WBZ

Maybe the same person who thought it would be a good idea to have Williams and Lisa Hughes anchor the news while standing outside in the station parking lot. Williams, being a man's man, of course, just stood there without a hat. They finally got him back inside, and by the looks of things just in time - his face was bright red.

WBZ announced today that the longtime overnight talk host is retiring at the end of the week. In a statement, WBZ NewsRadio Director of News and Programming Peter Casey said:

Michael Page alerts us that CBS is getting ready to smush all its Boston stations (Channel 4, WBZ 1030, Channel 38 and 98.5) into a single CBS Boston site with local news, sports and service-y type stuff all wrapped up under an emphasis on the CBS-ness of it all - four years after Channel 4 started calling itself WBZ again instead of CBS 4 Boston.

From this:

To this:

LeVeille isn't on WBZ 1030 this week and some anxious fans are wondering.

UPDATE: Just heard from one of those people in A Position to Know, who says there's nothing sinister going on: LeVeille had a cold last week and now he's on vacation: "He hasn't been purged again!"

The Globe reports.

Glick talks to Sal from Peabody:

Dave Maynard drops in on Glick:

Three more samples of Glick's work from Northeast Air Checks (requires RealPlayer):

• Glick interviews the guy Robert Shaw played in "Jaws"
• Glick takes calls
• Glick being Glick

Bruce Wall is now all but promising some excitement on Friday, Feb. 27, when Lovell Dyett supporters show up on Soldiers Field Road to demand Dyett be moved to a time slot where most people are awake enough to hear him. He's claiming WBZ has told him he and his followers are not welcome on its property and that:

Pastor Wall is concerned that his planned peaceful rally could turn ugly and this is not what he wants his people to encounter. He does not want people to be hurt if the WBZ security and Boston Police start to haul people away.

Because, you know, there's absolutely no nearby public space, like, oh, a public park and parking lot where protesters could show WBZ their feelings.

This morning, the Mouth that Roared declared that nobody cares what he's doing every minute of the day. And I couldn't help but agree: I don't care what he's doing every minute of the day.

Of course, Keller said that in the context of being roughly the 74,000th media pundit to sneeringly declare his disdain for people who use Twitter, because if he doesn't get it, there's obviously something wrong with it.

Twitter this, Mr. Keller.

Lovell Dyett supporters don't think much of the way WBZ brought him back - via a taped 30-minute show airing at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday. The Rev. Bruce Wall reports the Friends of Lovell Dyett are planning a protest march on Friday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. around the 'BZ studios at 1170 Soldiers Field Rd.

[WBZ Program Director] Peter Casey is saying, by his actions, that he does not care what we have to say and that he will do what he wants to do. It is time that we take a stand and fight for a man who has fought for us.

And he kept shuffling papers and he was unable to finish his anecdotes, he'd sound like Bob Lobel did doing the sports this morning on WBZ.

And Steve Garfield was there this morning:

Bob Lobel will be doing the morning drive-time sports reports on WBZ next week, we hear. It's not a permanent thing (at least, not yet).

A little bird chirps in our ear that management just let staff know that LeVeille is returning. The station had dropped the overnight host earlier this month to save money, but apparently decided it couldn't argue with the hundreds of people who barraged station management with letters and e-mail.

The Salem News interviews Generosa Aiello on her sadness at the loss of Steve Leveille:

... Aiello, a chatty 96-year-old, phoned the station every Friday morning between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. for the past 30 years. Her weekly discussions earned the great-grandmother a following of her own. ...

Garrett makes the case:

Dick Summer, who once did the overnight shift on WBZ, is busy putting together an Internet station. And he's trying to get in contact with Steve Leveille, who used to do the overnight shift on WBZ and others recently let go by CBS stations. He explains in a post to the Boston Radio Interest mailing list:

Non - Political talk, done by entertaining, highly professional, honest to God real people. No money...at least not now. But a lot of personal satisfaction, and a platform to be heard all around the world.

UPDATE: WBZ comes to its senses, re-hires LeVeille.

A little birdie from Brighton passes along some of the e-mail WBZ's gotten since canning Steve LeVeille (along with Lovell Dyett, Tom Cuddy and Pat Desmarais). Posted verbatim, although I took out last names, phone numbers and the like:

WBZ is no longer broadcasting in HD.

That's what happens when you no longer broadcast with 50,000 WATTS OF POWER. Scott Fybush, who knows a thing or two about Boston radio, explains that there's something wrong with 'BZ's connection to its main transmitter in Hull and it's temporarily using its non-HD and lower-power (only 10,000 watts) backup transmitter on Soldiers Field Road.

Sadly, I think Keller was dead serious this morning on WBZ when he accused people who plan to cut back their Christmas shopping this year of being "selfish" because they are helping to ruin the economy. Good to know he still has a secure job.

WBZ's Carl Stevens refuses to leave the Harvard Business School turkey alone, so she claws him. Hey, if he kept getting in my face, especially if he were reciting some of his poetry, I might be tempted to do that, too. The well deserved attack occurs around 1:55:

This is not the first time that Stevens has hounded a poor animal that just wanted to be left alone.

How can WBZ 1030 just fire God like that? Instead, we now have Gary LaPierre doing the station IDs every 30 minutes.

Via Todd Glickman, who's posted an MP3 collection of WBZ jingles and IDs from the 1970s.

Chemi Che-Mponda, a part-time news writer at WBZ, says good bye to the WBZ weekend newsreader (and New Hampshire bookstore owner), who died this past Tuesday:

... I will miss Jim. I'm in the Newsroom now, it just doesn't feel the same.

Last week, Harry Mattison wondered if Harvard would try to buy WBZ's 8-acre parcel on Soldiers Field Road to complete its purchase of the neighborhood (which also included WGBH's old studios). Looks like Harry was right.

D.R. is a regular listener:

... Listening to Rea requires intelligence - the intelligence to understand that not everyone agrees with your view, the intelligence to recognize that people of good will can come to different conclusions. Rea panders not to the lowest common denominator, but to the highest common denominator - and that quality will make him an iconic figure in Boston talk radio. ...

Stupor Tuesday? Tom Menino in a Giants uniform? All because Menino wants to come up with a plan to keep drunken college students from going on a rampage IF the Patriots win?

Also, WBZ 1030? That poll about whether Bostonians would rather go to a Patriots rally or vote on Tuesday? What drugs did you take when you came up with that? It's not like it's really an either/or thing, unless, of course, there are no police present, because Menino stupidly decides the Herald is right and rips up his police plan and the rally becomes the parade out of the first Batman/Joker movie (you know, the one with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson) and thousands of terrified office workers can't get home to vote because they're trapped in a murderous downtown hellhole by hundreds of marauding, angel-dust encrusted drunken college students.

Just sign me,

Curmudgeon for a Day.