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98.5 The Sports Hub hosts Mike Felger and ‘Big Jim’ Murray spent time on the station’s Off Air Show on Facebook talking about their former teammate Rich Shertenlieb being let go by iHeartMedia. Shertenlieb had been hired to do mornings on classic rock station WZLX, but was let go earlier this week as part of another round of layoffs by the company. He was with the company for less than six months.
Morning host Fred Toucher, who was partners with Shertenlieb for many years before the two split when Shertenlieb unexpectedly left the station around a year ago, did not hold back on his thoughts when he spoke about what happened. Toucher said in part, “I’m not surprised and I’m very happy because I feel like he’s a backstabber and does not tell the truth.”
Felger and Murray were a bit more diplomatic on the Off Air Show, while noting station management had asked them not to spend too much time on the subject.
“A lot of people want to talk about Rich and the ZLX show,” Felger said. “They don’t want us here to talk too much about it. I don’t know anything, like again, I’m the worst gossip person ever. I don’t know anything about anything, like honestly, so I can’t even offer any insight…and they don’t want us to even if I did. But there’s nothing for me to really dish on because I don’t know anything. The only thing I would say is, I’m sorry it didn’t work. I feel bad it didn’t work.”
Murray added, “That’s a crazy short time. Not even six months.”
“Right, so that’s a bad sign as a radio guy, I shouldn’t be fuc**** celebrating that. And I don’t celebrate it. I feel bad, I’m not happy that it didn’t work. And I was rooting for him…I want Fred and Hardy to win and win dramatically and that’s obviously what I want. But if Rich had gone there and been a success, whatever that means, that’s good for us radio guys. It would make the next guy more marketable.”
“I was under the impression they were probably going to flip it to another sports station, which would have been great in terms of more leverage for someone like you or I,” said Murray. “And that didn’t happen. It sucks that that happened for those guys. I’m surprised that the brass over there at iHeart, decided ‘we know this isn’t working, so we’re going to pull the plug.’ I’m trying to think of where other times, because I’ve been around for a lot of this, I listen to a ton of radio. There’s only a handful of other times where I feel like I’ve seen that. And it’s been a long time since.”
