http://www.adn.com/politics/story/391150.htmlKUDO firings shake up station
By BETH BRAGG
bbragg@adn.com
The city's only politically liberal radio station fired its highest-profile broadcaster this week, but new managers at KUDO-1080 say the station will keep leaning to the left and will still air three local weekday call-in shows.
Aaron Selbig, who focused on state and local politics and gave Democrats a weekly forum on Fridays, lost his afternoon talk show and his job as program manager Sunday.
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"We're not moving the direction of the radio station. We'll maintain an important position in that we're the only forum where people can discuss the other side of the coin," he said. "But it doesn't do us any good to be a progressive radio station and rank 20th. We want to be a progressive station and rank fifth."
KUDO will launch a new schedule Thursday with the debut of a morning call-in show hosted by the man who fired Selbig -- Cary Carrigan, a longtime Anchorage broadcaster and KUDO's new program director.
Carrigan said his first guest will be U.S. Senate candidate Jake Metcalfe -- a former IBEW attorney who figures in a controversy Selbig had been talking about on his show, involving Web-site attacks against Ethan Berkowitz, another Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
On his show last week, Selbig alleged a connection between the Web attacks and a Jake Metcalfe political advisor. Carrigan and Robbins said Selbig's firing had nothing to do with any of this. It was a business decision based on economics and ratings, they said.
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Selbig said he doesn't think the timing of his firing and his comments on the anti-Berkowitz Web sites were entirely coincidental.
"The last guest on my show was Ethan Berkowitz. I got fired two days later. You tell me," he said Tuesday. "They told me it was a cost-cutting measure. I have no choice but to accept that at face value."
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