Michael Coren returned to CFRB this Sunday past.
Here's the official announcement from CFRB:
Michael Coren is one of Canada's most controversial talk show hosts. He returns to CFRB on Sunday September 10th to host a new talk show from 7 pm to 8 pm. Michael was in Israel during the Israeli - Hezbollah conflict this summer. He appeared on many CFRB talk shows providing commentary and exclusive reports about the conflict.
Michael is host of the nightly television programme The Michael Coren Show on CTS. He is also a columnist with the Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg Sun. He is the best-selling author of twelve books, translated into more than a dozen languages. Coren is a columnist for The Western Standard and writes regularly for The National Post. He is also a highly popular public speaker.
He has won several awards and honorary doctorates for his broadcasting and writing and is published in various international magazines, but his major boast is that he has been married to Bernadette for nineteen years and they have four children. Coren was born in Britain but came to Canada in 1986 and lives in Toronto.
Listen to the Michael Coren Show Sunday nights 7p-8p starting Sunday, September 10th on Newstalk 1010 CFRB.
In case you aren't familiar with the Canadian talk-show scene, in particular in Toronto, you should know that Michael Coren was returning not from a summer off to be in Israel. He was fired last November:
Last Monday evening, talk-radio host Michael Coren on Toronto's CFRB apparently crossed one too many lines, even by the standards of evening AM-radio call-in shows, and it cost him his job.
During a segment that station general manager Pat Holiday said lasted about five minutes or so, Coren -- a veteran talk-radio host, TV personality and newspaper columnist known to court controversy -- interviewed a man from New Jersey who was said to have lost 100 pounds after previously weighing more than 500.
Coren mocked him on the air for not losing more and even joked about whether he could find his wife in bed, Holiday said. He later pretended to quote the Bible by saying that the gates of heaven weren't wide enough for obese people.
Holiday wasn't listening at the time, but received a slew of angry e-mails from listeners that night. Reviewing a recorded portion of the interview the next morning, he was astonished by Coren's offensive remarks.
What was weird, though, is the Coren did not insult anyone, at least not directly. It was staged:
Yet as it turns out, the interview was staged. The caller was fictitious, although there was no mention on air before or after the segment that it was made up, Holiday said.
Despite the questionable practice of staging the interview, Coren's remarks were still unusually heated and offensive. "What was so strange was this never had to happen because the whole thing was staged [by Coren]," Holiday said.
Talk-show hosts commonly have to be cautioned not to get too personal during the heat of talk-radio arguments, Holiday said. Coren had been previously warned about being too offensive and about staging at least one interview.
There is a grey area in radio, Holiday said, about staging interviews. "It's not uncommon to have morning shows doing it a lot. They'll have fake callers, and it would be a [comedy] bit or something. But CFRB is a talk station. It's a different animal. We don't want people doing that here."
I like Michael Coren, but I think I have to go with Halliday on this one. Staging an interview is akin to fraud. Unless it is so obviously a fake, like an on-the-steet interview with Osama bin Laden outside of a local convenience store, you need to clearly indicate that the interview is staged, especially if it includes outrageous comments.
Coren was trying to make a point about the difficulty in debating issues like obesity. But instead of the outrage highlighting the point, the point was lost in the outrage. Trying to use satire is tricky -- not everyone gets it. And not everyone can do satire well. Most people who try just end up insulting and hurting people.
Simply saying "I was just kidding" and "Can't you get a joke?" doesn't cut it. To Coren's credit, he's not making excuses:
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Coren said in an email to LifeSiteNews.com, “and also learned just how many people out there rely on my voice on the radio. I will not let the side down.”
It sounds like he knows that we like him best when he's being absolutely honest.
And with that, and a constant clamour from his fans to bring him back to radio, CFRB has put him back on the air. Only once a week though. On Sunday night. And no guests -- just Coren and call-ins. Perhaps he's on probation. Fair enough. I have no doubt there won't be any problems.
Good luck, Michael, and welcome back.
