Cincinnati Radio Drive-Time Mainstay Eddie Fingers Axed At WLW: Talker Silenced In Clear Channel Contract Flap

 

WLW-AM, 700  Cuts Off Its Fingers

 

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- An old friend from the neighborhood said Eddie arrived in the world as Doug Johnson.  He came up with something snappier for his on-air persona.  Eddie Fingers has been around for decades, first as a morning deejay on WEBN-FM's dawn patrol, the last two years as an afternoon talker on WLW-AM.  Now it looks like his bosses at Clear Channel have pulled the plug on his microphone.  Fingers has a Facebook page where this message has shown up:  "guys.....i never post, but it's true....i'm out at wlw....couldnt agree on contract...biz is a bitch......new sh0w to come....they're scared.....you'll be the first to know....you guys rule!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

He may be a casualty of shrinking budgets caused by ipods, sat radio, and Internet listening.  The structural changes slamming commercial radio are enormous.  What was can be no more.  Still, Fingers is such a fixture in SW Ohio's radio firmament that a long discussion thread about his fate broke out yesterday on MiamiHawk Talk. Some on board the discussion line were speculating that Fingers' really wasn't sacked -- it was a hoax to jack up WLW's ratings. That theory isn't entirely baseless. Conservative talk show host Bill Cunningham has been "fired" several times. It always turned out that Cunningham was on vacation or taking time off from his show. Here's more about Fingers' from AllAccess.com, which covers the music biz. It is taking the report as genuine.

The Daily Bellwether has found a 2001 profile of Fingers from CityBeat's best of Cincinnati edition. It noted he's been fired before. He was canned by WSAI-AM in his first job out of college.  Griff at the Cincinnati blog, says it would be "pathetic" if WLW is pulling a publicity stunt.  He adds:  "WLW is not above being pathetic."  And Griff doesn't have much use for the AM talk station:

"I listen to either NPR or my ipod in the car both on the way to work and on the way home. The only value WLW holds is a breaking news outlet. If there is a tornado coming or snow storm, WLW does great work. It does pretty good work on 'news' but it devotes so little time to it, it is lost in the shuffle."

WLW 700 AM Radio Talk Show Host Bill Cunningham: Ripped As Ruthless Businessman

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Taxman blog, a conversative site, posted an unflattering item today about Bill Cunningham, the conservative Cincinnati talk show host. It's about Willie's, a local bar and restaurant outfit that uses Cunningham's nickname. Seems to have some inside info. Check out the crunch lines:

"Last year, given that the stores were losing money, the principal owner, Brad Orr, gave ownership of the Kenwood store to the accountant Barb for cover the debt they owed her.Apparently, Cunningham wanted the store back so he could give his jerk wad of a kid a store to manage. But he didn't go to Barb to buy her out. Instead, knowing that the store was on a month to month lease, went to the landlords and offered a sizable rent increase if they would evict Willie's out of the spot; which they promptly did.So now Willie's is attempting to reopen on Galbraith road where the old Gentry Shop used to be. And Cunningham is looking to start his new place where the old one used to be."

The Push-Button Brain Of Bill Cunningham: Will Rant For Money

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain, an Annapolis graduate, is an officer and a gentleman. Cincinnati talk show host Bill Cunningham is a mindless guttersnipe who is a savant at self-promotion. His political philosophy -- seen as glib in some GOP circles -- is actually redacted from the short phrases that are imprinted on bumper stickers. By now, the world knows that Cunningham warmed up a crowd at a McCain rally Tuesday and McCain apologized for the couthless idiot with the block-head and overactive mouth who appeared on his behalf. Just last year, Cunningham was apologizing for himself. He had witlessly remarked that Reds outfielder Adam Dunn was playing drunk. Cunningham had to eat those words, which were untrue.

Cunningham, of course, is not an original political thinker. He's a sock puppet, the Oliver J. Dragon who delivers his ventriloquist's talking points. He's famous for being an apologist for the powerful, and for being wrong; in 1989 he insisted there was no believable evidence Pete Rose bet on baseball, and consistently insisted Rose was innocent until Rose admitted guilt. Cunningham, thus, couldn't spot a lie when it was staring him in the face. His talk show philosophy, boiled down to its essence, is warmed over Rush and Hannity. He lacks originality and creativity. Like a cockroach, he picks up the conservative crumbs that drop from their plates. Even now, after McCain apologized for Cunningham's behavior, the Cincinnati talker could come up with nothing better than to say he would follow Ann Coulter's lead and vote for Hillary Clinton. In his snit, the conservative cockroach stayed true to form, that of an insect species which survives on detritus, and scurried to run off with a Coulter crumb. Cunningham again proved he was a follower -- this time behind Coulter -- because he lacks all ability to deliver an original thought. As the election year proceeds, WLW listeners can expect bumper sticker talk like this as Cunningham expounds on:

• Education: Ten Commandments, Barack Hussein Obama.
• Crime: Willie Horton, Barack Hussein Obama.
• Iraq War: Support the Troops, Barack Hussein Obama.
• Trade and Globalization: Wal-Mart, Barack Hussein Obama.
• Marriage: Gays, Barack Hussein Obama.
• Mean Jean Schmidt: Nancy Pelosi, Barack Hussein Obama.
• Capital Punishment: Guillotine, Barack Hussein Obama.
• Taxes: Welfare queens, Barack Hussein Obama.
• John McCain: Swiftboats, Barack Hussein Obama.

Ohio Trash Talker Bill Cunningham: A Peeping Willie?

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Usually, WLW's Bill Cunningham is on the dishing end, reliably spouting conservative causes like a human geyser on his radio talk show that emanates each weekday in Cincinnati. Now he's managed to p.o the Christian Right, and one evangelical commentator has sprayed back with a dose of skunk juice, implying that Willie likes to leer at young women through their unshaded windows.

Definitely titillating. But that's really hard to believe, isn't it?

A lengthy commentary that mentions the ogling is online at Citizen USA, the web-version of a newspaper that circulates in many Ohio churches. There is no fairness doctrine that covers newspapers or online sites -- or radio talk shows for that matter -- so there is nothing showing Clear Channel talker Cunningham has responded to the commentary. Citizen USA says about itself that it is a "newspaper that represents the worldview of the Values Voter" and "challenges the liberal bias found is most hometown daily newspapers."

The passage that gut-punched Cunningham reads as follows:

"So why was Willie, usually the Conservative's conservative, blasting Phil Burress, David Miller, Bill Seitz and others? While eating lunch at (irony of all ironies) the West Chester location of the restaurant that bears Willies name, I overheard diners ate (sic) the table next door speculating that Willie had to be rescued from his roof not for inspecting dryer lint, but for inspecting the navels of young women in the neighborhood through their open windows. (Cunningham recently had to be rescued from the roof of his home, placing a famous but embarrassing 911 call to the Madeira Fire Department after climbing up a too-short ladder to inspect a dryer vent installation on his roof and becoming frightened he would injure himself getting down.)"

Maybe Cunningham just got Swiftboated by the right? After all, it was a navel attack.

UPDATE: 10:25 am EDT -- Just discovered that Right Angle Blog is conducting a poll to determine the most influential/popular conservative talker in Ohio. Cunningham is the first name on the ballot. He's definitely a force. But some people in Cincinnati have another nickmane for Willie. They call him the cunning ham. It will be very interesting to see who wins the RAB poll. Guess here -- Willie zips past all comers.