Clear Channel announced Nov 16 that the company will be purchased by a private investment group for $26.7 billion. The media giant, now $8 billion in debt, plans to sell off its television branch and 448 radio stations.
Norton always wins
two Opies converge
NY Daily News
A nasty case of air rage at Free-FM
By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
A surreal story that began when WFNY morning co-host Anthony Cumia's girlfriend was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital led yesterday to Anthony and his partner, Opie, exchanging a torrent of loud insults on the air with the Free-FM team that follows them, JV and Elvis.
The volume of this exchange and the fact it involved hosts from the same station made it sound unusually intense.
JV and Elvis said Opie (Gregg Hughes) and Anthony (Anthony Cumia) aren't as successful as Howard Stern and that while Anthony is funny, Opie is "just a board operator."
Opie replied, "Yeah, a board op who's on the side of buses and David Letterman's couch. A board op who's a multimillionaire. Whatta you think of that?"
Opie said "nobody listens" to JV and Elvis and that if they were "any good," they'd have gotten the WFNY morning show when David Lee Roth was fired.
The drama began with Anthony talking about how his girlfriend was committed and how he was working to spring her.
Opie and Anthony host 6 to 9 a.m. on WFNY, simulcast with XM, then 9-11 on XM alone. But Chernoff said Cumia's story was "compelling" enough for them to stay on WFNY until 9:30.
JV and Elvis, who do 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., grumbled about losing the time. O&A called them from XM, and the discussion quickly escalated to schoolyard-style yelling.
Opie also said WFNY's parent, CBS, "wants me and Anthony to do 9-10 [on WFNY] every day."
Elvis said later that when the call ended, he and JV were told to stop on-air discussion of it.
Originally published on September 29, 2006