Watch that mic! ... KGO suspends Karel

[radiofan]

It looks like KGO weekender / fill-in host KAREL has blown his chance to take over the 10PM - 1AM shift thanks to a mic being left on during a newscast. It appears Karel isn't a fan of Joe The Plumber ..

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kerry-pick ... nity-laced

It was announced today that KGO has suspended Karel for an indefinate period of time.

[BossRadio]

There but for the grace of on-air lights and a few brain cells still operating go a lot of us. Crash and fail baby, crash and fail.

[radiofan]

From Karel's website dated 11/11/08

And with a two minute phone call and one paragraph letter I have been fired from KGO. I’m told the engineer that made the mistake has been as well.

So, we’ll need to start doing podcasting and such until a new station is found. So check back for details.

Yes, this is wrong. It is my responsibility but not my fault. I do my show remotely and have no on/off for my microphone. The engineer had two ways of stopping this, and had he not been in the bathroom he may have. Should I have gone off like this in my home studio? No, in a perfect world we realize all microphones are live, even if for 15 years they haven’t been. But as Joe Scarborough drops the Fbomb and lives, as many other KGO host have and survived on air...one wonders if there’s more.

Who can say. But whatever the case, the final word is in and I’m out.

[tuned]

I think the board op that went to the can and left Karels mike on is 100% to blame and should have gotten fired but Karel shouldn't walk the plank.
You have to wonder what's happening at KGO since Citadel took over the station. Citadel has a reputation for cheapness that makes Clear Channel look generous. I was in a control room in LA for a major league sports broadcast not too long ago and the board op dumped the the PBP guys into cue the instant he went to break. What I heard throughout the entire game was one hundred times worse than Karels little tirade. In my personal experience potty mouths during commercial breaks in TV are also quite common. I think KGO was looking for an excuse to dump Karel.

[jon]

The best manager I ever worked for in my entire life, not just Radio, had a very good rule that he made stick even though we were in a Union shop: anything said in Master Control could get you a formal reprimand if it would get the station in trouble if it was aired.

I personally benefitted from that rule as that station's Master Control room had a funky Intercom system that was simply moving the Mic. switch slightly differently than you would to go On Air. A least twice when I was visiting the evening guy, I made the mistake of talking to several hundred miles of listeners instead of the evening guy when he was in the Production studio, and I was minding the on-air board for him.

[radiofan]

I think the board op that went to the can and left Karels mike on is 100% to blame and should have gotten fired but Karel shouldn't walk the plank.

In this case, Karel is 100% to blame for his own demise. He's not actually at KGO, he does his show from his home in Santa Monica and uses a Switch 56 to give him studio quality.

KGO's "local" news in the evenings, overnights and weekends originates from the Metro Traffic studios in San Francisco.

Karel instructs his board ops to leave his mic hot during newscasts so he can jump in and kibbitz with the newsperson..

I always thought his interrupting the newsperson took away credibility from the cast and sounded somewhat idiotic, but I guess the programming people at KGO know better.

Look where Karel and his op ended up.

[tuned]

If that's the case Fan then it's Karels own fault....I've heard him kibbitz back and forth with the news person and sometimes you could tell the news person was uncomfortable with editorializing during the cast. The whole remote thing is a recipe for disaster which is exactly what happened. If the board op hadn't been taking a bathroom break though he could have killed Karel's feed fairly quickly. They both deserve the gate then.