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| Dave Rutherford |
Garry McKenzie, regional general manager for Corus Radio
Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg , confirmed that Corus will no longer
be carrying The Rutherford Show. He would not confirm it was because of the
criticism, saying only it was a “personnel” matter and due to “a variety of
reasons.”
When reached Tuesday afternoon, Rutherford
said he was given no explanation as to why he was taken off the air, nor was he
told if the removal was permanent. He was set to leave the station anyway. His
last show was scheduled for July 26.
“I got a call three or four minutes after 7 this morning and
they said ‘You’re not on the air. You’re off the air,’” Rutherford
said. “I obviously said ‘Why?’ They said ‘Well, we can’t discuss that, legal
will be in touch with you.’”
I have just been taken off the air on Corus radio. Message: don't criticize management.
— Dave Rutherford (@RutherfordShow) June 25, 2013
“At the time, that was my guess,” Rutherford
said later in the afternoon “But I was thinking about it later in the day: They
pay me to have opinions. They pay me to be a loudmouth. And I was. So what
changed?”
On Monday, Rutherford told
listeners that he would “completely understand” if they went somewhere other
than NewsTalk 770 to get information about the flooding disaster.
Rutherford hosts his show from a home studio in Calgary . NewsTalk 770 was
broadcasting out of a building in Calgary ’s Eau Claire district, which was evacuated amid the Calgary flood. It has
been running the Edmonton CHED630 feed, whose anchors have covered the flood.
On Monday, Rutherford said,
“I was concerned about the decisions they were making regarding the information
station, NewsTalk 770, because they had put resources obviously into the music
stations, Q107 and Country 105 are their two FMs. And they are on the air
running live, current stuff,” Rutherford said.
“It’s unfortunate they made this decision to put all their resources into the
music station in the middle of the biggest crisis the city of Calgary has ever seen. And they chose music
over information.”
McKenzie would not address Rutherford ’s
comments directly, but he defended NewsTalk 770’s coverage of the flood.
“All of our news people have literally been surviving on
five hours a night since Thursday to try and keep us going while the whole city
of Calgary
downtown was without power,” McKenzie said. “Some things people don’t realize,
and I’m not going to give you Radio 101, but we did the best thing we could
with our chief engineers and whole engineering team. If we wanted to connect
and give the whole story it was best to go simulcast through CHED, our sister
station in Edmonton ,
because we didn’t have the capability to provide the right kind of connectivity
and content that we needed for Calgarians.”
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