Radio is color blind — and so is former WABC talk show host Ron Kuby, who says he’s happy to be replaced by a black woman.
Whip-smart Fox News Channel host Eboni K. Williams suddenly replaced Kuby last week as Curtis Sliwa’s partner on the station’s three-hour noon time show.
“I appreciate the Zen of it,” Kuby told the Daily News. “I’m sad that I lost my job but I’ve been saying for years that this station needs to hire a more diverse on-air staff — the last time I got fired they gave my job to a contemptible bigot (Don Imus).
“This time they gave my job to an African American woman, so it’s much better than last time — Eboni is smart, talented and fun.”
Kuby, a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, served as the lone left-wing voice on WABC, New York’s popular conservative talk radio station that also carries shows featuring right-wingers like Mark Levin and Michael Savage.
He worked with Sliwa twice — initially from 1999 to 2007 and then from 2014 until last week.
Kuby says he doesn’t know exactly why he was fired, but was called into an office with Craig Schwalb, the station’s programming director — and a human resources executive with a stack of papers.
“I said, ‘so I’m fired?’ and they said, ‘we prefer the term laid off.’ “
Schwalb declined to return emails and repeated phone calls last week.
Online, there have been rumors that Kuby was long ago given a list of things not to talk about on the air and at some point in the recent past he broke that rule.
Kuby says that’s not true.
“In all the years that I’ve been back, management never once told me what I could or could not say on the air,” he says. “They never told me any topics that I should stay away from. Management left me alone — until they fired me.”
He said the only instructions his bosses ever gave was to keep his shoes on in the studio, remember to identify the station before breaking for a commercial and “set the table you come back from a break — all totally reasonable requests.”
Kuby plans to focus full time on his law practice now and doesn’t rule out a return to broadcasting down the road.
“Not many people get second acts in radio,” he says. “I appreciated every minute of it.”