The reason you haven’t heard Dave Smith doing either morning (co-hosting with Roger Lodge) or afternoon weekday sports talk shows on the Angels’ KLAA-AM 830 is pretty simple: They’ve let him go. For a couple of weeks now.
Smith’s extended contract ran out on June 30, when Angels team president/program director Dennis Kuhl told him that he wasn’t going to be renewed. He had been at the station since March 31, 2008, and had a three-month extension through the end of June.
“The only explanation I got was that they didn’t have any money,” said Smith, the Chatsworth resident and a former two-time No. 1 pick in the Daily News annual best/worst of L.A. Sports Talk Show hosts.
“I was shocked. The whole year they’d told me I was doing a great job and they’d take care of me. I’d been doing a double shift for nine months.”
And that, apparently, meant nothing much. Co-hosting from 6-to-10 a.m. — especially effective during the Nick Adenhart coverage — and then from 3 to 7 p.m. was a ridiculous thing to ask anyone to do, but Smith was willing to help the station get its feet planted.
Smith, an L.A.-based sports-talk show host for 15 years, now finds out what many former hosts already know: It’s a tough job market to find any kind of work.
“I just hope I don’t have to move out of town,” said Smith. “I’m hanging in. There was no severance pay. I’ve got another month or so but them I might be in trouble.”
Smith still has his website (http://thesportsgod.com/) that’s in need up an update on his situation.
