Reno-area talker cut after gay-issues program

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Sean Savoy, a local talker on Fox News Radio affiliate KKFT-FM received complaints for a gay-themed program that aired 8/12. Soon after, he was let go.


KKFT airs Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett and Dennis Miller in addition to local talker Bill Manders. It airs a five-hour block of programming from Nevada Matters on Sunday nights. That block aired the :30 minute “House of Savoy” until 8/12.

Savoy was told by his producer that his show would be taken off the air after the airing.

“It just doesn’t fit with a conservative talk radio station. … It was just really odd,” Fox News Radio 99.1 FM Talk owner and manager Jerry Evans told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Savoy’s show discussed several issues — including religion and politics — during its nearly one-year run.

“The show itself was general interest,” Savoy said. “There was never a consideration there would be a problem with the station. The show is not a gay show. That was one episode of dozens on many topics.”

On 8/12, Savoy interviewed Texas gay rights advocate Will Kolb to discuss gay and lesbian topics in light of Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s comments on same-sex marriage in July.

During the show, Evans received a call from his son asking, “Are you aware what is on your radio station?” Evans said the show gave an “earthy, hippie, spacey-type feeling” that didn’t match his station’s regular programming.

“We are conservative, and we make no bones about it,” Evans said.

During the Aug. 12 airing, Savoy, an openly gay man, said he felt it was “flabbergasting” that people could not understand the gay rights movement.

Kolb added during the program: “Homosexuality has been in this country and in the world since the beginning of time, but up until the late 1960s, you couldn’t even talk about it. I think for everybody who is LGBT or has a sense that equality is important in this country for everybody, not just a certain group of people, I think it is critically important for us all to stand up and say what we think and what we feel…The country is becoming divisive enough that there is a certain segment of the population that wants to completely marginalize the LGBT community and say, ‘We don’t want to hear anything you have to say.’”

Evans said the 8/12 episode was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“I’ve been called a gay hater and just all kinds of oddball stupid stuff,” Evans said.

He added that he has received “foul, crude and hateful” mail from gay rights advocates: “These people — these precious people — think that it’s an affront to their something or another. They seem to think they are deserving of this. The show was on for a year, and the few times I heard it I thought, ‘Well, this is weird’.”

Eddie Floyd, Savoy’s producer, owns Nevada Matters. It produces 29 shows for four local stations, 17 for Fox News Radio 99.1 FM Talk, Floyd said. Savoy paid for the 30-minute time slot with help from a local sponsor.

See the Reno Gazette-Journal story here