Screen cap via cleveland19.com

Keep playing with hot takes, and eventually you may get burned. That appears to be what happened to Cleveland sports talk radio host Kevin Kiley, who announced on local TV station Cleveland 19 Thursday night that he was resigning from his position on the morning show at 92.3 The Fan.

You may remember Kiley from such searing opinions as the one he spewed in mid-January, following the Buffalo Bills’ hiring of Kathryn Smith as a special teams/quality control assistant coach. “There’s no place for a woman in professional sports, in football, coaching men,” Kiley said.

Kiley expressed similarly unenlightened thoughts nearly four years ago, stating that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As you might imagine, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Mary Kay Cabot, who covers the Browns, took serious issue with that at the time. Following his remarks about Smith, she called for 92.3 The Fan to be disciplined. Evidently, that happened in one form or another, even if just suggested, and Kiley is claiming that was enough for him to, in his words, “go away.”

Yet Kiley also claims that he submitted his resignation to the station back in November, before his Smith remarks, because his “principles of doing business” didn’t match with management. Had the station already been feeling pressure from advertisers, negative feedback from listeners and/or a drop in ratings, and thus told Kelly to knock off his ill-informed, unnecessarily provocative hot takes?

Here are the segments from Cleveland 19 with sports director Tony Zarella:

Cleveland 19 News|Cleveland, OH|News, Weather, Sports

Here is a transcript of Kiley’s remarks, if you can’t watch the video:

“But there’s a bigger issue here, let me get to this issue here. Look, throughout the history of radio and broadcasting, from Orson Welles to Howard Stern, people have stood up for the right to say and the right to argue and the right to make points. And people have lost their jobs, and opportunities, and they’ve been chastised for that. And they sacrificed. Throughout the history of broadcasting, you have these people. And I have no right to accept censorship. I’ve never been censored. In 35 years, I’ve never been censored, and I shouldn’t have been censored for this. And I have no right to accept censorship based on what broadcasting is. And nor should you accept censorship, ever. You should make sure that the people on the radio are telling you the truth as they see it. Now, you’re gonna argue with them and you can disagree with them, but don’t let the program director there, don’t let the general manager, don’t let some clown in New York tell them what to say, and then you think it’s their opinion, or what not to say. That’s what happened here, and I’m not accepting it. So, demand the truth. We’ll see how they feel about the truth, trust me, if I’m on the air tomorrow morning.”

Well, Kiley wasn’t on the air Friday morning, so he and the 92.3 The Fan listeners probably have their answer. It’s certainly not difficult to believe that station managers wouldn’t let him on the air after going on television to say he’s resigning. How many stations would let talent go on the air and take calls or speak about such issues publicly?

We don’t know what management said to Kiley, but if he was told to stop alienating listeners, local and national media and advertisers, that’s not censorship. Maybe that argument will fly with a different audience in a new market if a station is willing to hire Kiley after he’s had some time to be forgotten for a while.

[Cleveland Scene]

About Ian Casselberry

Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.

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