I Fired Ted Sarandis

As I come to the last day of my job today and the start of my new job on Monday, I wanna tell a story on to show how hard it is these days to keep a job you like no matter how well you do it.

A few months ago I was invited by my favorite radio station, the Boston Sports station WEEI, to participate in a listener focus group. It was my day off and I figured it would be fun to see the studios and get to chime in on the process of one of the biggest sports radio stations in the country.

They gathered myself and about 10 other guys about the same age as myself in a conference room and got to talk to Jason Wolfe, the stations program director who treated us to some pizza and soda. He asked us questions about the shows on the air, what we thought about some of the personalities on the station then had us fill out a questionnaire. After we filled out the questionnaire, he seemed to want to focus on 2 particular personalities on the station; Michael Holley, who just joined the mid-day show with Dale Arnold, and Ted Sarandis, who for 13 years has been doing the evening show.

Jason wanted to know if we liked listening to them and asked us to rate there performance on the air, which to me made perfect sense. Holley was not new to the station but this was his first full time hosting gig, and over the last year or so Ted's show has been on the decline somewhat as he would go off on rants about things people didn't want to talk about like the war in Iraq and college sports (He is the play-by-play voice of the Boston College Basketball team). He would also make somewhat off the wall suggestions like building a new ballpark for the Red Sox with a retractable roof when it was clear that there was not going to be a new place built at all, roof or no roof. He was turning into the Les Nessman of sports talk radio.

All of us were in pretty agreement that Holley was going a great job, especially when he and Dale did interviews. Ted, on the other hand, was another story. Although we all agreed that he really was one of the most knowledgeable and prepared of the 'EEI on-air talent, several of us (including myself) admitted that we turned him off sometimes because we just were not interested in what he was talking about and when a caller could call about another topic, he would interject and still would want to talk about his topics, not the callers. He didn't seem too interested in bending for the callers and focused on his agenda. At the end we were all thanked with small tokens of swag and we sent on our merry way.

On the way home I called Bismo and tell him about the experience. I told him that my biggest impression out of the meeting was that it was apparent that Ted was history. 5 months later, I proved to be correct. Although he will remain the voice of the BC Eagles on WEEI, he was let go out of the show he did mostly by himself for more than a decade.

When I heard that he was out, I remembered the meeting months earlier and finally saw the meeting for what it was mostly for - to give WEEI the ammunition to fire him....and I helped supply the bullets. It was apparent that there was no love lost between Ted and Glen Ordway, the afternoon show host and the station's biggest personality. Some reports stated that the station were making things so miserable for him that they would hope he would quit so they didn't look like the villain to the small of VERY faithful following he acquired over the years (who Dan Shaughnessy dubbed as "Ted Nation"). And while Ted did seem to lose his way on the show in the end, it might have more of just seeing the writing on the wall well before it happened and decided to do his own thing.

I hope that Ted can get back into form and find another gig. A few years ago we was offered the announcers job calling Boston Celtics games but turned it down because he loved talking to his audience every night for "Five Action Packed Hours", a decision I'm sure he might to kicking himself for now. At least he still has the play-by-play job at BC thanks to his excellent play calling and his overwhelming love and knowledge of college sports.

It feels kinda shitty thinking that I might have played a small part of this. I know I wouldn't want someone I didn't know have a say in my future employment. But I wish him the best and hope that he finds himself another "Nation".