Marc Steiner took the telephone call late Friday afternoon. A reporter was on the line asking about the firing. Steiner asked, What firing? Yours, said the reporter. And this was how Steiner, the man who helped invent the local National Public Radio outlet WYPR-FM and became the very heart of the station, discovered his microphone had been silenced.

When he went to work two days earlier, says Steiner, station Vice President Andy Bienstock told him, “Your show is really important to the station. Let’s figure out how to make it better.”

By “better,” thought Steiner, Bienstock meant: Let’s try to get those ratings higher.

But, when he went to work Thursday, Steiner says he was suddenly handed a separation agreement. It called for him to continue doing his midday talk show through the end of May and get paid through October. It also called for him to get an additional $50,000 settlement if he agreed not to say anything nasty in public about WYPR or those now running the station.

This story continues below
Advertisement

Steiner says he laughed at the proposition. He had no intention of quitting, and he had a contract with a year left on it.

When he went to work Friday, says Steiner, WYPR President Tony Brandon said he wanted to talk about the separation proposal. Steiner said no. He said he wanted to talk to his attorney before he did anything. He left the station and went to his lawyer’s.

When he drove home in the darkening late afternoon, he got the reporter’s call saying WYPR had just issued a news release declaring Steiner was no longer on the air and a new program would begin next week.

And, just like that, a 15-year midday radio program that brought listeners the latest in insightful talk about everything from Baltimore street corners to Middle East violence to the heavenly searching of the Hubble telescope was brought to an end.

The station’s official statement blamed ratings for his dismissal.

Oh, please.

As everybody knows, radio’s a business. But public radio, and WYPR-FM radio, are supposed to be different. Public radio was created to find an oasis on the dial for programming that isn’t subject to the crass commercial pressures of the marketplace — where the music programming didn’t have to be Top 40, and the talk shows didn’t have to generate bared-teeth political hostility as a way of generating listener numbers and bloated advertising revenue.

When Steiner led the effort to buy the old WJHU station from Johns Hopkins University, his intention was to turn it into a community conversation on the airwaves, where smart, informed people shared the news and the cultural trends of the day. And that’s exactly what he made it.

He was never one of these radio talkers who sat in a padded studio and pretended to see the whole world. When he wanted expertise — whether it was about local gas and electric rates or the war in Iraq — he brought in people with firsthand knowledge. And he did this day after day.

It was never about scoring points — it was about finding out stuff that you didn’t know before. If politics was involved, you heard all sides of an issue, including listeners’. It wasn’t a chorus line of ditto-heads echoing each other’s cheap shots; it was a true marketplace exchange of ideas.

The format was not only healthy for listeners — the station thrived, too. WYPR’s budget has more than tripled in the past five years. Annual listener donations are up 50 percent in that period. They’ve added local programming, including the daily “Maryland Morning.” And the station has purchased two other outlets.

So, for a lot of listeners, the news of Steiner’s firing was stunning and inexplicable — and the ratings excuse from Brandon and Barbara Bozzuto, WYPR’s board chair, disingenuous and absurd.

Despite Steiner’s unique role as the station’s primary voice, he’s seen his power stripped away for the past several years: removal of his former position as vice president, cutbacks in airtime (reruns of the show used to be played at 7 p.m.) and cutbacks in promotional time.

This was a power play based on personalities and in-house politics.

It’s also one of the most witless and heartless moves around here in years — by people who don’t seem to understand the very mission of public radio.

Removing Steiner from WYPR is like taking Ray Lewis from the Ravens, or Jayne Miller from WBAL-TV news.

It’s not just removing the best player. It’s the heart and soul of the team.

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com