Inside the Collapse of the Mark Steyn Show

Source: Daily Beast | March 14, 2017 | Lachlan Markay

When his show was suddenly canceled by CRTV, Mark Steyn said he sued to protect his employees—a claim some of those employees flatly reject.

When conservative commentator Mark Steyn sued the company that canceled his new online TV talk show last month, he said he was doing it for his employees.

His staff didn’t buy it.

“It’s bullshit, frankly,” said Mike Young, formerly the show’s site supervisor. “They all hate him.”

Late last month the Canadian author sued conservative media startup CRTV for breach of contract following the network’s abrupt cancellation of The Mark Steyn Show after just two months on the air. Steyn demanded the court issue a restraining order keeping his show running while it adjudicated his breach-of-contract allegations, saying his “employees will suffer irreparable harm because they will lose their health insurance coverage as a result of [CRTV’s] actions,” in the judge’s summation.

Steyn was there, he said, to protect their interests, claims he reiterated on his website: “I didn’t feel the cameramen and production assistants and musicians and audio engineers should have to suffer because I was stupid enough to get into bed with CRTV.”

His employees tell a different story: They say Steyn ran the show into the ground. He generally wouldn’t even speak to crew members, they claim, and when he did, he verbally abused them. In one case Steyn referred to members of the northern Vermont-based crew, a former employee claimed under oath, as “a bunch of meth-heads.” A Steyn spokesperson denied he made that comment.

Steyn had crew members run personal errands, they say, spent CRTV funds on lavish meals and expensive personal purchases, and boasted of the large settlement he planned to extract from the company.

This account is based on sworn declarations, made under penalty of perjury and provided exclusively to The Daily Beast, from nine former Mark Steyn Show employees, and interviews with four of those former employees, three of whom spoke on the record.

Steyn did not respond to a request for comment on his former crew members’ allegations. His spokesperson Melissa Howes denied most of their claims. “It saddens us to hear these allegations,” she said.

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