SiriusXM has announced a slight change to its daily schedule on the P.O.T.U.S. channel.
Laura Coates and Julie Mason will flip timeslots. Coates — who also works as an anchor and legal analyst for CNN — will move her show to mornings. The program will be heard live from 7:00-9:00 AM ET.
Conversely, The Julie Mason Show will now move to a 3:00-6:00 PM ET window. It is a return to afternoons for Mason, who is now in her 12th year working for the satellite broadcaster.
The station’s midday offerings — The Michael Smerconish Program (9:00 AM-12:00 PM), The Briefing With Steve Scully (12:00-2:00 PM), and The Dan Abrams Show (2:00-3:00 PM) — remain unchanged in the shuffle.
In a press release announcing the changes, SiriusXM pointed to the already underway 2024 presidential race as a reason for the changes. Coates currently serves as an anchor for CNN Tonight, which airs from 10:00 PM-12:00 AM.
Longtime play-by-play announcer Kenny Albert is scheduled to release an autobiography later this year, and the inclusion of Don La Greca in the book was a potential hot-button issue.
Albert has long been the radio play-by-play voice of the New York Rangers. La Greca has served as the fill-in announcer when Albert has been tasked with national television and radio assignments and was worried he wouldn’t be included.
During The Michael Kay Show Friday, Kay allowed Peter Rosenberg to share a recent conversation with the play-by-play announcer that would make La Greca happy.
“We’re sitting with Kenny Albert, and having a conversation,” Rosenberg began. “Michael insists that Don will not be in Kenny’s upcoming biography. And Don you said you’d be very hurt or disappointed to not be acknowledged?”
“He said and I quote ‘Don’s all over the book’. And he even said to me ‘Michael, you’re mentioned once’. We have the same birthday, and we try to beat each other at midnight to text happy birthday. So he tells that story. But he said ‘Don’s all over the book’.”
“I’m honored. I just thought that I would get — I was confident that I would get in the acknowledgments. I didn’t think I would get in the book.”
Kay then shared an anecdote that happened recently that proves Albert is one of the finest people working in the industry.
“Kenny showed me something yesterday that showed me why he’s a star. He was — due to circumstances beyond his control — doing play-by-play from the monitor in the studio upstairs,” Kay explained. “He bought two large pizzas and a bag of something for everyone involved. I asked him if he sent down a producer to pick it up, and he said ‘No, I went down and picked it up’. He doesn’t have to do that.”
“A Mic For All Seasons”, the autobiography from Albert, is scheduled to release on Tuesday, October 10th.
Phil Mickelson played a fantastic round of golf at The Masters Sunday, but wasn’t prominently featured on the day’s television broadcast. Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti disagreed about why that was the case.
During Boomer & Gio Monday, the pair talked about how well players from the LIV Golf tour played at the major tournament over the weekend, before Esiason said the situation with Mickelson put CBS in a difficult position.
“I totally understand why they downplay those guys,” Esiason said. “Because those guys tried to ruin the PGA Tour. Now, again, The Masters aren’t part of the PGA Tour, but they are partners in a lot of different things…CBS is in a weird spot. NBC will be in a weird spot for The U.S. Open, and ESPN will be in a weird spot for The Open Championship because they’ll have to deal with the same kind of stuff.”
“But it’s not less of a story because Phil (Mickelson) went to LIV, it’s more of a story,” argued Giannotti. “You might disagree with the decision, or CBS has an issue with what Phil did or the LIV guys did, or Jim Nantz or whatever…”
“Hold on. Wait a minute,” Esiason interrupted. “You gotta remember that CBS has a contract with the PGA Tour, and (LIV Golf) tried to torpedo that.”
“But the fact of the matter is that Phil Mickelson doing what he did yesterday — journalistically — needs to be treated like a huge thing,” rebutted Giannotti. “It just has to be. To me, you can’t have your personal or business feelings going into the broadcast. That was a huge deal…All these guys were non-factors, and here is Phil Mickelson — at 52 — shooting a 65 in windy conditions on Sunday at The Masters, and it was treated like an ‘Oh, by the way’ situation.”
The pair have been previously critical of the upstart LIV Golf league. After a commercial aired during their morning show on WFAN promoting a LIV Golf event in New Jersey last year, Esiason said “So we took the blood money, Trump Bedminster took the blood money, Trump Doral took the blood money too, that’s the last event that they have.”
Boston sports fans will hear a lot less of Fred Toucher in the coming weeks.
The co-host of Toucher and Rich announced Monday that he is stepping away from 98.5 The Sports Hub after issues with his voice and throat were found to be much more serious than originally thought.
“My voice has been messed up for a long time,” Toucher said in a statement read on air by partner Rich Shertenlieb. “I had been going to doctors and they didn’t seem overly concerned. However, a listener heard me and put me in touch with a doctor he works with. I went and things didn’t go great. He found some things in my throat that concerned him. He told me not to worry because he could fix all of it. Not to sound dramatic but it is possible a listener saved my life by setting up that appointment.”
Toucher has talked a lot about the struggles with his voice this year, but always dismissed the issue as a nuisance more than a concern. He has taken days off along the way, but this is the first time he is taking a true sabbatical.
Fred Toucher chose not to elaborate on the diagnosis. He instead focused on his spot at 98.5 The Sports Hub.
“I will be back. That is for sure,” he wrote. “In the meantime, your mornings are going to be a little happier and less fat.”
Until he returns to Toucher & Rich, Fred Toucher says he will be contributing to The Sports Hub’s website with written work.
Last month, it was announced that Pablo Torre was going to stop hosting ESPN Daily and make the move to join Dan Le Batard at Meadowlark Media. While he will continue to be a part of Around The Horn and PTI, it marks an end of an era of hosting over 700 episodes of the ESPN Daily podcast.
Torre was a guest on the Jenkins and Jonez podcast this week and he said ESPN was very diplomatic for allowing him to still be a part of the family of Around The Horn and PTI.
“I realized that Around The Horn and PTI, these shows I have done, I’m functionally family with them. As long as it became clear to me that they still wanted me to do that stuff and they had this evolving perspective of ‘There’s this other thing you could be doing with your other time. We love you on ESPN Daily, but you have this offer that’s out there and you feel strong about it’. Diplomacy is really the answer.”
During the interview, Torre brought up what always got him interested in sports and how he enjoys the fact that he is not limited in terms of what he can talk about in sports.
“Sports is the toy department in the classic imagining of a newspaper. To me, it’s also every section of the newspaper. There’s real shit out there. For me, it’s always been the widest aperture of society and life…I was always passionate about sports as a fan and a writer, but my concern was never that it would be too limiting. Where I came up in sports, it was through magazines (Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine), shows like Dan’s and Around The Horn and PTI, there are ways to talk about so much more. I have never felt limited by it.”
When hosting ESPN Daily, Torre mentioned that he enjoyed the challenge of doing high-production audio storytelling and digging into stories that he was curious about, even if he didn’t have a hot take right away.
“I always prided myself in curiosity. Stuff I don’t have takes on from the jump is the stuff that is often most fascinating. As long as I figured out an angle on it that I found engaging, I knew we could do something with it. So much of it is reliant on these guests that we pull from.
“I had not worked in high-production audio storytelling until ESPN Daily. I was essentially the managing editor of the staff. I got to weigh in on every topic. We also had to manage ‘ESPN has this awesome piece/investigation/documentary/feature. Can you guys do something with it?’ I know this is not The Pablo Torre Show. The challenge was ‘Here’s a topic I don’t know about. Maybe I wasn’t responsible for the piece that we are about to discuss, but what’s the way that we can do it that’s substantive and can push it to another level?’”
From June 2018 until March 2020, Torre hosted High Noon with Bomani Jones on ESPN. While he feels no regrets about any part of the show, he does feel some nostalgia looking back and wonders what would have happened to the show if it debuted in a different format.
“I am so nostalgic for the mission that we had and the big ‘What if’ that you think about now in retrospect is was that more of an internet prospect than a linear television property? What if that was a video podcast show? What would have been different about that? I think the trick of what High Noon was it was trying to subvert a medium.
“What we were trying to do was figure out a way to be ourselves and build chemistry and do the stuff in the daily sports news cycle while also balancing the mandate of we are coming on after First Take…It was an experiment. Then, we went to a half hour in the afternoon, which I wasn’t bothered by, but it ends up changing the very premise and it’s harder to build chemistry in that format.
“I have no regrets about that, but I do have mostly nostalgia for the fact that we tried to have discussions that went to levels that sports television in the linear cable television model just never really had time for in the talk media daily setting.”
Journalist Matt Taibbi has allegedly left Twitter after a disagreement with the social media platform’s owner — Elon Musk — and podcast host Keith Olbermann was quick to point out that, in his view, Taibbi was used by the billionaire.
Taibbi played a prominent role in releasing the Twitter Files, which purported to show collusion between the social media platform and the U.S. Government to suppress stories that were viewed as unfavorable to now-President Joe Biden, among other allegations.
Taibbi released several batches of documents about the platform’s actions before it was purchased by Musk. However, after Twitter limited interactions by users that included links to Substack, Taibbi claimed he would leave the platform and move to Substack’s Notes app, a similar platform.
During his Countdown with Keith Olbermann podcast Monday, the eponymous host declared it was a foregone conclusion that this would happen.
“Who didn’t see this coming? The former reporter exploited by Elon Musk to do that Twitter Files right-wing propaganda stuff has quit Twitter,” Olbermann said. “When Musk futzed around with the links from Twitter to Substack, Taibbi was shocked. He went to Musk. Musk told him to eff off, so Taibbi left Twitter. Musk promptly declared that Substack was trying to steal all of Twitter’s technical details and stuff for its rival form of Twitter.
“And Musk said he was the real victim here because Taibbi turned out to have been a Substack ’employee’. Matt Taibbi, the latest to learn the eternal lesson that the claw of the sea-puss gets us all in the end.”
As Fox News prepares to defend itself in a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, a new report claims the network ignored a request from host Bret Baier to debunk the myths and falsehoods around the 2020 presidential election.
According to a report from NPR’s David Folkenflik, Baier offered to host an hour-long special that would push back on claims made by former President Donald Trump and his legal team.
The report details Baier’s wish to deflate election conspiracies, with a claim that he first pitched the show in late November 2020, and continued to advocate for the idea until January of that year. However, according to a Fox News source quoted in the story, by the time network officials came around to the idea “We were transitioning to covering Biden’s first term. It was past the point of litigating this point any further.”
According to Folkenflik, Baier received internal pushback from fellow Fox News hosts for his assistance in bringing attention to false statements made by those in Trump’s inner circle.
Records show Baier called out tweets made by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, among others, that featured inaccurate statements. “We have to prevent this stuff,” Baier messaged Fox News Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon after the election. He was also reported to have called statements aired on Fox News about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election “bullshit” and “nothing concrete” while adding “There is NO evidence of fraud. None.”
Baier had questioned claims made in Tucker Carlson’s Patriot Purge documentary and went as far as to air those grievances with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace, before ultimately reaching the desk of Lachlan Murdoch. He publicly admitted “there were concerns” about the documentary during an appearance on The Brian Kilmeade Show in November 2021.
Through a spokesperson, Baier declined comment for both NPR and this story.
Skyview Networks CEO Steve Jones and Emmis Communications CEO Jeff Smulyan will host a free and virtual discussion later this week.
In the “Great Minds, Great Conversations” series presented by Adelphi University, Smulyan and Jones will discuss the Emmis CEO’s entrepreneurial rise, the launch of the first all-sports station, as well his purchase of the Seattle Mariners.
The conversation will also include Smulyan’s detailed retelling of building the company’s television station portfolio. Smulyan will also share hard-earned lessons he’s learned that can benefit prospective entrepreneurs.
Jones, an alumnus of Adelphi University and member of the university’s Board of Trustees, will lead the discussion on Wednesday, April 12th. The virtual event is free and will be hosted from 7:00-8:30 PM ET.
Cumulus has announced that it has hired David Kelly as the new Program Director and Afternoon Host of Wildcats Radio 1290 in Tucson.
Kelly joins the station after working as a Sports Anchor/Reporter at KVOA-TV in the Arizona city. He has more than 20 years of sports radio experience as a Sports Director, Producer, Play-by-Play announcer, and anchor in markets like Memphis, Cleveland, and Bakersfield.
“When I came here to Tucson 15 years ago, my hope was that I’d have the chance at some point to lead coverage of the high-profile collegiate sports program at UA,” Kelly said. “The opportunity to head programming for Wildcats Radio 1290 gives me the chance to do that, as well as set the pace for delivering the best sports, news, and information to our listeners in Southern Arizona.”
David Kelly steps into the role previously held by Rich Herrera. Kelly will begin hosting the afternoon show on Wildcats Radio 1290 on Monday, June 12th. The show will be heard from 4:00-6:00 PM.
“I couldn’t be happier to welcome David to the Cumulus family,” said Cumulus Tucson Operations Manager Herb Crowe. “His experience covering all of the University of Arizona athletic programs for television, combined with his years of radio experience, make him the perfect person to lead Wildcats Radio 1290.”
Fox News and Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil have reached a settlement to close a defamation lawsuit after former host Lou Dobbs linked Khalil to accusations of rigging the 2020 presidential election.
“The parties are pleased to jointly inform the court that they have reached a confidential agreement to resolve this matter,” attorneys for Khalil and the network wrote in a filing to U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton. “The parties anticipate filing a joint stipulation of dismissal with prejudice early next week.”
In December 2020, Dobbs tweeted the 2020 presidential election was a “Cyber Pearl Harbor”, and shared a document that labeled Khalil as the “effective COO” of the plot. He also added that Khalil was “a liaison with Hezbollah”.
The same day, Dobbs interviewed Sidney Powell — a lawyer for then-President Donald Trump — who made the claim that Khalil and acquaintances “designed and developed the Smartmatic and Dominion programs and machines that include a controller module that allows people to log in and manipulate the vote even as it’s happening.”
Last Semptember, the presiding judge declined to dismiss the case, saying that Khalil’s suit “adequately alleges that Fox may be held liable for the defamatory claims”.
A Fox News spokesperson said “This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides. We have no further comment.”
The cable news outlet continues to defend itself from a defamation lawsuit brought forth by Dominion Voting Systems. That suit alleges Fox News knowingly peddled falsehoods around the election machine company’s role in the 2020 presidential election. Fox News has continually denied the allegations made by Dominion Voting Systems, and has contended that it is protected by the First Ammedment.
