Don’t know about you but I’ve read Howie’s book, found it to be fascinating and spt on, what’s scary is I lived in Southie at the time Whitey and his goons were running loose....
Yup, great book!
Mon ping, last of ‘07. Avi Nelson filling in. No ping tomorrow since it’s likely a best of (but if someone’s on live,
maybe). Howie back on Wed.
I’ll prob. miss today’s shows due to a couple afternoon
concerts here in Beverly (a pop/country/blues retro band
called Bob Kramer Band, and then the soul stylings of
Barrence Whitfield—real name Barry White but had to use
stage name for obvious reasons).
Happy New Year!
From Scott Fybush’s North East Radio Watch
(http://www.fybush.com/nerw.html )
(stories of the year, 2007..#1 was the Imus story):
While Don Imus’ mouth was getting him in trouble in New York, one of Boston’s most prominent talkers was silenced for much of the year for another reason: a contract dispute.
On July 9, Howie Carr’s lawyers announced that the veteran WRKO (680) afternoon host would be leaving the Entercom talk station for greener pastures, moving to the morning slot at Greater Media’s WTKK (96.9) that just happened to have been recently vacated by Don Imus. Carr’s contract with WRKO was set to expire in September, and Entercom had failed to exercise a renewal clause - until Carr threatened to jump.
The result was a legal soap opera that filled Boston radio headlines for most of the rest of the year, as Carr first returned to the air at WRKO, then vanished again while enduring a series of legal rulings that came down pretty consistently in Entercom’s favor. By mid-November, Carr effectively conceded defeat, signing a new contract with Entercom that returned him to the air at WRKO until at least 2012. (It didn’t help Carr’s case that WTKK suddenly had an easy solution to its own morning woes, as the revived Imus show became available to return to its old Boston home.)
The return to status quo for both Carr and Imus still left other holes in Boston’s talk picture, most notably in morning drive at WRKO, where former House speaker Tom Finneran struggled to find success as a talk host. WRKO’s midday lineup was shuffled as well, with Todd Feinburg giving way to Reese Hopkins at year’s end. Over at WTKK, Mike Barnicle spent some time filling the former Imus slot, then left his old mid-morning slot vacant as he left the station to concentrate on his columns and TV commentary (though he did return with a daily commentary during Imus’ show), while Herald reporter Michele McPhee moved from frequent fill-in host to full-time evening talk host, leaving the paper in November to focus on her new radio career.