Posted by chicagomedia.org on June 10, 2008 at 15:12:38:
What's up with Laura Ingraham?
Affiliates are noticing that she's been absent from the mic for the last week, and that her contract with Talk Radio Network is supposedly up in July. I hear TRN's Mark Masters - who happily signed Ingraham when she left Westwood and gave her a better daypart - has put a new contract in her hands. But has she signed it? And if she hasn't, is TRN using a common management tactic by keeping her away from the studio until she does, as a negotiating ploy? Her unsigned status leads to rumors that Ingraham too might be thinking about joining a new syndication unit that would include Sean Hannity and perhaps others. (Don't count out Fox in all the speculation about Hannity, by the way.) Whatever the truth - and I think the situation is day-to-day fluid - the timing sure is interesting. Laura's website carries this statement: "Due to contractual obligations, for the present time I am unable to reveal why I am not currently hosting The Laura Ingraham Show. Rest assured, this absence is not of my choosing, nor is it health or family-related. I am ready, willing and eager to continue the conversation we started seven years ago about politics and the culture. Heck, if cancer couldn't keep me off the airwaves for long, nothing will." She also lists the email and direct phone number of TRN's management - doing a little negotiating of her own.
T-minus 2 days on Sean Hannity - or is it?
One seasoned observer says "they could always decide to keep negotiating past Thursday, but I don’t think they'd let it drag on for months and months. Maybe a week or so." T-R-I's been telling you since the Spring NAB in April that one possibility is some kind of cooperative arrangement between current syndicator Citadel and Clear Channel's Premiere. That combination might be enough to pay Hannity the signing bonus he apparently wants, but would also keep him on the big AM sticks he cherishes. One permutation might involve WABC, New York programmer Phil Boyce, who's got so much of the ABC Radio Networks talk operation right there under his roof, from Hannity to Mark Levin, with the possibility of more - maybe from outside the operation, such as Laura Ingraham.
(Tom Taylor)