In rehiring Glenn Ordway, WEEI takes a new approach with a familiar name
COMMENTARY
Timelines are supposed to be linear. They’re supposed to arrive at a new destination, not circle back to where they began. But WEEI’s recent history of personnel transactions comes awfully close to doing the latter.
Consider: In February 2013, Entercom Communications fired long-time WEEI host Glenn Ordway, taking advantage of a loophole in his contract that allowed them to replace him if he didn’t meet certain performance benchmarks.
He was replaced as Michael Holley’s co-host on WEEI’s afternoon-drive (2 p.m. to 6 p.m.) program by Mike Salk, whose name in Boston sports radio circles quickly became synonymous with disaster.
Salk bolted for Seattle, a half-step ahead of the Angry Listeners posse, in March 2014.
Dale Arnold, who had worked with Holley middays for six years before Holley moved to afternoon drive and Arnold was demoted in February 2011, joined his former partner in the later and more prominent time slot, his full-time role (and redemption) becoming official in January this year.
Meanwhile, the midday (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) program struggled for stability – not to mention ratings. Mike Mutnansky and Lou Merloni replaced Holley and Arnold in February 2011; Mutnansky was bounced to a smaller role in January 2014, with Benz and Christian Fauria joining the program. Benz returned to Pittsburgh, where his family remained during his year-plus in Boston, a little over a month ago.
And now, as you may have heard if you were following my Twitter feed last night or listening to WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan this morning, the midday role now belongs to … yep, ol’ Glenn Ordway, coming back around again.
The station confirmed Monday that he will join Fauria and Merloni on the midday program.
“I think we’re going to be fun,’’ he said on the D&C show “I think we’re going to be entertaining. I think we’re going to play for a lot of that, for the laughs. That’s going to be part of it. We want people to enjoy it, to have a good time.’’
Ordway previously spent 27 years at WEEI, including 18 as the host of The Big Show,’ a ratings powerhouse in the ‘90s and into the next decade in the afternoon drive time slot. But ratings dipped with the ascent of the rival 98.5 the Sports Hub’s Felger and Massarotti program, which launched in August 2009 and rapidly reached the top of the ratings. The cruel irony is that both hosts — Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti — were given big breaks in radio by Ordway on The Big Show.
Since’s he’s been gone, Ordway, who will return officially September 8, hosted an internet radio show that petered out. He’s also hosted a SiriusXM program and is a familiar presence on Comcast SportsNet New England programming. His return, which should boost a midday program that has drawn mediocre ratings, is a tribute to his resilience – and the gracious way he publically dealt with his firing those two-plus years ago.
“You’re going to hear nothing negative about anybody here,’’ said Ordway in February 2013 on this first show after the news of his departure broke. “If you’re looking for that, you’re not going to find it here. I was a big part of starting all this [at WEEI], so I’m really fond of it.’’
Now he’s back to being a big part of it again. And WEEI is glad to have him back, though the program does not yet have a name. Ordway got the nod for the midday role over candidates such as Mike Giardi, Gary Tanguay, Greg Dickerson, and Danny Picard, all of whom filled in and essentially auditioned for the role in recent weeks.
Phil Zachary, Entercom Boston’s vice president/market manager, has known Ordway since the ‘70s. He was not involved with WEEI when Ordway was fired.
“I’ve been hoping to have Glenn back in the ‘EEI fold since I arrived two years ago,’’ said Zachary in an email this morning, “but the timing was never quite right. He and I worked together in ’79 and ’80 at the old 1510 WITS when it was “Information, Talk and Sports’’ and, at the time, the flagship station for the Red Sox and Bruins. We were both young turks and ultimately went off in different career directions. What really brought this to the finish line, however, was Glenn getting progressively more comfortable with WEEI Brand Manager, Kevin Graham, and vice versa. I think they’ll make a great team going forward.’’
It’s amusing how it’s all played out. WEEI has made all of those aforementioned changes in the past four years – several of them coming in the 2 ½ years since Ordway was fired – and yet in the end, it’s pretty much led back to how things used to be, other than that Arnold and Holley are in afternoon drive rather than middays while the opposite is true for the host best known as the Big O.
Despite the unusual and often misguided path (I will never understand why former WEEI boss Jeff Brown thought Salk was a good idea, though that kind of thinking is a clue as to why he’s the former boss), there’s a chance all of the maneuvering-for-naught in between firing Ordway and hiring him again led them back to a good place.
He’s been as successful as any sports host in the history of Boston radio (though Eddie Andelman sure would dispute such a sentiment). He has an ally in Zachary. And he already has an idea for what the show should be — and what it should not be.
“I don’t think it will be safe radio,’’ Ordway said. “I think there’s too much of that right now, I really do. There’s a cookie-cutter syndrome out there. Everybody has learned now through the ESPN process, ‘This is how you do radio, this is what you say, this is when you say it.’ I don’t think we’re going to do that.
“I think both of those guys, Lou Merloni and Christian Fauria, could be great in that type of format because I think they’re both opinionated guys. I’ve spent time speaking with both of them off the air, obviously a lot more with Lou over the years, and they’ve got knowledge certainly in the sports that they played and I think it goes well beyond that. But we’re not going to be safe. If you want safe, well, go somewhere else.’’
Of course, Ordway doesn’t want listeners to go somewhere else. He’s back. Now he needs the audience to rejoin him. Some will – despite the petering out of his internet radio project, there’s no doubt he built a loyal core of listeners through the decades. His presence should have some positive impact on ratings, though how much only the Nielsen Audio ratings will be able to tell.
But this much we can confirm for now: in the tumultuous world of sports radio, you can go home again – and sometimes you won’t even be gone that long.
Ordway just needed to wait for the timeline to circle back to where it began.
Photos: Memorable images from the old Boston Garden
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