I thought the same thing when I first saw this but Charlotte is a totally different market from the Research Triangle, where Howie went to school at Chapel Hill. Non-starter, IMHO.

Howie, please come back. This is almost 2 months now, and I can't take much more without you on the air. Devoid and Co. are getting off far too easy.

While I could be wrong, I believe the contract was reported to restrict Howie from broadcasting with a competitor within the Boston market.

I'm sure there are other gotchas in the contract to prevent this as well.

I think the "I've got another option" is a negotiating tactic.

Ah, so it looks like Bostonians are going to ruin North Carolina just like New Yorkers have ruined Vermont.

My good pal and buddy Howie Carr will not end up in NC. He is too fat for that market.

I, however, have won political campaigns all over the world. I am a political god (disregard those pesky Globe reporters who keep digging into my, ahem, resume).

As always, I am Jimmy Severino II and I am better than you all, although I am 72 now.

Not going to happen. If Howie was based in NC and his show was carried on TTK it would still be a violation of the contract.

And if he was just on WSB they are not going to pay him 7 mill a year.

no staffer
the "normal, law abiding tax paying" people who have had it with high taxes, fees, corruption, and hacks, etc, etc--I could go on, but not enough space or time--are the ones leaving, IN DROVES!
It will be the moonbats, like horseface, coffee boy, and all the rest of them, left.
Once they all have to dip into their trust funds to pay for all the programs they want, and all the illegals they love, lets see how long that lasts! I am so glad to say to people "the former state I used to live in" about Taxachusetts, LOLLOLOLOL

Would Charlotte support a program with that much cost against it that is hosted by a talent that while good, is completely unproven in the market?

Seems unlikely.

Here is something to think about with reference to the "Can not compete in this market" clause. This would make sense in the old days but if Howie did go to North Carolina we would all still be able to listen because of streaming audio. All they would need to do is bring Howie's advertisers to the NC station and only play the spots that are germaine to the Boston market on the Internet feed. Technically, he would not be broadcasting to the Boston market but Boston could hear him anyway, and the NC station would have all that revenue and RKO would not. This is not likely to happen, but it is a fun thought. It is also interesting to note that the Internet has made the world one big market possibly making this type of non-compete clause obsolete.

Howie is a professional and very good at what he does. He could adjust to the Charlotte market if he really wanted to.

However, what he can't do is Boston talk from Charlotte.

We have seen that Howie can only sell in New England. Several tries at syndicating him to a national audience have failed.

So do you think people in Boston are going to tune into Howie as he talks about local Charolette issiues?

Are the folks in NC interested in hearing Howie rant on about the Massachusetts solon's.

I don't think so...

As a matter of fact, I'm heading down to far western NC in another year or so, permanently.

I own a vaca place down there - the house is twice the size as mine in NH, and the property taxes are about 1/5 of those in NH, and for 8X as much land acreage. Winters are far shorter, summers far longer, no blackflies, few mosquitoes, and the level of lunatic leftist liberal moonbattery is about 2% of that found in most of NE.

WBT and Charlotte are around 150 miles east of me, though WBT, 1110 does come in fairly well during the evening through early morning hours - as it also does up here - when the small local / regional stations, also on 1110 reduce their power, or go off the air after local sunset.

I also heard the adolescent pee-pee and poo-poo "discussions on re-Todd Fineburg yesterday, (stay tuned for live action fart music today, I suppose) and unless Howie comes back, WRKO will be off my listening list, forever...

I can hear Rush and Michael Savage on LOTS of other stations, no problem. The rest of RKO's programming isn't worth the wasted wattage that the radio consumes.