Meriden Radio Station Drops Glenn Beck

Listeners used to tuning in to controversial commentator Glenn Beck's talk show weekday mornings on Meriden's WMMW 1470 AM will have to head somewhere else starting April 4 for their Fox newscaster fix.

The conservative station, owned by Buckley Radio out of Bloomfield, will be replacing Beck's nationally syndicated news show with a lifestyle program by local host Mary Jones. Jones, of New Britain, is familiar with the 9 a.m. to noon time slot – she was actually ousted from it by Beck's show in October 2008.

"Due to the budget fallout that affected everyone, we had laid Mary off. It's less expensive to run syndicated shows than local programming," said program director Grahame Winters. Winters said the station was making an effort to bring more local content to listeners. "We brought her back in a lesser capacity, on weekends – until timing and budgets were right. Now we’re ready to go back."

Media Matters, a left-leaning media watchdog, reported that the chain's president said Beck had lost his appeal to Connecticut audiences.

"He bounces around pretty radically, I think he confuses people, they're not sure where he is coming from," said Rick Buckley, president of Buckley Radio of Greenwich, Conn., in an article by Media Matters. "It can change day to day, hour to hour. Consistency is, I think, the path to success in broadcasting, in radio for sure, whether it be music or talk. Glenn is sort of all over the park from time to time."

The station will be making the switch on all four of its talk radio stations in the state, which broadcast the same content: WMMW-AM 1470 (Meriden, Middletown and Wallingford), WDRC AM 1360 (Hartford), WWCO AM 1240 (Including Waterbury, Naugatuck, Southington) and WSNG-AM 610 (Litchfield County).

Every day at 9 a.m., Jones and early morning host Brad Davis will cohost an hour together, and then from 10 a.m. to noon, she will run the program alone. Next week's shows will include topics ranging from assisted suicide to etiquette, according to Winters.

As for the fans, Winters said she has had calls from listeners about the change, some positive, some negative, and said she'd had a similar reaction from listeners when Jones' show went off the air.

"Talk radio listeners are a very vocal community," she said.