Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Howie Carr off the air, for now
Jessica Henslam over at the Boston Herald has all the details: ["Ruling leaves Howie Carr in limbo"]. Here is the Globe's report: ["Ruling issued in Howie Carr case"]. His PR firm released this statement which was sent to the Boston Radio Archives email list:

While we would like to have achieved a complete victory in court, we are gratified that the decision leaves open the opportunity for Howie to work at the place of his choosing. Not only did the Court find unlawful a portion of Entercom's employment agreement, but the Court adopted our argument that Howie cannot be forced to work for a particular radio station.

Howie looks forward to taking some well-deserved time off from one of his three careers and to joining WTKK in the very near future.

This entire thing has been pretty interesting to watch but I can't honestly see how it will all turn out. In the end, I think Entercom is going to lose this one and, knowing that, they probably should starting thinking about a future without Howie and start making the necessary changes to the station lineup.
Matching an agreement isn't just about money. In the case of radio, it is also about signal strength and time slot. While Entercom could match the monetary offer Greater Media made to Carr, WRKO is AM, not FM. The signal isn't as strong. They can't match that. They also can't match putting Carr on mornings without a total restructuring of the entire line up, something I doubt they would do. They could move former Speaker of the House Tom Finneran to another time slot. But, they are reportedly paying him a lot of money. They could give Howie mornings and Finneran afternoons, but I doubt that they would do that. The publicity buy alone to let everyone know of the change would be extremely expensive.
I just saw Howie on WBZ-TV 4 and boy, as he would say, he is one fat bastahd. Note to Howie: Like Tony Soprano once said to Big Pussy: "I have one word for you: Salads!" Come on, Howie. Get back on the treadmill, man.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

his life-style is why there is a weight gain issue but it is not at the point of concern...not yet, anyway.