-
Opie And Jim Norton Return To The Air, Discuss Anthony's Firing
July 14, 2014 at 7:55 AM (PT)
What do you think? Add your comment below. -
The OPIE AND ANTHONY Show went on without ANTHONY TODAY (7/14) with GREGG "OPIE" HUGHES and JIM NORTON hosting their first show after SIRIUSXM fired longtime co-host ANTHONY CUMIA.
OPIE and NORTON awkwardly opened with sighs and OPIE remarking that "we're being called traitors" (NORTON said that they had gotten a text suggesting they be called "The Benedict and Arnold Show"); NORTON refused OPIE's suggestion that he sit in ANTHONY's customary seat. After discussing the company's desire to change the name of the channel and tear the "OPIE AND ANTHONY SHOW" signs off the studio wall, OPIE said, "I think they want us to save the channel, but they got rid of TIM SABEAN, they got rid of ANTHONY, they changed the name of the channel, they got rid of all the archives, and they said, have at it, boys. We're in a horrendous spot, we're in a horrible spot, we're in a sh-tty position."
I knew in my gut that this was not going to go well.
"We have no choice," OPIE said. "We're under contract. We have to be here. We're not excited to be here at this moment in time. Maybe this develops into something new and exciting. Who the F knows? I don't know." NORTON added, "This is not a disloyal thing. We're under contract." OPIE read a note sent from ANTHONY wishing them well before relating a "sh-tty" meeting the hosts had after the last show they did before vacation, with SIRIUSXM executive SCOTT GREENSTEIN, and noted that NORTON closed the last show by saying "this is our last live show," which OPIE said made him uneasy.
OPIE and NORTON discussed how they would have verbally beaten ANTHONY up had they been on the air the day after the TWITTER tirade, with OPIE saying that when he saw the tweets the next morning, "I said to myself, I swear to you, 'oh, my God, we're fired' ... I knew in my gut that this was not going to go well." NORTON said that "there were one or two" of CUMIA's tweets that made him think things would go poorly, confirmed when he saw the first blog about the incident. OPIE suggested that the "right way" to handle the incident would have been to "ride it out and see what happens," but instead he got the word from his agent that ANTHONY had been fired. He described his subsequent phone discussion with ANTHONY as "lethargic."
"I absolutely do not believe that ANTHONY should have been fired," OPIE declared. "They should have rode it out." He added that the firing was attributed to the violence involved with the tweets, and NORTON noted that CUMIA did not react violently at the time he was attacked.

