Posted on 08/28/2006 10:10:35 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Don’t breathe a word of this. Because nobody’s supposed to know. But the real reason Charles Laquidara and WBOS parted ways was because the station believed the Boston radio legend was being too political - and he wouldn’t sit for censorship.
Laquidara resigned his gig as host of a daily one-hour music show called “Back Spin” after catching heat from station suits for airing his way-left-of-center views on the prez, the war, etc.
Our spies in the studio say that after Laquidara played Neil Young’s new tune “Impeach the President,” he was reprimanded by his boss, who told him something along the lines of “We don’t do politics, we don’t do news, we rarely do interviews and we don’t do controversy. We’re an oasis for our listeners.”
Begging the question: Why, oh why then did they retain the services of the outspoken ex-WBCN jock?
“If they hired Charles thinking all he would do is introduce songs, well then, they didn’t do their homework,” said one industry insider.
Laquidara also was reportedly peeved when a bit he did on a phone call he got from his ultra-conservative brother reading him the riot act for defending the French was drastically edited by someone in the ’BOS control booth.
“It was originally about 40 seconds and they cut it to about four seconds,” said Someone Who Knows. “It just sounded stupid.”
After that, Laquidara went all Howard Stern, telling the station that they couldn’t edit anything he sent them - they could just decline to run it. (The DJ, who retired from Boston radio a few years ago and moved to Hawaii, was prerecording the 9-to-10 a.m. show.)
When the station suits objected to the edit edict, Laquidara resigned.
We rang up Charles to get his take on the matter, but all he would say was: “The music I was forced to play made me sleepy.” Charles said he would like to leave the door open to work for Greater Media in the future.
(His former boss at WZLX, Buzz Knight, is vice president of program development there.)
Greater Media cheese Peter Smyth said he “never heard the political line,” and said the station and Laquidara parted company because ’BOS decided to extend the station’s “Music Morning” - an announcer-less format - into the 9 a.m. hour.
“Charles is a great guy,” he added.
File Under: Back Pain.
By the way even though Chuckkkkkk leaves the door open to working for Greater Media again, he did get a dig in at the format: " “The music I was forced to play made me sleepy.”
WBOS, once known as "The Boss" (when they were album rock, IIRC): "The boss music in the boss city
on the boss station that my BOSS told me to play! Yay!"--George Carlin
Management: "WE DON'T WANT TO BECOME AIR AMERICA!"
His leaving Boston for Hawaii raises the IQ levels of both places. I'm sure he won't be missed either.
>>"WE DON'T WANT TO BECOME AIR AMERICA!"
Yes...
And by the way, while Boston may be far to the left electorally, note that Air America BOMBED here, and the only country station in town refused to play "Not Ready to make
Nice" by the Chicks due to high NEGATIVE reaction among its listeners. We're not TOTALLY moonbat... (add to that the ratings success of conservative talkers like Howie Carr, etc.)
Caters to displaced rednecks and veterans. (I know, I'm a member of both classes.)
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