Smerconish gets second radio show

Smerconish gets second radio show
By Michael Klein

It's the O'Reilly factor, all right. With Bill O'Reilly easing out of the radio picture (400-plus stations), talk stations are looking for product.
 

Enter Michael Smerconish, a longtime O'Reilly fill-in. The Doylestown-bred lawyer turned morning host at WPHT (1210), whose CBS show recently started simulcasting in Washington, just signed a syndication deal for a second daily radio show.
 

His first station, starting Feb. 2, will be New York's WOR (710), as syndicator Dial Global and CBS announced yesterday.
 

Smerconish will take a break after his 9 a.m. WPHT sign-off and do the second show from noon to 2 p.m. from his home studio. WOR will air the show from 8 to 10 p.m. on tape - though, in the early going, Smerconish says he will do that show live as a courtesy to WOR.
 

No rest for the weary, or the ambitious.
 

No other stations have been announced, and his Philly morning show also is being offered for syndication.
 

Smerconish, a HUD administrator here under George Bush 41, will continue to contribute to MSNBC.
 

Smerconish credits the start of his talk career in 1991 to Brian Tierney, now publisher of The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. Smerconish (now an Inquirer columnist) says Tierney, guest-hosting for Tom Marr on the old WWDB, had him on the Saturday Night Shootout. Smerconish also credits Larry Kane for leaning on Chuck Schwartz, then owner of WWDB, who put him in touch with program director David Rimmer.