Sequel to 2008's award-winning
"The Hard Lie"
By Richie Whitt
DFWSportatorium
PART 1: DEAD MEN TALKING
PART II: THE BLOODY KNEE
PART III: HIGH ROAD TO HELL
PART IV: SH*T HITS THE FAN
PART V: DIFFERENT DIRECTION
Where's Greggo?
Trying to get fired by 105.3 The Fan. And on the verge of succeeding.
For weeks he's publicly, privately, on-and-off the air talked about how his "days are numbered." And today he's playing martyr, histrionically driving the nails through his own crucified hands.
It is April 12 and, little do we know,
RAGE is conducting its 824th and final performance. And, boy, are we about to climax with a
bang thud.
Positioned at a main entrance to Texas Motor Speedway Williams and I embrace the glamorous life one last time, preparing for our show in a cramped trailer before heading to our broadcast table. Greggo is lucid on this day, yet unwittingly determined to go out guns o' blazin', like
Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid heroically - yet fatally - taking on the entire Bolivian army with two pistols.
Late in the show he turns a coveted interview with Texas A&M and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel into his own self-aggrandizing, watch-me-push-the-envelope solo scene. Three times during the otherwise entertaining and informative interview he asks Johnny Football a version of "So, now that you won a Heisman, how much sex you havin'?"
On the third occasion, Manziel politely says "I'm sorry, I'm not comfortable with those questions."
Depending on whether or not you covet your job at The Fan, this turn of events leaves you, in Williams' case, elated or, in my case, embarrassed.
Though The Fan is the Metroplex station for Aggies' football and despite the fact that Armen had been efforting for this interview since February, we will never be allowed to have Manziel on again. And, to his chagrin, Williams will never hear his sophomoric handiwork repeated. We replay the interview just before going off the air, but only after Tim has ordered substitute board operator Jeff Cavanaugh to edit out Williams' repeated attempts to get Manziel to address his total "trim" triumphs.
"Who did that?!" yells Williams on the air. "Who took that out?!"
Later in the show Tim censors Williams again, this time yelling "dump" (or cut) as the dangerously bold Greggo begins uncomfortably asking a young woman about her breasts during a segment in which he took the wireless microphone onto TMS' midway.
Not surprisingly after the show, with a gaggle of listeners gathered around our table hoping for a picture or an autograph or just a friendly chat, the two go at it - nose-to-goatee.
(continued from page 1)
"Don't you ever edit me again! Ever!! You hear me?!" Williams screams to the assistant program director who joined The Fan early in 2009. "I've been to the top of the mountain! You don't even know where the mountain is!!"
Says Tim, calmly, "Greggo, I'm always going to make the decisions I think are best for this station. You can take chances all you want, but it's my job to protect the station. And that's what I did."
As Armen and I contemplate how to diffuse a confrontation that is a saliva splat to the cheek from becoming a physical altercation, Tim issues a general "I'm sorry everybody" apology and walks away. A couple hours later he texts me:
8:57 p.m.:
Again, sorry about today. But I couldn't take it anymore.
No problem, I respond.
Welcome to my world. "High road" ain't so easy with him.
Writes Tim in conclusion,
It was about as high as I could go. Took all I could to walk away.
On my way into work the following Monday - April 15 - I text Tim to inquire about what, if any, discipline would be taken against Williams for Friday's outburst. No response. Should've known his silence wasn't golden.
(continued from page 2)
My head said Monday, but my heart was pounding like Day 49 of my two-month climb up Mount High Road. Before our pre-show meeting I pop into Spittle's office to follow-up on a couple of my on-going ventures:
1. To judge the Cowboys' cheerleaders tryouts in early May; 2. How to maximize show/station exposure via a billboard I had recently purchased at a charity auction. Spittle is receptive, but certainly not excited.
"Those are both great," he says. "Let's address them more in detail as we get closer."
And with that, I unknowingly walk out of his office as a CBS employee for the last time.
While Williams alternated incoherence with truancy, I had also long been butting heads with Spittle and his, um, unique management style. This wasn't the guy I remembered. Not the leader I expected. This wasn't the guy who hired me, but he was about to be the guy who fired me.
Spittle's creative decision-making included his launching of a station text alert system in early March that would supposedly send breaking news right to the smartphones of The Fan database. But in the wake of
RAGE's March 14 interview with Hall-of-Fame running back Emmitt Smith that made national news including our audio being played - and credited - repeatedly on ESPN's
SportsCenter, Spittle didn't send out the podcast through his text alert. I inquired as to why not:
"Ideally," he explained, "it's to be used for transactions only. You know, like when the Cowboys sign a player or the Rangers make a trade."
"So you don't think one of our interviews that makes national news is fit for our text alert?," I asked again, failing to hide my exasperation.
"No," he maintained. "That's not the purpose of this thing."
Funny, because I had signed up for our text alert and received to my iPhone on March 13 - the day before our Emmitt interview - the following dispatch from Spittle's system:
The Fan: Agent David Canter says the Cowboys have "showed interest" in Texans free agent LB Tim Dobbins.
Maybe it's just me, but (in addition to the troubling lack of an apostrophe and a hyphen): 1. That's not a transaction; 2. Someone named Tim Dobbins is somehow more relevant to Fan listeners than Emmitt Smith?
There were many more confrontations.
(continued from page 3)
After our show on March 19 Spittle sent
RAGE an email claiming he had to "roll up his sleeves" and fix our show, which to him was in shambles. He promised to sit in on our pre-show meetings to add his direction. He demanded we listen to, and adhere to, his input. Yet from that day until April 15 he appeared at exactly one such pre-show meeting, casually giving his stamp of approval on that day's proposed topics and order.
Spittle also lamented to Armen about how - as a show -
RAGE would leave the station at 7:05 each night instead of staying and heading to his office for a post-show wrap-up. So the next night, as instructed, we proceeded to Spittle's office immediately after the show, only to find his door locked and him gone. In a show meeting later the same week, he again questioned what he characterized as our "early" departures. I reminded him that we came to his office at 7:05 p.m. two days earlier only to find him with a case of premature evacuation.
"Well, hey, I was at the Stars game," Spittle said defiantly. "I've got to have some sort of social life."
"Well," I countered. "Ditto."
"That's it, this meeting's over!" Spittle then said, rising up as if to storm out of his own office. "I'm not going to be challenged on this. You know, you guys are going to force me into being a dick. I will be. I can be. This is a dictatorship, not a democracy. And that's it!!"
In 27 years in this market working for bosses in newspaper, radio and TV, that's the first time anyone has not at least pretended to care about employee input.
(continued from page 4)
Couple mornings later in a station hallway Spittle tells me he feels "really unwelcomed" by
RAGE. Nonsense I respond, and we set up a post-show meeting. Before that day's show is over, however, he feverishly bursts into the studio.
"Why are y'all posting Cowboys Cheerleaders' photos to your Facebook page?!" he demands during a commercial break. Well ...
Because DCC director Kelli Finglass and I have been friends for 20 years. Because the Cowboys and The Fan have been partners for four years. Because
RAGE has hosted a show with a cheerleader(s) the last two years. And because several members of the squad were Tweeting - sometimes directly to
RAGE - photos of themselves trying on skimpy bikinis for their upcoming calendar photo shoot in Mexico.
"We don't have permission to post those!" screams Spittle, curiously livid.
We were honestly stunned, paralyzed in calm confusion.
"It's okay, Gavin, we've ..." I attempt to explain before he violently cuts me off.
"Why is everything so difficult with you guys?!" he yells as the commercial break dwindles. "Stop f*cking arguing with me and just stop doing it. Now! Is that okay?"
"No, actually," I say. "It makes no sense and it's not okay at all."
Why not?
Because the same guy who was running into the studio to censor something as trivial as
RAGE's Facebook page was the same guy who had recently ignored my alarm that one of his employees was under the influence of drugs on the air. That's why not.
(continued from page 5)
Furthermore, it was Spittle who had Jake writing web-site stories stories for his personal T-shirt side business. It was Spittle who gave
breaking news about Williams to the Dallas Morning News rather than to The Fan's web site or, not to mention, to his own staff. It was Spittle who, as of last week, parlayed his oh-so-omnipotent social media expertise into following none - zero - of his 105.3 The Fan hosts on Twitter. It was Spittle who Tweeted out love to a competitor of his own station's website, calling rinky-dink splogit.com a "great place to give your sports take."
And it was Spittle who offered
RAGE minimal advice, outside of vague strategies like "let's make our teases sexier" and "we need to work on our TSL (Time Spent Listening.)" In football terms, that amounts to a head coach telling his quarterback to "throw better passes" and his team to simply "score more points" than the opponent.
In Spittle's office on April 15 I am discouraged by his flat-line reaction to my two burgeoning ideas, but at this point my focus is more on getting to the NFL Draft in two weeks and then into May and ...
High Road? But as we begin to prepare our show in the meeting room Spittle appears and asks to "borrow" Williams for "a quick second." No biggie, I surmise. Maybe a tongue-lashing for confronting Tim or perhaps ...
(continued from page 6)
"Well, they fired me!" Williams exclaims upon his almost immediate return, slamming a white envelope containing his CBS separation agreement on the table in front of me. Behind him in the doorway stands Schunck, two security guards and, suddenly, sheepishly, Spittle. "Hey," pleads Williams, "can I just talk to Richie real quick?!"
But instead of an answer, Williams gets an escort. And Spittle is now summoning me into his office. I am seeking solace. Turns out I need a cigarette and a blindfold.
"I just wanted to get you out of there because it could get ugly," Spittle says. "So ..."
After naively engaging in small talk and re-visiting Friday's Williams-vs.-Tim altercation, I turn the topic to who the heck my partner was going to be today, the rest of the week and ... Hey! ...
What the what?!
"We've just got to make a change," Spittle mumbles with all the comfort and chutzpah of Mark Cuban in a suit-and-tie. "With, um, yeah, the whole show. We're going in a different direction."
And, right on catastrophic cue, Schunck appears from around the dark corner, through the virtual fog and emerges with her deadly sickle -
my white envelope.
I wasn't totally shocked. But I was completely pissed.
(continued from page 7)
"Gavin, you lied!" I shout. "I sat in this chair two weeks ago and you told me I'd be a big part of things moving forward. Remember?!"
Says Spittle, typically avoiding eye contact, "I'm sorry, Richie. This is tough on both of us. We're going in a different direction."
In no uncertain terms I remind Spittle - and Schunck - that I had feared this very doomsday scenario and had attempted to thwart it. That, as requested - demanded, even - I had taken the High Road. I attempt to re-boot his memory to the fact that, since the day he arrived, I had been alerting him to my partner's debilitating issues, even so much as texting him on March 22 that Williams was noticeably under the influence on his own airwaves.
"And you totally ignored it!" I say emphatically.
"No, Richie, I didn't ignore it," Spittle contends.
"You didn't? Then what do you call it? You didn't do anything," I go on.
"Look, I didn't like the way that text was worded. I didn't appreciate the tone," Spittle explains.
"What?!?! What does that even mean?" I scream, my voice cracking like a teen crashing through puberty. "When I call 911 to report a house on fire they don't question my tone! They put out the fire. What are you talking about, tone?"
"Besides, I was on my way to Houston," Spittle continues. "I don't check my texts all the time in my car. What do you want me to do, stop and check my texts?"
I take a deep breath and deliver calmly, yet sternly, "Yes. Yes, that's exactly what I'd expect you to do. Wanna know why? Because you're the motherf*cking program director, that's why!
"You ignored my information. You allowed my partner to sabotage our show and you're now firing me along with him. I hope that sits well with you when you look at that lying scoundrel in the mirror."
Says Spittle, "I'll put my hand on a Bible and tell you that I didn't ignore you."
"Howwwwww?!?!?!?!" I demand, garnering only a blank return look from Spittle.
Other than down the drain, this was going nowhere. Less than 10 minutes later Sybil and I are driving away from CBS in a daze.
(continued from page 8)
At least 10 times Spittle told me the reason for my firing was "different direction." In a press release the same day, however, he was quoted as blaming "low ratings."
If so, I'd been handed a can of expired Spam and was being fired for not serving Surf & Turf. To be held accountable for the show's direction and ratings while being suffocated by the Greggo Grip was infuriating, and that's exactly what I told Brian when he called a week later in an attempt to console me.
"To be the collateral damage of Greggo's necessary termination is just plain wrong," I told the foreman of the fantastically failed High Road Project. "I took your high road and look where it got me. If CBS had acted on my consistent and numerous complaints and placed me with a new partner, I'd still be an employee and a productive on-air host."
Said Brian, "I'm sorry it has to be this way. I don't always agree with my managers' decisions, but I'm bound to stand behind them."
In the wake of my firing, and suddenly with lots of time on my hands, I perused my CBS contract and came across the "Termination For Cause" paragraph. While I consistently played within CBS rules, Williams violated nine of the 14 fireable offenses, including "dishonesty," "influence of drugs," "excessive absenteeism," and "failure to work in a harmonious manner with management."
It's one thing to get fired. It's another to get f*cked.
Before I left Spittle's office the final time, I asked him to look me in the eye and tell me sincerely that he believed 105.3 The Fan was better off without me being involved.
One last murmur, "Different direction."
Since our firing Williams has reached out to me multiple times via Twitter, text, email, voice mail and mutual friends. And I've got multiple reasons to ignore him.
Continue reading part 5:
Different Direction
