An interesting and troubling development in Tampa radio tonight, as Mark Beiro, who has hosted part-time on WFLA 970 for over a dozen years, teased an "important announcement" to be made by him at 9 tonight.
The announcement was not hard to pre-guess. As I suspected, Mark announced his "retirement" from his three-hour Sunday evening show, one of the very few liberal voices (Lionel, Saturdays, another) on FLA. The "choice" of retirement was "offered" to him over lunch on Tuesday, and came via Gabe Hobbs, a high ranking local exec in the CC managerial lineup. Beiro, always the gentleman, simply said that Hobbs merely had to leave him a voicemail, and that doing lunch was a decent touch. The three words in quotes above are my editorial license, BTW. Beiro, incidentally, suffers from diabetic blindness and his future employment options are subject to speculation, as his vision is somewhat degraded. The bottom line, briefly is that the edict came from San Antonio, and is part of a "zero budget" initiative now forming throughout the CC organization. This means that, unlike shows such as Cigar Dave (on Saturday daytime) which bring in revenue, this kind of show does not pay its way. It will probably be replaced with another repeat of Hannity or Limbaugh, which apparently create zero additional expense, compared to paying a local air talent. And they DID have a number of ads on Beiro's time slot. None of those stupid HD promos are heard any more. This is unfortunate as such syndie shows add nil to local content. Beiro, being live and local, always had local content, but this is not important to the CC org, unless it can find a way to yield profit, always a very tall order on Sunday evenings. Beiro took calls during the last half hour, and I called in (this is while the Pats-Colts thriller was playing out the 3rd and 4th quarter). The switchboard was jammed. I finally got a free line about 9.52 and got on at about 9:57. I made the point that I believed we "need more local content, the way that 1040 is doing", and I also said it was happening while CC was "spending millions to implement the failed technology that is HD radio on AM". I have little doubt that Mr. Hobbs was listening. It is to Beiro's credit that he was allowed to do his last show after being cut. Maybe at the staff meeting tomorrow, when they plan whether to give us the 2nd repeat of Limbaugh or the next repeat of Hannity, someone will mention that "a listener mentioned HD on Beiro. What's that?" Live and Local. What a concept. It even works when the HD signal is turned off !! - Bob sent 2258 est _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
