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Money Talks, Skiest Walks
Controversial WELI talk host silences himself; when is a ‘show' not a show?
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Business New Haven
2/8/1999
By: Michael C. Bingham
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The “People's Advocate” may have breathed his last on the local airwaves in a dispute that may say more about the direction of local radio than its does about the controversial talk-show host.
Skiest, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for mayor of New Haven in 1993, had been holding down the 6-to-8 p.m. weeknight slot on WELI (960 AM) since November 1996. With its slogan “When the people will lead, the leaders will follow,” the People's Advocate sought to galvanize listener disaffection with a politicians and social trends.
He regularly lambasted the administration and policies of New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. (who has his own once-a-week program, Inside City Hall, also on WELI) and railed against the injustices borne by the middle class in the Elm City and elsewhere. “Common sense is our theme,” he frequently intoned.
His opinions - on one show he advocated for compulsory sterilization of welfare recipients - earned him the scorn even of some of his own WELI on-air colleagues. These included local NAACP chapter President Roger Vann and former Milford state senator Tom Scott, who afforded Skiest so little consideration that after a time they refused even to speak his name (referring to Skiest only as “Rumpelstiltskin”).
When the 1997 shooting death of African-American Malik Jones by a white East Haven police officer threatened to ignite a racial firestorm in the Elm City, Skiest fanned the flames by defending the officer and implying that, by fleeing his pursuers Jones had been largely responsible for the tragic outcome?
But no matter how inflammatory, it was not Skiest's pronouncements that got him kicked off WELI January 21.
It was only money.
Rather than being employed by WELI, Skiest paid the station for his air time. He's not alone, much of the station's evening and weekend lineup comprises so-called “brokered” shows - in effect, radio infomercials created and produced by anyone with $200 an hour or so to spend to pitch their products and services, from legal advice to home improvement.
And although Skiest wasn't “selling” a tangible product or service (unless one counts the “People's Advocate” coffee mugs he sold to listeners in return for a “donation” to the show), to support the program Skiest re-sold advertising time on his nightly air slots.
The break-up, both sides agree, came at the conclusion of a January 19 meeting at which station management informed Skiest that his rates were going up. Skiest, who maintains that WELI had already violated his advertising contract by reducing promotional support for his air time, declined, and the next evening informed his listeners that he would be leaving the frequency.
For the 42-year-old Skiest, who describes himself as an “entrepreneur/investor,” the issue is simple. “In October the station broke my contract - they took all my [promotional announcements] away, took Friday away [when he left the air Skiest was on Monday through Thursday] and said, 'By the way, you're going to keep paying the same amount of money,'” Skiest recounts.
“Here I am, delivering a top-quality radio show that beating their FM station [WELI sister station WKCI], which has been very successful, and they want me to pay even more money? It doesn't make any sense.
“WELI is in total turmoil right now just because of my show,” Skiest adds. For the time being, the station has filled the air time by extending a syndicated talk show from Los Angeles to 4-8 p.m. from 4-6 p.m. “If they think my show is so insignificant, why are they now in chaos?” Skiest says he is pursuing other opportunities, for example at stations in Waterbury and Hartford.
WELI Program Director Jerry Kristafer, not surprisingly, spins it quite differently. “Kevin ran a two-year brokered program, and chose not to renew with the radio station,” he says. “He had a grandfather clause which meant that he was paying substantially less than [other brokered shows] were bring charged, and when the time came to pay a relatively small [rate increase], he balked at that and opted not to renew.”
To most listeners, the distinction between “brokered” and “regular” programming is meaningless. However, many local listeners are sensitive to the relative proportion of local programming to canned material from syndication services. And for the time being, WELI has surrendered at least four hours of local programming - counting Skiest from 6 to 8 p.m. as well as the former afternoon-drive Newsline show from 4 to 6 p.m. - but Kristafer says he remains sensitive to the desire for local content and is looking to expand it and “solidify things here.”
The desire for local programming “absolutely does figure into the thinking here,” Kristafer acknowledges. “But I also have to look at the quality of what's available. Just because something is local doesn't necessarily mean it's better.”
- Michael C. Bingham
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