Bring Back Steve LeVeille

As you probably know by now, WBZ/CBS Radio fired Steve LeVeille and replaced him with a syndicated show. WBZ/CBS gave no warning of the change, and they did not let Steve sign off on the air. Morgan White, Jr--a fine radio host in his own right--was filling in for Steve the night the decision was leaked, and it was Morgan who concluded the final Steve LeVeille Broadcast with a tearful call from Generosa, a loyal WBZ caller for decades. Dan Rea and Jordan Rich, the remaining talk-show hosts at the station, were instructed not to address the changes on air, as if the local listeners would not notice the changes. No announcement about the change was made by management on the air or on wbz.com. Steve's face was promptly removed from the website, and WBZ cancelled the domain name of Steve's personal website (radiosteve.com; fortunately it remains accessible at http://www.geocities.com/~radiosteve/). They did their best effort at making Steve disappear.

The Steve LeVeille Broadcast was replaced by the newly syndicated Overnight America, hosted by Jon Grayson out of St. Louis. It was touted by Jordan as a show that will continue to be local and relevant to Bostonians because it is only broadcast in four select markets: Boston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. Jon, however, clearly stated that he wishes to expand the show as much as possible, and his intentions of hosting a nationwide show are obvious. He has no connection to the Boston area, as was painfully obvious when he touted living in upstate New York and Delaware as reasons making him relevant to Boston.

I have nothing against Jon Grayson. He seems like a fine host for a market like St. Louis. I listened for a couple of hours, and was surprised at his choice of topics for his "inaugural show". One would think that a host would spend some real time thinking of topics for the first night of a brand new radio show. Grayson's first topic was drunk driving, based on some report he had just heard in the news. Whatever his thesis about drunk driving was, I don't remember, as it was either really short or really obvious (or both). Callers took it in whatever direction they chose, and it ended up being a pointless discussion topic.

The second topic was about monkey meat. Yes...monkey meat. Enough said. I fell asleep after that.

I didn't want to have to make a point about Boston callers having a bit more, uh, shall we say, intelligence than their counterparts in the mid-west, as expected from this conceited and proud Bostonian. Fortunately, I don't have to. Callers from the other regions--except for the few blatant rednecks I heard--were mildly entertaining. Jon didn't need to announce where a caller was from, as you could figure it out based on the accent within a sentence or two. Jon's choice of topics and the conversation he contributed, however, made him sound intellectually little more than the average caller.

I, for one, do not plan on becoming a regular listener of Overnight America. The combination of the way Steve was discourteously removed from the station and Grayson's lack of fit for the Boston market is too much for this listener.

From what I heard, Grayson was unapologetic and unsympathetic to the callers lamenting the disappearance of Steve. In the telephone conversation with him before the show started, Jordan tried repeatedly to get him to express that he understands we just lost a local voice in Steve. Grayson foolishly refused to address it, and sounded painfully confident that we would instantly approve of his voice being heard during the Steve LeVeille Broadcast. On his show, callers, fortunately, let him know what they thought--not of Grayson--but of "pig-headed management" that made the changes. Grayson quickly (and smoothly) hung up when callers got that far in their short-lived rant. Grayson again was unapologetic, and told listeners to take it up with WBZ management. He distanced himself from WBZ on that issue. WBZ, for their part, advertised Grayson's show as "WBZ's Overnight America", as if Grayson were broadcasting from 1170 Soldiers Field Rd.

What would I like WBZ to do? I think that's obvious if you've read this far. Bring back someone who listens to callers, and doesn't hang up on them after a few sentences while pretending to thank them for their call. Bring back someone whose premier discussion topic is not monkey meat. Bring back New England's local voice. Bring back someone who knows where Boston is. Bring back someone who knows what Chowdah is. Bring back the one link to WBZ's legendary past hosts. Bring back grass-roots efforts that can lower our gas prices, or retire Johnny Pesky's number. Bring back LeVeille-palooza. Bring back Tagliabue. And Binswanger, too. Bring back Max. Bring back Mel Simons. Bring back Generosa.

Bring back Steve LeVeille.