A popular Boston radio host who held the attention of listeners in New England for more than 40 years threatened to quit his job on-air on Wednesday after being told by his boss that he couldn’t joke about Demi Lovato’s sudden pronoun change.
“I am the biggest of all time. And they said ‘Shut up, Matt. Stop talking.’ Well, I hope you’re happy because I just stopped talking. Matty out,” Matty Siegel, co-host of the “Matty in the Morning” show on WXKS-FM radio, said live.
During his segment on Wednesday morning, Siegel explained that he was simply going against the “woke thing” but quickly felt punished for his views on Lovato’s decision to become “nonbinary” and use the pronouns “they/them.”
“It’s a joke, the whole binary thing,” he said. “I don’t care what Demi Lovato does. But now we have to worry about ‘you might offend someone.’”
This isn’t the first time Siegel said he was chastised for offending people on air. Just last year, Siegel said his boss warned him against making “nasty” comments about Donald Trump on-air. These restrictions on his speech and content, Siegel said, take away from the point of his job.
“We were having fun with it, and my boss called up and said that I’d crossed the line and they didn’t want me talking about it anymore,” Siegel told Boston.com. “I responded by saying, ‘If I can’t talk about what I’m thinking at this point in my career, I don’t want to be on the radio anymore.’”
While Siegel said he likes his boss “personally” and is “very fond” of him, he clearly disagreed with his superior’s position on the issue and questioned numerous times on the air why someone would limit the abilities of a host with decades of experience and a top-rated show.
“This is why I got rich. OK. Because I told it like it is to my listeners for 40 bleeping years,” Siegel explained. “They pulled the plug on me and said you can’t talk about what you’re talking about.”
Despite his threat of quitting on Wednesday, Siegel hosted a broadcast on Thursday morning explaining that he had reached an agreement with the station that gave him the freedom to say what he wants and that his wife refused to let his career end over Demi Lovato.
“Somebody had to say this is ridiculous, ya know. And the company was like, ‘What, you can’t talk about that.’ … It’s like somebody had to say, ‘Are you kidding?’ Like life’s not complicated enough, now you’re telling young people they don’t know what they are,” the host said on-air on Thursday morning.
