BOSTON (AP) — A longtime Boston radio host who abruptly quit at the end of an on-air rant Wednesday after he was told by management to stop joking about singer Demi Lovato’s announcement that they identify as non-binary was back on the air Thursday.
“I’m here. Good morning,” Matty Siegel said as he opened the “Matty in the Morning” show on WXKS-FM.
Explaining his actions from the day before, he said he “snapped” when management at station owner iHeartMedia told him to stop making jokes at Lovato’s expense.
Siegel, 71, insisted his resignation wasn’t a stunt. He decided to come back after talking to his wife, who said it wasn’t worth ending his career over Lovato, and after being told by station management he has “the freedom to say what I want.”
Siegel has been at the Top 40 station, known as Kiss108, for 40 years. His show is frequently the top-rated morning show in the market.
His statements about Lovato drew condemnation from a transgender rights group.
“Public understanding of what it means to be non-binary is growing and listeners expect better from the media and people with a platform,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, wrote in a statement to The Boston Globe.
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