Here’s a phrase that’s probably never been said before: “Soon we’ll be longing for the golden days of Guy Page.”

And here’s another: “Mary Beerworth is the sane person in this group.”

Allow me to explain. Guy Page of the conservative “news” site Vermont Daily Chronicle has announced the end of his association with WDEV Radio, where he had been holding down the 11:00 a.m. weekday slot with his call-in program “Hot Off the Press.” He is, in fact, taking his talents (such as they are) to WVMT Radio in Colchester, where he will host the 12:00 noon slot Monday through Friday.

That, in itself, wouldn’t induce me to write. What put this story over the top was the list of luminaries who will collectively occupy the timeslot forsaken by Mr. Page. All of them have made previous appearances in this space in notably dubious circumstances.

Oh man, you’d better be sitting down for this.

Your new Monday host will be Renee McGuinness, who managed the neat trick of spectacularly losing a race for state House in the Republican wave election of 2024. She finished a distant fourth in a race for two seats. (Her first guest will be Rev. Ed Wheeler, a very conservative Evangelical who was a major donor to her campaign.) McGuinness is head of something called the Vermont Family Alliance, which conceals its rank bigotry behind the fig leaf of “parents’ rights.” She’s a fixture at sparsely-attended press conferences and rallies and such. Lately she’s been writing hair-on-fire opinion pieces (posted on Page’s Chronicle) against PR.4, the measure that would add an equal protection clause to the state constitution.

McGuinness will alternate Mondays with Mary Beerworth, longtime head of the Vermont Right to Life Committee. Beerworth is the O.G. conservative Christian activist in Vermont. And in the new HOTP lineup, she is definitely the normal one. By comparison.

Tuesdays will feature a pair of co-hosts who seem like an odd couple: Alison Despathy, conspiratorialist obsessed with COVID and Anthony Fauci, and Elizabeth Brown, who spent gobs and gobs of money in 2024 trying to grab one of Waterbury’s two Democratic House seats away from incumbents Theresa Wood and Tom Stevens. She failed miserably in the August primary. At the time, she presented herself as a Phil Scott-style “affordability” Democrat; now she’s sharing a platform with one of Vermont’s nuttier conservatives. Hmmm.

Wednesdays will fature Despathy flying solo, which will be entertaining in an “I watch auto racing for the crashes” kind of way.

Your Thursday host will be Amy Hornblas of Vermont Stands Up and our state’s number-one anti-masker conspratorialist. She is still obsessed with mask mandates that expired years ago. I’m sure she will bring a rational, accessible view to her new platform.

And get this: They don’t HAVE a host for Fridays. According to Page, the Friday slot will be “Chef’s Choice… either a rebroadcast, or something new and unique.”

In other words, They Have No Idea What They’re Doing.

The lineup is bad enough. From my view as a longtime radio guy, what’s even worse is what it says about the direction — or lack thereof — at WDEV, which prospered for decades as a community resource for central Vermont under the ownership of the Squier clan. But after Ken Squier’s death, his family sold the station to Myers Mermel and Scott Milne, unsuccessful Republican candidates for statewide office.

At the time, I thought there was a chance that the new owners, both smart businessmen, might chart a path forward for WDEV. I wasn’t optimistic because the radio business is in severe and likely irreversible decline, but I thought if anyone could do it, it’d be Mermel and Milne.

So far, things are not going well. Any listener will tell you there’s a dearth of local advertising on the air. Lots of public service announcements, which radio stations play for free when they don’t have paid advertising. Last year, Mermel promoted a new partnership with The Nation, which seemed to presage a more progressive direction for station content. But otherwise, everything is trending to the right. WDEV recently lost its national newscast partner when CBS Radio closed down — and Mermel replaced CBS with Townhall/SRN, an extremely conservative, pro-Trump enterprise.

Worse, the station has turned its 9-11 a.m. call-in show from a community fixture to a state-level gabfest hosted by a rotating collection of Vermont political types — most of them conservative, and most with little or no connection to, you know, the local audience. Now, the 11:00 slot will be given over to a random collection of fringey cranks.

If WDEV is to have any chance of surviving, it needs to re-establish a connection to its local communities. It needs prominent local personalities who can attract audiences and advertisers alike. It needs a stable, predictable, welcoming collection of personalities who are known in the community.

It’s probably too late for this to work. The horse long ago escaped the barn, and the barn itself was hit by a succession of flaming asteroids labeled Corporate Radio, The Internet, and Podcasts. But it’s a better hope than whatever the hell Mermel and MIlne are trying to cook up.

If they even have a plan. From the outside, this looks more like the desperate wanderings of a drunk who’s lost his keys and his way home. And pissed his pants. And vomited down his shirt.

I hope I’m wrong. I’m rooting for WDEV, I really am. It’s one of the few remaining outposts of locally-owned radio. But my optimism fades with each new development at the formerly Friendly Pioneer.