WBZ Newsradio listeners are organizing to try to get AM news anchor Deb Lawler, overnight talk host Bradley Jay, sports reporter Tom Cuddy and political commentator Jon Keller back on the air, after the station's owner terminated them earlier this week as part of its national effort to shrink costs through large-scale layoffs. Read more.
News is breaking that WBZ Newsradio's owner, IHeartMedia, has let a number of long-time on-air employees go. Read more.
Scott Fybush reports several people were let go at WBZ Newsradio, including anchor Josh Binswanger as well as weekend hosts Dean Johnson and Marissa DeFranco - whom the station is so far replacing with Larry Glick reruns.
WBZ Newsradio reports the death of longtime broadcaster Gary LaPierre, as well known for his winter school-closing rundowns as his news reporting and announcing. He had worked at the station for 44 years.
Fumiaki Minematsu reports how he and a friend picked up WBZ 1030 from two different points in Japan this past November. With recordings of their catches.
The 50-kW station has its active transmitter in Hull, where it offers unique local reception as well: Read more.
WBZ Newsradio reports the death this morning of Lana Jones, a longtime reporter. Jones, 62, had joined the station in 1991. Read more.
WBZ Newsradio's owners have cut veteran anchor Rod Fritz, who has been reporting and broadcasting Boston news for some 40 years. In a memo to the staff, the station's assistant news director tersely writes:
Listeners to IHeartMedia's Kiss 108 this morning learned one of the dangers of stations automating their operations: The station's news reports (shut up, yes, Kiss 108 has news reports) kept repeating "breaking" news of the Las Vegas massacre, which, of course, happened back in October. Chris taped one of the "news" broadcasts, says it was repeated at least five times today and says the station may have been running the same report since Friday. Read more.
Grizzled WBZ NewsRadio reporter Carl Stevens cracks an egg on pavement in single-digit temps to see what would happen.
Peter Casey, who had been news and program director at WBZ-AM for 21 years, is out of a job today, less than a week after iHeartMedia took over the news station from CBS.
Dylan Sprague, iHeart's senior vice president for programming for the Boston region, announced the shakeup to staff in a memo today: Read more.
UPDATE: WBZ comes to its senses, re-hires LeVeille.
A little birdie from Brighton passes along some of the e-mail WBZ's gotten since canning Steve LeVeille (along with Lovell Dyett, Tom Cuddy and Pat Desmarais). Posted verbatim, although I took out last names, phone numbers and the like:
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