Great show! You're fired!

Well, what did you expect?

Filling in for conservative talk-show host Michael Berry Tuesday morning, Houston lawyer Geoff Berg was direct with KPRC radio's listeners.

"I am a moderate," he announced. "Michael is a right-wing fanatic. We are going to disagree."

He was on point.

Listeners -- and apparently advertisers -- disagreed so much that KPRC/950 AM fired Berg after one day on the job, ending his brief stint as a talk-radio host.

"Right after the show, the producers told me that I'd done a great job as host," Berg said Wednesday.

"(But) later in the day, they said don't come back."

[...]

Berry, when asked for comment, sent the following reply via e-mail: "Geoff is a personal friend. I also think he can develop into a good talk-show host. He is quite to the left of me, but I think there is an audience for him. 950 is not that place."

Berg said he does not have any ill will toward Berry or KPRC, joking that the station fired him after "one day of diverse opinion."

You know, I don't have any problems with KPRC's actions here. You've got to figure that if, say, Michael Berry had sat in for Amy Goodman one morning on "Democracy Now!", KPFT listeners would be pretty vocal about it. People tune into a show like that expecting one thing, and when they don't get it, they're not gonna like it. While this is certainly amusing, and while I agree with Jack that it would be nice to have a little more diversity in the airwaves, I also agree with Berry that it's not going to happen by mixing and matching on an established station. It'll take a different outlet establishing its own brand. Which means it'll probably never happen, but that's what it'll take.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on June 29, 2007 to Other punditry