Re: Bulletin !!!! Mixed Ruling Against Howie Carr !!!!
He'll try to appeal
He better win, then. If not, he can set the navigation system in his SUV to 20 Guest Street, or his own home, for the next five years.
or poss. may try the "breach of contract route".
Since the court has ruled his Artist Agreement is legally in effect, what's he going to plead, that he's in breach?
Will 'RKO lose big ad bucks without Howie?
I would assume so. As will Howie.
(Similarly, how long could that D&C lockout have lasted...)
Not very long, since they had nowhere to go but home or WEEI. WEEI was still billing in AMD because it is a numbers buy.
With no Howie and a Felon in the morning, and the Sox not lasting too much longer, the ratings
could really dry up. As with the ad billings. Howie takes 6 months off: do you want to buy time
on the Not Howie Carr show?
I think there are still ads running in PMD on WRKO. But, let's say that somehow Carr is able to take 6 months off. He goes to the 'TTK, which is in ratings freefall, casually mentions to the GM that he's going to skip the fall and winter books. Do you think that WTKK is going to stick with AMD fill-ins until they reach #25 in the market? They expected him to start in the fall. So they decide, since Howie screwed this up all by himself, to find a permanent AMD guy and sues Howie to get out of their deal since Howie blew it by his own negligence. So now Howie is without a 'TKK deal and is sitting at home without pay. Yep, he sure showed those WRKO suits who was boss.
Say something nasty about Wolfie or Kahn on the air, Howie; get fired, and move to 'TKK...
Or get suspended without pay. You'd probably be surprised at how things that sound really clever on a message board just don't play as cleverly in front of a judge...
"Mr Carr, are you aware that the court has ruled that your Artist Agreement with WRKO is still in effect?"
"Yes, your honor, I was, but I thought you were only kidding, especially since you didn't realize how mean Wolfe and Kahn were to me."
"30 days"
(As they say in the Geico ads, the above was a dramatic reenactment, exact wordage may vary.)
Now, what part of the following don't you understand....
“What Carr could not do is what he did here: receive and accept an offer from Greater Boston Radio Inc. before his Artist’s Agreement had terminated,” the judge wrote.......“The Artist’s Agreement still has not been terminated by Entercom, or by mutual agreement of Entercom and Carr, or by the expiration of the Agreement itself,”
What Carr did, in his desire to stick it to Entercom, and show everyone how much smarter he was then those 'idiots' Wolfe and Kahn, was to screw himself. You knew Haslem was blowing smoke but bought into it anyway (notice how that all-important trump card 'Wolfe neglected to get his contract in writing" that the pundits used as Exhibit 1 turned out to be a meaningless joker rather than an ace?), and the BS red herring that the non-compete (which everyone who could read Mass law knew was a dead letter) was at the crux of the matter. It turned out Wolfe knew Howie's contract better than Howie did.
Now, you may think that judge was fooling, but most of the ones I know tend to take themselves, and their rulings, pretty seriously.
All Carr had to do was keep his mouth shut and ride out what was left of his contract, and he would have been on WTKK this morning. Instead, he's racking up gigantic legal bills so he can take a job with a cut in pay, and subjecting his fans to the spectacle of their 'conservative icon' petitioning the courts to save him from his own folly.
My gawd, Rac, you're in the business. Put down the Kool-Aid long enough to think this through.
Regards,
TSB
I do it for the love of radio (blues music, etc)