Jay Severin, Jimmy Severino, Boston Herald

SEVERIN "RETURNS"

Gets Fluff Piece In Boston Herald







Creepy former MSNBC panelist Jay Severin, fresh off of his failed radio syndication effort, "returned" to Boston today, a city he previously didn't think was worthy of calling home.

Kicking off his first show today, Severin spent several minutes shamelessly brown- nosing nearly everyone at his new / former employer, saving particular praise for his high- powered agent, who engineered an absurd seven- figure deal. Hey, it's great for Severin (real name: Jimmy Severino), but terrible for talk radio's credibility.

While Severin did achieve ratings success in his previous local incarnation, it's not clear whether that can be repeated after a year stuck in radio purgatory. Listeners may have moved on and there are big problems with other parts of WTKK's lineup.


And just in time for the occasion, the Boston Herald kicked in its welcome "back" present, presenting this choice fluff piece, which even claimed that Severin didn't fail in national syndication:

He wasn’t canned and his syndicated radio show didn’t bomb.

Jay Severin says he missed the energy and “IQ” of his Boston audience and yukking it up during the afternoon commute.

Starting tomorrow at 3 p.m., Severin returns solely to Boston radio, back to his afternoon drive-time gig at Greater Media Inc.’s WTKK-FM (96.9), after a near nine-month run in syndication.

The controversial host reportedly inked a seven-year deal worth more than a million a year with Greater Media, making him one of the highest paid - if not the highest - local radio hosts in the country.

In an interview with the Herald, Severin said he left WTKK last year after more than five years because he was lured by the “bright lights, big city” offer of a syndicated gig with CBS Radio-managed Westwood One.

But Severin admitted this week that syndication “wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.”

“I didn’t enjoy evenings. I really missed the idea of belonging to this afternoon audience in New England. That’s when my energies are highest - it’s when I perform best,” said Severin, whose 7-to-10 p.m. syndicated show was picked up by WTKK.

Severin said the night audience wasn’t as engaged as his old afternoon listeners.

“Without a knock at any of those other audiences, they frankly didn’t have the energy, the IQ and the imagination of the Boston audience,” Severin said. “There was a discernable difference. It wasn’t the same.”

None of Severin's many scandals were mentioned in the piece, which read like it was written by the station's PR department. Once again, evil prevails in Boston.


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