Monday, August 25, 2014

8.25.14 Bee-otch of the Day: WKLT


Bee-otch of the Day honors are awarded Monday through Thursday, Bee-otch of the Week is awarded Friday on Chuck69.com.



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Name: WKLT
Age: 35
Occupation: bland rock station
Last Seen: Traverse City, MI
Bee-otched For: still being shitty

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Hard to believe it, but my baby's 15 years old.

It was in 1999 that I started "Bring Howard Stern to Northern Michigan Radio and TV", a website devoted to bringing the King of All Media to Traverse City. Of course, through the years, this site has focused less on Howard and more on various schtuff.

Years ago, I suggested that WKLT would be a great station for Howard. After all, Bob and Tom and The Bear were kicking their asses in the ratings. But did they ever carry Howard? Nooooo.... Instead, they hired a guy who had moved around the country eight trillion times named Omelette and his female sidekick, Charly. Since then, Charly has moved to Las Vegas and Finster was added to the show. Many felt that Finster was the funny guy on the show, but he was canned due to KLT always letting people go because of money issues.

But, I'm not gonna bitch much about Omelette today. It's their afternoon show I'm worried about.

Their afternoon show is called (what else?) The Afternoon Trainwreck, hosted by "Racin' Jason" and Tom Devitt. I look at their pictures on KLT's website and they don't look very welcoming. I could care less about Jason, but why the folks at Northern Broadcast hired Devitt is another issue in itself.

Back in the late 90's, Devitt was the morning man at former alt-pop The Zone (95.5 Traverse City, now EZ 95-5, 94.5 Straits Area, now teabagger talk WYPV and 93.9 Mio, now a Jesus freak station). I listened to his morning show and it SUCKED. I laughed at the fact that he refused to say the name of a popular Broadway play (The Vagina Monologues)
 and, well, the fact that he was as interesting watching paint dry.

A few months later, I was driving downstate and my scan stopped at 92.1 WIDL out of Caro. Suddenly, I heard, "this is Tom Devitt with a news update" and I started to laugh. A northern Michigan jock doing radio in a small hick town? O. M. G. At the time, The Zone's morning show was much better, but nothing special.

Not long afterward, I was on the Michigan Radio and TV Buzzboard and I would look in the Flint/Tri-Cities section. Some jerk known as "radiostudtd" posted nonsense about "Rabid Radio". People were asking what the hell was this show, and the answer was that Rabid Radio was a crappy-ass radio program on WIDL, still soccer mom AC, but now known as "92.1 The Coyote". Yes, a hot AC station with a radio show called "Rabid Radio" and is named "The Coyote" with crappy liners that sounded like they were all recorded on 1940's-era German surplus equipment. So, I outed Tommy on my Bee-otch of the Day and the douchebag was nice enough to send me some hate mail stating that yes, he's in a smaller market, but at least the company he worked for was more reputable than Northern Star (The Zone's parent), he owned a house, gets pussy on the side, one of The Zone's ex-jocks who moved over to WIOG didn't have a car, blah blah blah.

I guess Tom got lots of backlash for posing as an asshole on the Buzzboard. I heard that he was asked to leave the station and ended up at another station in the Thumb. Oh, well, at least the stupid "radiostudtd" posts ended... For a while. He did end up at WIDL again doing mornings, but that was only because of a management change. However, he was canned again. Oddly enough, WIDL has a better-suited name these days, "Mix 92.1" and their airstaff is all live and local, unlike during Tom's days with the station when they used ABC's "Today's Variety" format.

But, I think Tom decided to seek revenge on me. Several years ago, he and some other guy sent me an e-mail that one of the jocks on The Bear, Ted Cramer was let go from the station. It was Cramer who tried to turn the station into a Jack FM format, and it scared away listeners. So, I posted the info on the message board and I got backlashed. Turns out that Cramer wasn't really let go, but they asked him to leave. Without explaining myself, the board's moderator locked the thread and needless to say, I was hurt to the point where I decided to no longer post on the board. Turns out that Devitt was now employed again at Northern Star, now managed by Del Reynolds, but has since then moved over to KLT and sister station ESPN 106.7/105.5 where he hosts some stupid high school sports show. I also learned that Cramer - now at some hick station in Indiana - posts on the board as "Zzand".

I told Devitt how much of a jerk he was for telling me this shit, but then he told me that Cartman was next to go. Of course, that was many, many years ago, and Cartman is still at what's now Rock 105 handling morning and PD duties. Sorry, but it's people like Tom Dipshit that make me proud that I'm not in radio. Too many assholes and too many overinlated egos. This is why I'm happy that like most of us, I have a smartphone and I have several apps that allow me to control what I'm listening to. I'd rather listen to a station with no jocks over those with jocks whose shit doesn't stink. Want worse egos? Come to northern Michigan sometime. Thankfully, the 4G speeds have dramatically improved up north over the past few years so being forced to listen to ten stations aimed at old people and hicks won't be an option.

Radio: dying a slow, painful death since 1995.

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