Judge rules against Carr in WRKO case
Radio talk show host Howie Carr, whose tortuous contract negotiations have kept him in limbo between two stations, remains under contract with his current employer, WRKO-AM, a judge ruled today.
But the ruling, issued this morning by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Allan van Gestel, sharply ratchets up Carr’s salary to match the offer given by a competing radio station.
At issue is a contract that Carr signed with WRKO that was due to expire in late September. The station is owned by Entercom Boston.
Prior to its expiration, Carr fielded a lucrative contract from a suitor station, WTKK-FM, which reportedly has offered the popular talk show host and Boston Herald columnist $7 million over five years.
“Entercom, by exercising its right of first refusal, continued Carr’s services beyond the Sept. 19, 2007 original expiration date of the Agreement, upon the compensation arrangement and the term of employment offered by the other station,” van Gestel wrote in the seven-page ruling.
The judge sharply rejected Carr’s July 10 statement to the media that the Entercom contract transforms him into a “virtual indentured servant.”
“Carr is not, as he argues in his brief, ‘in essence [subject to] a lifetime employment agreement’ with Entercom,” the Judge wrote. “And wherever he legally finds himself, it is of his own conscious doing. He has not, as he publicly claims, been placed into some form of high-paid indentured servitude by this Court.”
(By Diedtra Henderson, Globe staff)
