With Friends Like These

After a lengthy and publicly rancorous battle with his employers, Kevin "Ital-K" Smith was officially informed that his services as traffic director at WLRN-FM (91.3) would no longer be required. This occurred Tuesday, June 21, when Friends of WLRN executive director Rick Lewis and CFO Karen Echols personally lowered the boom on Smith. "I was fired under the vague umbrella of restructuring. They told me that my position was being outsourced to California," Smith says. "I was not surprised, because since the events that went down at the end of October of last year, they've been trying to eliminate me."

Smith, who had scheduled the station's underwriting spots and station breaks since 1998, is referring to his still-pending federal discrimination complaint against Friends management. "This is their way of retaliating against me," he says. Smith asserts he was subjected to openly racist comments by co-workers, and claims his termination is part of "the ethnic cleansing of local voices and programming at WLRN." Many of the radio station's local music programs have been replaced by nationally syndicated talk shows and monotonous broadcasts of BBC world news.

"Our policy for Friends of WLRN is that employee information is kept confidential, and so we have no comment. He was a Friends of WLRN employee, and that is our policy," is all Echols will say about Smith. Lewis apologetically replies, "I can't comment on anything about it. I'm sorry. I couldn't if I wanted to." Radio station manager John Labonia notes, "This was a surprise.... It's a Friends issue, so I can't comment on it." When attempts were made to contact communications manager Jeneissy Azcuy, New Times was informed she no longer works at the station.

Steve Malagodi, who has been an engineer at the station since 1979, is baffled by Smith's predicament: "My concern is that Friends of WLRN made a decision to terminate a person who does a vital function for WLRN radio, whose license is held by the [School Board of Miami-Dade County]. ... This is to me, once again, the same question that keeps coming up -- it's come up before in school board meetings on other issues -- as to who's running the show here."

Ital-K is looking for a new full-time job. "Radio is what I enjoy, so I'm looking to stay in the same field," he says. For now, listeners can still hear Ital-K's mellifluous voice on Sounds of the Caribbean Friday mornings from 1:00 to 5:00 a.m. "When you have pirates and thugs and fools like these that I'm dealing with, I can't let them, or the tribulations they've put me through, get me down. They have never dampened or lowered my spirit. Even though technically speaking I'm out of a job, I know that I can go to bed with a clean conscience. They, on the other hand, cannot."