NorthEast Radio Watch 5/13/2024: Rudy Out at WABC

In this week’s issue… Giuliani out at WABC – Remembering a Buffalo legend – Beasley makes job cuts – WPHT adds local nights – 

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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*He was once “America’s Mayor” – but now Rudy Giuliani is persona non grata at NEW YORK‘s WABC (770), where he’d been a fixture on the conservative talk lineup since early 2001.

The news broke Friday afternoon, when Giuliani was missing from his usual 3-4 PM slot. WABC owner John Catsimatidis wasn’t shy about explaining why: as he told the New York Times, he’d asked Giuliani repeatedly to refrain from making comments claiming the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.

“We warned him once. We warned him twice,” he told the Times. “And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.”

For a station that usually thrives on controversy, why is this particular topic so touchy for Catsimatidis? The answer seems to be in the courts, where other conservative media outlets including Fox News and Newsmax have been the targets of legal action from Dominion Voting Systems and other companies claiming defamation over the claims they’ve made about voting machines allegedly being rigged.

In Giuliani’s case, the timing of his suspension may well have been pegged to the lawsuits he’s facing from two Georgia voting inspectors who accused him of defamation. They already won a $148 million judgment that Giuliani hasn’t yet paid, and last week they asked a federal judge to enjoin the former mayor from continuing to defame them in his comments.

That, no doubt, has made Catsimatidis wary of the possibility that WABC and its parent, Red Apple Media, could end up being sued themselves over Giuliani’s comments – and it may explain why WABC pulled Giuliani off the air mid-sentence on Thursday while he was reportedly complaining about the suspension of his law license and and the other legal woes he’s facing.

For his part, Giuliani issued a statement complaining about “a clear violation of free speech” (which, of course, doesn’t apply when you’re an employee on someone else’s radio station) and claiming he wasn’t aware of any policy restricting comments on alleged election fraud.

At least on Friday, WABC veteran Curtis Sliwa was hosting Giuliani’s usual 3 PM hour.