A spokesperson for CBS Radio gets around to answering the rumor that's been burning up the Internet all weekend - the supposed return of deposed afternoon bad boys Opie and Anthony to CBS, to take over mornings for the floundering David Lee Roth show...based at New York's WFNY/92.3 "Free FM" and heard locally on WNCX/98.5.
AllAccess reports today that the unnamed CBS representative "flatly denies" that O&A are "returning to CBS Radio". Even if you don't parse that statement as some have - the rumor would have the duo's existing XM Satellite Radio show air in a broadcast-edited version, so they're not really "returning" directly - confirming the rumors would mean that Diamond Dave would have to be let go and would be off the air. So, we didn't really expect that...no matter how likely the rumor originated by New York Radio Message Board owner Allan Sniffen is to be true.
For his part, Sniffen says that he's "sticking with" what he originally posted on Friday. "CBS-Radio can deny the O&A story if it wants to," he says in a post to his message board today. The talk radio pair said several things which could be construed as confirming the story on their Monday show, though it's not altogether clear how serious they were about those statements.
Meanwhile, for DLR's part, he's been lashing out at his new CBS Radio bosses. John Mainelli, the former WABC program director now doing the radio beat for the New York Post, reports on Roth's on-air rage, where he predicted he'd be fired soon. Roth listed a bunch of management directives about how his show should change.
They sound to us like typical stuff (target audience focusing, etc.), but they also sound to us like Howard Stern's own on-air complaints about how he was being handled by his bosses when HE was in the time slot. You don't think...nah...well, it wouldn't be the first time that supposed inter-office sniping was used as program material on purpose, and to get publicity for a show...
1 comment:
Back in the day when I did radio, during an all-too-brief (or too long) seven months at a near-bankrupt AM-FM, at the suggestion of a local priest who was a fan and a friend, I did a "what would you do if you were program director" talk show. The program director was not amused. (Nor was his then-girlfriend who was morning host.) Because I was going bankrupt, I left that station (it was May 1988, just for perspective), not returning to radio for 17 months. (It then was to KQV, where I spent the next decade.)
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