If the name sounds familiar, you may remember Bill Plante as the CBS TV news correspondent at the White House and long time CBS news contributor. Chris is his son. He was been doing radio for a while, mostly on WMAL in Washington, DC., the former ABC Radio station.
Well, Cumulus Media is launching Chris Plante into syndication (at least on some of its own stations). He’s heard live from 9am-noon (ET) on his home station, but I just found him on KROC-AM in Rochester, MN.
It’s a new year and time for new faces. Unlike Geraldo, Chris Plante did local radio before going national. Back in 2009, WMAL fired Plante to make room for Joe Scarborough, one of the most bone headed decisions in talk radio history. [I wonder how the “Retooling” of Scarborough’s radio show on hiatus is coming…]
There is no Wikipedia page on Chris Plante yet, so I’m not sure of his age – but his father is 74, so he’s probably in his 40s. There is a pretty good chance he actually knows something about the subject of politics as well. He worked for CNN for 17 years, spending about 10 years of that covering the Pentagon.
This is the type of person that I’ve been hoping would pop up in talk radio – we need hosts getting on talk radio now to be prepared for the “After Limbaugh” era, whenever that starts.
The motifvation for Cumulus is probably mostly to save money, but if the product is good, I can live with that 🙂
I remember when Chris was a CNN correspondent and I could discern absolutely nothing about his personal political preferences. Remember when that used to be the norm for network reporters?