Chris Russo flies first class for Sirius, 'which is fair'

Your Ad Here

My favorite line from Chris Russo's appearance with Howard Stern on Sirius this morning came as Russo tried to illustrate the fact Sirius' financial situation is not as dire as reported, based on the fact his budget has not been cut:

"I’m going to spring training for two separate trips in spring training. In my contract I’ve got that they have to fly me first class, which is fair, and they’ve got to send me to nice hotels. No Motel 6. I don’t get the impression we’re about to fall apart."

Click below for much more, if you're nuts. (Still awaiting Mike Francesa's on-air response to all this.)

Here is Russo on reports Sirius XM is on the verge of bankruptcy:

"I gave Mr. [Mel] Karmazin a status report on Jan. 6. Fill him in, what’s going on, who are we going to hire here, what are we going to hire there, sat with him for 45 minutes. In my contract I have a budget that I am not supposed to exceed for the rest of the channel. We wanted to figure out if we could do a little something on the weekends to up the budget. Mel said no, but he said also this: 'I will live up to the terms of that contract. You’ll have every penny you need up to the terms of that contract to do what you have to do.'

"Now, I don’t get the idea that a company that is about to fall apart, they would take my stuff away, leave me out by myself, Chris, just do your show and we’ll worry about the company in six months from now and then worry about your channel. That did not happen.

"Plus, I’m going to spring training for two separate trips in spring training. In my contract I’ve got that they have to fly me first class, which is fair, and they’ve got to send me to nice hotels. No Motel 6. I don’t get the impression we’re about to fall apart."

At this point Stern launched a defense of Sirius, saying, "I still believe satellite will be the dominant force in radio."

Then Stern asked Russo this: "You just signed a $3 million-a-year contract for yourself, personally. It’s very, very lucrative. What if the new owner comes in, let’s say he’s successful, though I don’t think he will be, and wants to open up the contract and give you less money. Will you buckle, or will you go back to terrestrial radio?"

Said Russo: "I will not go to terrestrial radio. I will not do that. I keep hiring all these guys. In Charlotte I have a morning guy, Gary Williams, who does a great job. I have an overnight guy in San Francisco, Larry Krueger. I can’t just bail out and leave these guys to hang. A lot of these guys took this job because of the idea of it - free radio, do what I want, I can do the kind of show I want to do. I can’t bail out on that.

Then Howard asked Russo how Francesa has done in the ratings without him.

Said Russo: "It depends who you ask. Their ratings, from an FAN perspective, seem to be the same. I have spoken to some other people at 1050 ESPN that said they’ve gotten murdered in certain parts of the tri-state area, Jersey for instance. And if you noticed, ESPN, they moved their show." [I assume he meant the expansion of Michael Kay's afternoon show.]

Stern: "There was always a question of who needed who more. Did Mike Franceso [Stern kept mispronouncing his name] need you more, or did you need him? Now, if his ratings are down and you're making $3 million a year, you win. You're the winner and he’s the loser."

Russo: "It’s intangible. I don’t have the ratings in front of me. Plus there’s that new system, that PPM, that people meter thing. It’s not a diary."

Russo insisted he was not aware of Francesa's ratings, and also said he has not listened to or watched Francesa's show since leaving WFAN.

"I hear the quality of the show, he misses the energy, he does this, he does that, and I miss Mike, too. It goes both ways. So I’ve heard that. But as far as, Chris, did you see or look at this, that this rating was 10 percent less than when you were there? No."

Stern's producer at this point quoted ratings from November showing WFAN had fallen somewhat, but he was using ratings covering the entire day, not the afternoon slot occupied by Francesa and Russo.

Finally, Russo conceded ratings were down, just to shut up Stern. "There’s been a little bit of a decrease, if it makes you happy. I’ve got pride, of course."

Russo told Stern that he and Francesa have seen each other twice since they broke up. The first was in November at Joe Torre's "Safe at Home Foundation" dinner.

"Perfect, we talked about sports, about the station, like long lost friends, phenomenal," Russo said. But he said "it was a little awkward" when they saw each other again Jan. 26 in Tampa.

"We were both at an event to cover, so there was a little bit more of a competition scenario to that, because I’m looking for the same guests and the same kinds of things he’s looking for in Tampa two Mondays ago," Russo said.

Then Stern asked about Francesa's decision to do his show Super Bowl week from the Hyatt lobby rather than Radio Row.

Stern: "Mike, your former partner, thinks he’s such a big deal, thinks he’s so good, that he decides he doesn’t have to be at Radio Row and he sets up a separate hotel room for himself where all the guests should come to him and this way he aces guys out like you. So what happened? No one showed up to Mike’s hotel room. Am I right or wrong?"

Russo: "For the most part you’re right. It wasn’t a hotel room, it was a lobby of a hotel. You had to walk eight blocks for interviews."

Stern: "Your ex-partner thinks he’s such a ---- big deal that he’s going to stand in a hotel room eight blocks away and people are going to come to him like he’s Jesus. Comment on that."

Russo: "That was a mistake. What the motivation was, maybe Mike just felt with me there, I’ve got the NFL radio network with Sirius maybe he felt that would be a compromising situation. But as you say, in that situation, the big spots are not going to walk eight blocks to do a 15-minute interview on WFAN."

Stern: "Is it fair to say that Mike made a power play that completely failed?"

Russo: "Power play might be a little too strong, but I had 56 guests that week, and Mike had 26 guests."

Stern: "And isn’t it true that Mike’s big thing was he always had a personal relationship with Bill Parcells? He and Bill Parcells are super tight, Bill Parcells my best friend, and you had nothing to do with it. And isn’t it true Bill Parcells gave you an interview and didn't do an interview with Mike? . . . His so-called good friend Bill Parcells didn’t even do an interview with him?"

Russo: "That was a little dicey. I didn’t understand that either, myself. I did get Parcells on Friday at 5:35. So the Friday before the Super Bowl, Bill’s sitting there for 15 minutes. Now, he was doing it because he was promoting Gatorade. So it’s not like he just said, 'I’m going to do Russo today.' He was there for a reason. But the two channels he did, you’ll be proud of this, were Sirius. He did the NFL channel on 124, and he did us on 123, nothing else."

Stern: "Have you heard your old partner Mike is out of mind over this? It’s embarrassing!"

Russo: "That I have not heard."

Stern then admitted he made it up, and went on to recount Russo's fight with Francesa over Parcells in 1996, and made some off-color jokes about Francesa's wife that Russo refused to react to.

The two went on to discuss Russo having Joe Torre in-studio last week and Francesa only by phone. Russo explained Francesa is located in Queens, making it more difficult logistically to have some guests in-studio. I didn't get that stuff on tape.

Back to the Super Bowl thing: "We got [Parcells] on for 15 minutes and that Friday at the Super Bowl, that’s a huge show the Friday before the Super Bowl. We had Madden, Costas, Ebersol and Bill. And the day before was Bruce [Springsteen], you heard about that."

From that, the two veered off into Springsteen and movie talk, so I stopped typing. Oy.

source