GM Doerr: 'No Hard Feelings' Over WLNE Ouster
New owner Citadel Communications is ousting WLNE Providence general manager Steve Doerr. Doerr will leave at the end of April after 3 1/2 years atop WLNE.
"It's not surprising that Phil Lombardo and Citadel would want to take the station in a different direction," said Doerr this afternoon. "It comes with the territory. There are no hard feelings."
His departure was previously reported by TVSpy.
Last month, New York-based Citadel acquired WLNE out of receivership for around $5.8 million. Citadel owner Phil Lombardo and his execs were in Providence in late March to assess the station and meet with Doerr.
"We're going to crawl all over the place," he told B&C at the time. "We'll tell them our philosophy and compare it to what their philosophy is, and hopefully get a gameplan together that works for everybody."
The gameplan includes strengthening WLNE's news product, rigging the station for local HD, and obtaining better syndicated programming.
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Michael Malone is content director at B+C and Multichannel News. He joined B+C in 2005 and has covered network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television, including writing the "Local News Close-Up" market profiles. He also hosted the podcasts "Busted Pilot" and "Series Business." His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The L.A. Times, The Boston Globe and New York magazine.