In this week’s issue… WABC adds local overnights – Remembering Boston’s Severin, Maine’s Rogers, Springfield’s King, Delaware’s Loudell – FCC slaps New England pirates – New host named at CBC Toronto
By SCOTT FYBUSH
*Jay Severin was a fixture on the talk radio dial in MASSACHUSETTS – and, for a time, in New York – from the 1990s well into the 2010s, garnering both ratings and controversy as he jumped among stations before settling into retirement in recent years.
Severin, who died Tuesday at 69 after suffering a stroke, was apparently attempting a small comeback in the months before his death, even as he battled (and said he had defeated) cancer; while it had escaped our notice in this space, he’d been doing some Saturday shifts on WBOQ (North Shore 104.9) in Gloucester, near his home in Ipswich.
At the height of his career, of course, Severin soared much higher: after several decades as a Republican political operative, he started doing talk radio in the 1990s as a fill-in for Gene Burns on the WOR Radio Network, which led to his own afternoon shift on WOR in 1995-96.
Relocating to Boston, Severin worked the night shift at WRKO for a few months before becoming part of the inaugural airstaff at WTKK (96.9), Greater Media’s upstart FM talk challenger to the established WRKO.
Severin settled in to afternoon drive at WTKK, making appearances on MSNBC (in the days when Tucker Carlson had a show there) and surviving a suspension in 2009 after making racist remarks about Mexicans. Two years later, Severin was gone from WTKK for good, this time after defending a comment about how he’d slept with multiple interns at a company he owned. But he was back on the air again just a few weeks later, this time at iHeart’s WXKS (1200), his last local show in Boston before that struggling AM station’s flip to all-comedy in 2012.
Severin’s final full-time talk stop, from 2012 to 2016, was at Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze talk network; he’d been trying to find a new on-air home on and off since then, even as he battled health issues. Severin was 69.
(And he was, sadly, just one of several important obituaries this week; read on for more.)
And if you don’t have your Tower Site Calendar, now’s the time!
If you’ve been waiting for the price to come down, it’s now 30 percent off!
This year’s cover is a beauty — the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. Both the towers and the landscape are gorgeous.
And did you see? Tower Site of the Week is back, featuring this VOA site as it faces an uncertain future.
Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (buy the calendar to find out which ones!).
We still have a few of our own calendars left – as well as a handful of Radio Historian Calendars – and we are still shipping regularly.
The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025, too. Why not order both?)
Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the new calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too!
In this week’s issue… After NAB, hope and confusion - WZLX, WBEB relaunch morning shows - WJTO, WLAM stay alive for now - MBC takes over Bell stations - Remembering Mimi Griswold, Herb Squire By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME...
In this week’s issue… Fear and Uncertainty in Las Vegas - Memory Stations to sign off - WNED, WBFO rebrand - Najman out at WDEV - Zoomer expands in Ontario By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME - NH - VT...
A visit to many of the sites in Pennsylvania's Poconos, plus Bold Gold's stations in Scranton
In this week’s issue… Remembering Pittsburgh's Quinn - Seven Mountains enters Harrisburg - My launches new brands - Ryan out at B101 - More cuts at Radio Vermont - Another AM deleted
