It probably started around the time that the Red Sox parted ways with Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn and Rick Burelson. Lobel was a local media star back when a local newscast could be carried by its sports anchor. His station, WBZ, was an NBC affiliate, and when NBC started losing its pro sports contracts, everyone in Boston thought that Lobel was going to be toast, because it was implausible that a local newscast could continue to be built around its sports anchor when there was no pro sports lead-in and no cross promotion possibilities. I remember the newscast when the anchor announced that they had lost NFL football, and there were a bunch of awkward jokes that Lobel was now going to have to become an expert in figure skating.
WBZ had Dick Stockton as its sports anchor in the early 1970s and Jimmy Meyers as its weekend anchor. Then, when Stockton left for a network job, Meyers got bypassed and they gave the job to Len Berman. Then, when Berman left for a network job, they bypassed Meyers again and gave the job to Lobel. That weekend, Meyers announced at the end of his Sunday 11:00 PM telecast, that he was leaving the station and strongly hinted that he and others had been bypassed for the weekday anchor job because of race. Half an hour later, I was glued to the set in anticipation of Meyer's final salvo to come on the one minute segment that he always did at midnight, but they fired him before he got to give the parting shot that he had foreshadowed in his 11:00 PM sportscast.
The other black weekend newscaster who left on unhappy terms was Maurice Lewis. One Sunday night, when he was solo-casting, he had a coughing fit, and each time he seemed to have it under control, it would start again. And then, he glared at someone who we couldn't see and said, "No. I DON'T want you to read it" and almost instantly, a "Technical Difficiulties" sign went up on the screen and stayed there for five minutes. I was expecting to see a smashed newsdesk studio and a host all bandaged up like a mummy when the newscast continued. I'm pretty sure Lewis quit or was fired shortly after that, too.
