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.)
Wow ,I’m not even sure they could get that done in Chicago!!!
I heard some mention on another thread that what he needed in his WTTK deal was a clause allowing him to bolt on 24 hours notice from his employer. WRKO would have had to include this in their matching offer thereby allowing him to bolt.
From the Globe on 2/12/07 (the day Finneran’s show debuted)—link is on that SaveWRKO.com column:
“More than 200 guests were at the Langham Hotel to celebrate the marriage of Entercom Communications’ Julie Kahn and Boston magazine bigwig Dan Scully. The nontraditional hitching included gospel singers and the band Tavares. Spotted at the event were Celtics honcho Wyc Grousbeck , former Speaker of the House Tom Finneran (who starts his show today on Entercom station WRKO), Harvard Pilgrim CEO Charlie Baker”
Celtics: Were on WRKO last year and move to WEEI for this upcoming season
Finneran: So much for “We know all about talk radio because...we...invented it” (Dana Hersey liner for ‘RKO)
And now they’re killing it.
Baker: Harvard Pilgrim is a MAJOR advertiser on ‘RKO. One of the reasons DePetro is gone is because
HPHC was upset at some remarks he made. (Their complaint about anti-gay remarks on the show
may have contributed to his later dismissal.)
Herald (Nov 06): “One of WRKO’s biggest advertisers, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, contacted the radio station in March because of an anti-gay conversation on DePetro’s show. Harvard Pilgrim asked WRKO not to run their commercials during DePetro’s program and management was “very responsive”
Radio-host-in-limbo Howie Carr is asking a Suffolk Superior Court judge to reconsider the decision that has kept him from working at WTKK, while his former station wants the court to ban Carr and WTKK from talking to each other until 2012.
Carr’s attorneys have filed an emergency motion for reconsideration. The motion says Carr is following rules laid out in the judge’s memo and hasn’t begun to work for another employer even though his agreement with the Entercom Communications-owned WRKO ended Sept. 19.
Before his WRKO (680 AM) contract ended, Carr struck a deal worth $7 million to host the morning drive show on WTKK (96.9 FM), an offer WRKO matched.
In a memo issued last week, Judge Allan van Gestel said the provision in Carr’s WRKO contract that gives the station the right to match a competitor’s salary is valid. However, the judge said, the noncompete clause in the contract is illegal. Van Gestel hasn’t ruled on whether Carr is compelled to stay at WRKO. But WRKO says that because it matched WTKK’s offer, Carr works for them until 2012.
Entercom has also filed an emergency motion asking the judge to ban WTKK owner Greater Media from talking to Carr or his agents or making any public statements about him working for them until 2012.
Entercom claims Greater Media “continues to try to lure Mr. Carr into broadcasting on its radio station and refuses to cease making statements to the public that it hopes Mr. Carr will come to work for it soon.”
In a court affidavit, Entercom Boston Vice President Julie Kahn said she has “no doubt that Entercom will lose substantial . . . money” if Carr leaves WRKO. Kahn said some businesses have told Entercom they won’t continue to advertise with WRKO “in light of the publicity indicating that Mr. Carr was or might be moving to WTKK.”
The judge yesterday set a hearing for Oct. 15, when both sides will argue their cases. Carr has been off the air since last week.
Howie has compared his situation with Entercom to
indentured servitude. Well as far as he’s concerned
he “ain’t gonna work on Julie’s farm no more”,
as Dylan would say...
From SaveWRKO.com:
BRIAN MALONEY writes:
Boston Rag Again Bashes Howie, Listeners
Boston magazine is at it again, cranking the “smear” knob up to “11”. Are they taking lessons from Media Matters and MSNBC?
The publication, which is overseen by WRKO Empress Julie Kahn’s husband, used its daily update section to badmouth Carr even more than in the most recent print edition. And this time, WRKO’s listeners are also trashed:
(BOSTON MAGAZINE)-————————————
Couple of things here. First, if Carr isn’t allowed to work for TKK, what happens to the $7 million that parent company Greater Media has already allocated? Since they’ve decided to shell out the money anyway, let me make a suggestion: Give it to the poor. Specifically: me.
Second, how fantastic is this limbo? In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter from which station Carr broadcasts his lazy, often offensive garbage. The people who listen to his show don’t care. They’ll tune in if he’s on TKK or RKO, in the morning or during the afternoon drive — just so long as it doesn’t prevent them from dating their relatives or protecting the Commonwealth’s borders from the flood of illegals preparing to invade from Canada.
Ah, but for the rest of us who don’t delight in being subjected to his on-air idiocy, this radio blackout has been a little something I like to call awesome. For people who like talk radio, we’re now treated to not one, but two major stations without Howie the Horrible.
No “whiner line.” No “immigrant update,” or whatever it is he calls the fascist segment that details the missteps of people with Hispanic last names. No ranting about liberal “moonbats.” Just pure, uninterrupted silence.
So I’d like to make a plea to Judge van Gestel as well — don’t take another look at the case. Keep Howie right where he is.
It may be purgatory for him, but it’s heaven for us.
back to Brian:
Isn’t this EXACTLY what I’ve been saying? Why did any of you doubt me? WRKO is being destroyed on purpose. The sleazy ruling regime hates effective talk radio and will do anything to destroy it. They keep WTKK watered down (and low-rated) and are out to shut WRKO for good.
They are thrilled to see Howie off the air, this is what the Beacon Hill crooks and their print apologists want. If you think for a moment that the Empress disagrees with a word of this, you’re crazy.
They see you as backwater lowlife and themselves as city sophisticates. Isn’t that funny: snooty Manhattan socialites think Bostonians are small-town hicks. So much for the beautiful people.
I don’t care what Kahn says in Entercom’s court filing about Howie’s value, they are trying to win the case. They would drop him in Boston Harbor tied to a concrete block if they could get away with it.
These aren’t conspiracy theories cooked up by this site, they admit outright to everything I’ve been warning you about. Welcome to Venezuela.
I commented on the Boston mag. piece:
I’ve been told a bigwig at Boston magazine
is married to Julie Kahn and Julie has said in
a court affadavit that the station would lose
many advertisers if Howie bolted to WTKK.
So this is how her husband’s publication
treats him? A station that will truly tank
if he leaves?
You want elite radio for the hacks and
cronies, you got it, folks. Look for
the ratings to go WAY down.
And these people you trash, the Howie
listeners: they must have money to spend.
How can two radio stations each be willing to spend so much to retain Howie? Because he
brings in the listeners and the ad
dollars.
>>Crew Paints Over Roadkill Raccoon
(see my screen name... :) ^(..)^
EMONT, Ill. A photograph sent to CBS 2 shows a raccoon dead in the middle of a Lemont street, and yellow stripes painted right over its body by road crews. As CBS 2 West Suburban Bureau Chief Mike Puccinelli reports, the outraged viewer who sent in the photograph was not the only one upset by the incident. "There was a dead raccoon here kind of where you see this black mark and it was dead and when they were striping the road they just striped right over it," said Sylvia Wilk of unincorporated Lemont.
The problem for WRKO is what do they do? Do they really want angry host on the air? Even the judge must realize how ridiculous this situation is. I’m hoping he orders all parties into mediation and maybe there can be a deal worked out.
I also hope they work it out
>>should they want to retain him
The Boston mag. pieces would have you believe Howie is
lazy, a liar, a fascist, hater, etc., and it’s just as
well he’s off the air. Oh really. If so, why are these
two companies battling it out for him? Willing to toss
as much as $7 million his way? How exactly would ‘RKO’s
ratings go if, say, he continued to bench himself not for
months but for years. Anyway, if he’s such a lousy talk
radio host, why does Entercom want to bring him back?
They do want to retain him all right but while WTKK is
prevented from putting HC on the air, Entercom can’t
really have him either and that’s gotta hurt THEM.
He doesn’t intend to go back.
Unless maybe they switched one of their FMs to talk,
gave him mornings, etc. That prob won’t happen. And
he’d be up against their wonderful Tom Finneran, too.
Even if it’s the same company, they wouldn’t want
the Felon’s ratings to go down, under that scenario.
After six or seven months of The Howie Carr Show With
Todd Feinburg, will any advertisers be left? Kahn
herself admitted the station will take a big hit
if he leaves.
they claim that by matching his offer, he’s theirs for 5
more years...the judge ruled that the non-compete clause
wasn’t valid but right to match was.
Howie is challenging this. In the meantime it’s still the HC show, with his voice on ads/promos, his face in their
newspaper ads etc. Even if he’s not actually doing the show.
LATE BREAKING NEWS: Howie Carr once again spotted whith Whitey Bulger in the North End. It appears they had a small conversation in an alley, in which Howie gave Whitey a small package. Howie was then seen leaving the alley and proceeding to a local pastry store...
MORE BREAKING NEWS: Just in...it appears 680AM might relent and let Howard Lawrence Carr leave the station and void his contract...More news to follow...
That moonbat Howie wrote about in the Herald a couple of days ago is in tears now: http://www.townonline.com/ipswich/homepage/x1429056838
Howie’s Friday Herald column. HC column ping.
Doing Nothing Still Paying Off For Jane
by Howie Carr / Boston Herald 9/28/07
What if ex-acting Gov. Jane Swift gave a speech at Brown University on “public leadership” and nobody came?
That’s what happened Wednesday night - Salomon Hall was, as the Brown Daily Herald put it yesterday, “sparsely filled.” That phrase, along with the equally popular “sparsely attended,” is a reporter’s traditional rebuke of the city desk for sending him/her to a worthless event.
Translated into plain English, it is the ink-stained wretch’s plaintive cry: “You made me miss ‘Dancing With the Stars’ for this?”
Swifty showed up for one of these endowed lectures. Earlier speakers in this series have included ex-Gov. Christy Todd Whitman and cable-TV crackpots Ted Turner and Chris Matthews. They were at least semi-big names, unlike Mrs. Chuck Hunt. You could call Jane a has-been, but never-was is more like it.
According to the Brown press release, the Bride of Chuckie spoke on “Rising to the Occasion: Public Leadership in Challenging Times.”
No wonder the turnout was so . . . sparse. A discourse on public leadership - yaaaaawn.
She could have delivered a how-to lecture to the snot-nosed Ivy brats on what you do after you lose a race for Congress and are faced with the daunting prospect of getting a real job for the first time at age 31. The answer: you get yourself a hack Massport job with an office at Hanscom Field that has no phone.
cw-2But the most educational topic would have been if she’d explained how she’s still allowed to spend down campaign funds left over from the 2002 race for governor that she never made. She backed out of that fight after early polling indicated that, among Republican voters, Mitt Romney had opened up a 71-10 lead, which is somewhat outside the margin of error.
Yet here she is, more than five years later, still living high on the hog on political contributions. The Office of Campaign and Political Finance Web site shows that at the end of last year she still had a balance on hand of $287,858.28. As long as she doesn’t officially renounce running for some other public office someday, she can keep charging expenses to the campaign. This is known as the “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” clause.
Last week, Swift ran up a $473.15 tab for a night at the very chichi Onyx Hotel, which in not-so-chic days used to be Boston police headquarters. On June 19, her 2001 campaign contributors paid a total bill of $1,119.18 at the Taj, which used to be the Ritz-Carlton.
Last month, she stopped in at a Legal Seafoods and charged $60.77 on her campaign committee AmEx card. It wasn’t for a meal, you understand. It was for a “political meeting,” as she put it.
I’d love to hear her - or any other pol - address this abuse of living off campaign contributions long after the voters put a merciful end to your career. But instead, she promotes herself as a “first” governor - first woman in Massachusetts, first in any state to give birth in office.
And now, she speaks to sparsely filled halls, not about hiring Fat Matt Amorello, but on the “integration” of work and family.
“I use the term ‘integration,’ ” she is quoted as saying in the Brown newspaper, “because ‘balance’ connotes that you’re always sacrificing one to give the other.”
Which was not Jane’s style - sacrifice, I mean. What’s the sacrifice when you use state workers as your babysitters? When you have the state police helicopter to take you back to the Berkshires?
“Surrounding yourself with people . . . who knew what the right response was . . . not with people who knew what I ate for breakfast every morning.”
I guess that puts me out of the running for a staff job in the extremely unlikely event Swifty is ever elected to any office again, because I’m pretty sure I know what she ate for breakfast.
Article about one of Whitey’s girl
friends(Looks like he traded up just in time)
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/09/28/wondering_about_whitey/
thanks—haven’t read either paper yet.
Here’s a post of interest on radio-info.com (by
radiodouble) which makes Howie’s situation sound a lot
less positive than others might thing (at this point
I’d be willing to have Howie back on EITHER station,
just get him back...talk radio sucks without him!)
RADIODOUBLE:
>>
consdiering how howie and his paper have been going after mass. judges on regular basis, he probably won’t find a judge anywhwere in this state sympathetic enough to ‘reconsider’ the judgement against him...maybe he should ask for his case to be moved to brazil or dominican republic if he wants a shot at favorable judgement....no one is going overturn the decision, not even an appeals court. the judge pretty much left it up to him and entercom to work out a buyout. seeking relief from the court system is a waste of time as he’s about to find out. he’s got no choice but to deal with entercom if he ever wants to work in boston again.
-—back to me:
(Though personally I want Howie to cash in and inherit
Imus/Barnicle’s old slot! Even though that means I’ll
have to tape the morning show every day to listen back
later...)
might THINK that should say.
speaking of judges how about that Superior Court judge
that’s out on PTSD but stress couldn’t keep him from
betting the ponies in the Empire State?
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1034673
(”Well I hear you went up to Saratoga/And your horse natually won”
—Carly Simon, You’re So Vain)
WRKO has made a number of tactical errors. And it *will* come back to bite them in the arse even if for the time being Howie has to spend his time writing and judging tar-tar sauces.
And, please, it's like a constant whiner line as the HowieHaters(TM) continue to list every detail of his show as proof why he shouldn't be on the air. Here's my suggestion. Just keep WRKO on the dial and you'll be treated to the Snoozefest and BoobieTalk that you so desire. The rest of us can listen to Howie.--Moonbats For Howie
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