ABC Slashes Matt Drudge's Talk Show

November 14 -- Controversial Internet gossipmonger Matt Drudge has lost his job as the host of a Sunday night talk show on ABC Radio.

Drudge, who runs the ever-popular gossip site The Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com), will not see his contract renewed when it expires in December. An ABC rep says that Drudge's show has been axed due to poor performance, not because of its host's negative comments about ABC or its parent company, the Walt Disney Co.

(Mr. Showbiz is a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Co.)

"We decided not to renew the contract because evening talk shows are simply not good business," ABC spokeswoman Julie Hoover told The Hollywood Reporter.

Drudge, who has been hosting the two-hour show since July 1999, told The Associated Press that he thinks he was given the boot for openly criticizing ABC and Disney's corporate activities. "I guess I was a bad Mouseketeer and peeked under Snow White's dress," Drudge joked to the New York Post.

Drudge, who once called Disney CEO and Chairman Michael Eisner "the latest incarnation of [big media] vampires," told the Post he hoped he could return the favor by "not renewing Michael Eisner and [Disney President and COO] Bob Iger's contracts."

Hoover maintained that ABC concluded that Sunday nights were not a popular (or profitable) time for a political show like Drudge's, which aired on 135 stations nationwide. "There are no bad feelings between ABC Radio and Matt Drudge," Hoover told the AP.

Other potential employers are already lining up to talk to Drudge, including Premiere Radio Networks, which hosts conservative programs from Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlessinger.