Mark Belling Slams WTMJ

Mark Belling waited until the last half hour of his three hour show to address the WTMJ shakeup.

He gave his audience a tease at the beginning of his show that he would be discussing the matter in the final hour.

I guess the firing of Jessica McBride and the local talk radio wars must interest a lot of people.

Basically, Belling charged WTMJ with lying.

He said that WTMJ general manager Jon Schweitzer was backtracking from previous comments about the firing of Jessica McBride, citing an email.

Belling charged that Schweitzer was trying to make it appear that a now controversial segment McBride did last week had nothing to do with her firing.

He believes that WTMJ was going to fire her anyway, but that the station used the incident as an excuse to take her off the air, that it did factor into the timing of her dismissal.

Belling claimed that now the management was sanitizing the reason that McBride was fired.

He went on to say that McBride had emailed him. She told Belling that she was asked by WTMJ management to talk less about conservative issues (President Bush, Jim Doyle, taxes) and more about lifestyle issues.

Supposedly, WTMJ's focus group research has shown people want less conservative talk.

Really? I wonder about the makeup of that focus group.

I haven't listened to Dennis Miller, but I'm guessing that his show is conservative. How does the change in personnel play into WTMJ's desire to diversify the content of its programming?

Belling did address the comments that Charlie Sykes made this morning.

Belling said that when he discussed the McBride matter last week, he didn't want to be too critical of Sykes, given his recent personal loss. However, today he would not cut Sykes slack for failing to strongly criticize WTMJ management. He said that Sykes has enough clout at the station to throw his weight around.

As far as Sykes' suggestion that Belling should convince WISN to hire McBride, Belling disregarded that completely. He didn't address it all.

In sum, Belling accused WTMJ of silencing conservative voices, a trend in radio that he fears. He claimed the station was lying about its reasons for letting McBride go.

Again, that's a difficult case to make, since Dennis Miller can't be doing a Gordon Hinckley "Ask your Neighbor" sort of show. And Miller isn't a Clark Howard type. I'm sure Miller will be talking about Bush.

Belling said that he's not afraid to criticize his management when he disagrees and he chastised on-air personalities at WTMJ for being afraid to do the same.

To be continued?