In about a month, Cumulus Radio of Atlanta should own Citadel Radio, which owns the former ABC Radio stations – WABC, KABC, WLS, KGO, KSFO, WMAL, WJR, WBAP, WPRO, WPRV – the core of the AM news/talk “right wing” radio.
Today comes the news that Cumulus has hired a new VP of programming. CIatdel’s current VP of programming is Scott Shannon, the announcer on Sean Hannity’s show and voice track guy on the True Oldies Channel, and co-host of the morning show on WPLJ. (Hannity was originally syndicated by ABC, not Clear Channel)
http://www.radio-info.com/news/cumulus-media-hires-consultant-mike-mcvay-as-senior-vpprogramming
So who is the new VP and what does it suggest about the figure of the ABC radio stations/
http://www.mcvaymedia.com/about/consultants/m_mcvay.html
Mike McVay is a media consultant – the things he has been around that you may be familiar with are Delilah, Lou Dobbs, Rick Dees, Charlie Tuna, Al Sharpton, Donny Osmond, John Tesh..
Basically, he’s a Hollywood entertainment guy whose idea of Good Music is “Lite” – soft music targeted at women that doesn’t offend anyone.
Interestingly to me, he is within 1 year of my age, and also grew up in Pittsburgh, PA. He went to work at a radio station at 15, the age at which my family left Pittsburgh. He’s a guy who has paid his “radio dues” working at (and being fired by) a lot of stations before going into consulting.
If you can’t do a job, teach others how to do the job.
If you can’t teach others how to do a job, get a job doing it for the government.
If you can’t get a job with the government, become a consultant to the government.
I guess cumulus will run WJCW, Johnson city TN into the ground too?
All 3 hours a day of local programming? Just an off the top of my head guess – they could run the Washington Times ARN news from 6-9 to cut costs.
The bigger question I see is what is Cumulus going to do with Cumulus Media (mainly Mark Levin) and will they try to drop Clear Channel shows (Rush, Hannity). They carry Dennis Miller and Jim Bohannon, which just found out today they have a new boss….