Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Steiner and WYPR...Deja Vu, All Over Again

I have no knowledge of the whole Steiner firing from WYPR beyond what I read in the papers, but I wanted to present two items as food for thought.

First, this is almost certainly tied with WYPR's efforts to secure a new 50,000 watt station out in the Delmarva region; a move like that reflects a certain philosophy and vision in management, and while it's entirely possible Steiner was 100% in favor of it, it's also entirely possible Steiner viewed it as a departure from a local focus on Baltimore, and thus was not in favor of it.

Second, a well-known and public talk show host has a row with management, management tries to buy him off, and host refuses to the point where he's fired. Station looks bad. Host looks bad. Listeners cry foul. Wow. Doesn't this all just sound incredibly familiar to WBUR listeners? Wish you the best of luck, Marc, but remember that things ultimately didn't turn out so great for Christopher Lydon. (well, okay, Chris is hardly begging for change but Open Source is a shadow of the force The Connection was when he was host)

On the other hand, I'd say Jane Christo didn't exactly come out a winner in that tussle, either.

Again, I don't really know any details so it's entirely possible that the analogy is completely false. But on the surface, the parallels are striking.

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