and that the percentages are even higher among naturalized citizens and legal aliens. But moonbats can’t even stand the phrase, “illegal aliens.” She couldn’t even bring herself to use it in her letter, saying the stickers referred to “illegal immigrants.”
Remember Deval Patrick in one of last year’s debates? Even Grace Ross was calling illegals illegals, and Deval slipped and started to say “illegal aliens.” He stopped mid-sentence and corrected himself, PC-style: “undocumented workers.”
I’ve got one final thing to say to moonbat Meryl. I got an invite yesterday to judge another North Shore chowderfest next monthand I’ll be there - with bumper stickers, lots of bumper stickers, direct from Merlin Printing in New Hampshire. See you there.
"Boston’s Howie Carr has a court date for October 15.
"That’s reported by the Boston Herald, as the melodrama unfolds of a guy who’s still desired by Entercom’s WRKO but who longs to settle down with a new romance, Greater Media’s FM talker WTKK. I wouldn’t be shocked if Entercom’s David Field and Greater Media’s Peter Smyth ultimately work this out at the CEO level – and it may take something like that. Entercom genuinely doesn’t want long-tenured PM driver (and Boston Herald columnist) Carr to split, but Howie says he’s done with WRKO, and that’s all there is to it. Maybe Greater Media cuts a deal that springs Carr, involving some financial incentives to Entercom and a player to be named later?"
who knows...
Here’s a stomach turner......
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/09/26/more_than_700_honor_finneran_at_fund_raiser/
>>and former governors Paul Cellucci, William Weld, and Jane Swift.
Paul “You Talkin’ to me?” Cellucci (wasn’t he about 700k
in hock at one point, gambling, credit card debt)
William “Pink” Floyd Weld
Jane Swift, arrogant and inept enough to be a Dem.
SaveWRKO.com: “Though he may have bombed on the radio, convicted felon Tom Finneran sure knows how to draw a crowd. According to the Boston Globe, hundreds of people from Boston’s elitist politics and media clique attended a fundraising event he organized. In fact, if every one of these people were to begin listening to Finne-felon’s radio show, his ratings would likely triple. Especially disgusting: attendance by several former GOP governors.”
BREAKING NEWS: Howie Carr sighted with Whitey Bulger in the North End...More reports and news to follow...
Depending on where you are you could even pick up the
Sox on another station, like WBOQ 104.9 on the North Shore.
“Welcome to the Howie Carr show, I’m Todd Fien-( click )
I'm no fan of Severin but this guy Aucoin seems to be almost as much of a tool as Jay.
Same here. Went to 1150, and Hannity
Boston with out Howie is like fried clams with out the grease.
“Sandy” seems to be holding the show together today...
“Happy” is pretty quick on the draw at the board...
But, Todd clearly didn’t take his “Nature Bee” today.
bookmark for updates
from savewrko.com, some comments:
RE: Todd Feinberg, Not only is he just a placeholder, he’s maladroit as a radio host and has no place in afternoon drive in the Boston market. He’s boring, annoying and condescending. In addition, his voice is more suited to making supermarket PA announcements. It is clear from this situation that Ms. Kahn and her team have no clue as to how to run a radio station, if I were an Entercom stockholder I would be furious.
Posted by: Rob at September 26, 2007 06:38 PM
I live in Minnesota and listen to Carr’s show via a podcast. I had to visit Boston this week and turned on WRKO during the evening drive time. They had some guy hosting the show and he spent an hour talking about expensive homes in Massachusetts. Duh! Boring!
Posted by: jbenson2 at September 26, 2007 06:50 PM
Thu. re-ping; interesting bit from SaveWRKO.com....
Brian Maloney writes:
Frankly, keeping up with the interconnected nature of Boston’s thoroughly corrupt and elitist politics and media power structure is a full- time job.
Having lived in a number of places, I’ve never seen anything like it. The rot here truly knows no boundaries.
Here’s a prime example of that incestuous environment: a magazine overseen by Empress Kahn’s husband, Dan Scully, has used its latest issue to savage Howie Carr.
That’s right, Empress Kahn’s husband rules the roost over at Boston magazine, also known as Suck-Up Central.
In a puff piece interview with Billy Bulger, brother of fugitive murderer / mobster Whitey, it’s Carr’s credibility that is taken to task, not that of Boston’s most notorious crime family. This is truly sick:
HERE IS THE EXCERPT—EXPLETIVES DELETED:
GIVEN THE RANCOR HE’S INSPIRED OVER THE YEARS, you might expect some of the people who run into Bulger to give him hell. Bostonians, after all, are no strangers to the practice of hurling abuse out of car windows at each other.
But Bulger insists most people he encounters on the street are respectful to him, and that hostile run-ins are “very rare.” He offers an example. “I’m going to Mass General Hospital the other day,” he says. “The guy doesn’t know I’m with my wife. These are his exact words: ‘How ya doin’, good luck, and f-— Howie Carr.’”
Howie Carr: for years Bulger’s bane, his tormentor, his new terrorist. The name comes up often with Bulger, and when it does, he doesn’t speak it so much as cough it up; occasionally, he swaps in “the savage,” or, better, “that excrescence.”
The dynamic between Bulger and the popular Herald columnist and talk show host is what Moby Dick would be like if the whale were as obsessed with Ahab as Ahab is with the whale. (“I see in him outrageous strength,” Ahab says of his nemesis, “with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate.”)
In addition to writing The Brothers Bulger, an absolutely scathing though largely uncorroborated account of the reigns of Billy and Whitey that contends the two worked in concert to build and fortify their respective empires, Carr never wastes a chance to flog the man he relishes calling the “Corrupt Midget,” even if it means dropping anti-Bulger non sequiturs as a kind of shorthand for corruption or nepotism. (In a June column, for example, he trashed someone for being “the first cousin of Billy Bulger’s predecessor as Senate president.”)
The climax of the feud came in 2003, during Bulger’s disastrous testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform, which was investigating his ties to his brother, along with other allegations of miscellaneous skullduggery. Carr positioned himself directly behind Bulger, so that his head appeared right over Bulger’s shoulder on TV, and spent the entire testimony rolling his eyes and making choking faces for the cameras. Watching that performance, you got the sense that Carr’s already got half of his savage Billy Bulger obituary written, and is just waiting for the “CM” to kick off so he can do what Hunter S. Thompson did to Nixon, and H. L. Mencken did to William Jennings Bryan—namely, kill his ghost before it gets too far from his body. Carr even included a joke along those lines in the index of his book. Under “Bulger, William Michael ‘Billy’ Sr.,” there’s an entry, “demise of,” that points to passages on Bulger bombing at the 1991 St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast and his 2003 appearance before the House committee.
What really makes the fracas interesting is how similar the two men are. Both come from humble beginnings, attained a top-shelf education, and rose to the local apex of their respective fields. Both are immensely intelligent, though given to cheap showmanship—Bulger with his rote Irishness and Carr with his tired fat jokes and gay-baiting. Both have long, long memories and possess unmatched knowledge of the inner workings of Beacon Hill. Both wrote books about Billy Bulger that were praised nationally and panned locally, and both can be very kind and charitable to people, but are reputed to be painfully sensitive to criticism and prone to pettiness and vindictiveness. They could be brothers themselves.
At one point, I ask Bulger if he’s read Carr’s book. “I couldn’t bring myself to look at it,” he says. “I can’t even listen to him. He’s just so evil. All kinds of things—he just makes it up.”
BRIAN MALONEY AGAIN:
“Let’s go back to my post from earlier today: do you really think my theory that Entercom is quite happy to see Carr silenced is off base?
What kind of publication writes a puff piece on the likes of Billy Bulger, using it to trash his key critic? Only in Boston. This isn’t normal and this most certainly isn’t America.”
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