Plus Pages

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Chicago Radio: WSCR Boots Dan McNeil

Dan McNeil is out at WSCR 670 AM, a day after a tweet in which the sports-talk host compared ESPN sideline reporter Maria Taylor’s attire on “Monday Night Football” to that of an adult film awards show.

Maria Taylor
Danny Parkins, a onetime intern for McNeil and his afternoon co-host since March 2018, will work solo for the time being, The Chicago Tribune reports.

Rachel Williamson, Entercom Communications regional president, announced McNeil’s exit in a Tuesday memo to WSCR staff that spoke of the power of words and the responsibility to choose them wisely.

McNeil’s “tweet, and its degrading and humiliating tone to a fellow female broadcaster, was unacceptable,” Williamson wrote, offering an apology “to all who were offended by Dan’s words, especially Maria.”

Parkins said he agreed with everything in Williamson’s note, but he was shaken because he was close with McNeil and the ouster was abrupt.

“Actions have consequences,” Parkins said, opening Tuesday’s show. “I can understand completely Entercom did what it did, and I feel terrible that Maria Taylor debuts on ‘Monday Night Football’ — talk about a career milestone and accomplishment — and somehow she gets caught up in this nonsense. That’s not right. Nobody can condone that. So, yeah, the industry needs to be better. We need to be better.”

Reached by the Tribune, McNeil declined to comment.

McNeil posted Monday on Twitter, along with a picture of Taylor reporting from that night’s Steelers-Giants game: “NFL sideline reporter or a host for the AVN annual awards presentation?”

AVN is an abbreviation for Adult Video News.


Taylor — who was making her NFL sideline debut — not only responded to McNeil on Twitter after the game, but also took the opportunity to promote her upcoming NBA work.

No comments:

Post a Comment