Ross Mitchell has been the announcer voice of Coast to Coast since the Art Bell days – his extremely low voice is extremely distinctive.
In the past few days, his voice showed up on Red Eye Radio and now on Mike Huckabee’s program – but the new news is Ross Mitchell is gone from Premiere’s Coast to Coast.
Why, you might be wondering?
Rosss Mitchell also does a morning show on KKOV-AM in Reno, Nevada – KKOV is owned by [drum roll….] Cumulus.
While some of the work Ross does for Coast to Coast is done from day to day, most of it is things that were recorded years ago. It isn’t obvious yet whether Clear Channel dumped Ross (seems unlikely) or whether Cumulus “yanked his chain”.
Mark Davis is gone from Cumulus WBAP-AM having been unable to reach a new contract. Who else works for Cumulus who might be the target of further tough contract negotiations?
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------+-------------+ | Show | host | streamname | +-------------------------------------+---------------------------------+-------------+ | PLJ Big Show | Scott Shannon & Todd Pettengill | WPLJ FM/HD | | The True Oldies Channel | Scott Shannon | WPLJ FM/HD2 | | Larry Elder | | KABC AM | | McIntyre | Terri-Rae Elmer | KABC AM | | John Phillips | | KABC AM | | Mark & Brian | | KLOS FM/HD | | Don Wade & Roma | | WLS AM | | Roe & Roeper | Roe Conn & Richard Roeper | WLS AM | | KFOG Morning Show | | KFOG FM/HD | | Ronn Owens | | KGO AM | | San Francisco Morning News | | KGO AM | | Murph & Mac | Brian Murphy & Paul McCaffrey | KNBR AM | | Gary Radnich | | KNBR AM | | Brian Sussman | Melanie Morgan | KSFO AM | | Musers | | KTCK AM | | Mark Davis | | WBAP AM | | Chris Krok | | WBAP AM | | Morning Majority | Bryan Nehman | WMAL AM | | Paul W. Smith | NULL | WJR AM | | Frank Beckmann | NULL | WJR AM | | Buddy Cianci | | WPRO AM/HD | | Matt Allen | | WPRO AM/HD | | Dan Yorke | | WPRO AM/HD | | John DePetro | | WPRO AM/HD | | InBusiness | Margaret Brennan | WPRV AM/HD | | Wake up with the Wolf | | WSM FM/HD | | Ralph Bristol | | WWTN FM/HD | | Michael DelGiorno | | WWTN FM/HD | | Pulse, the | Leland Conway | WAPI AM/HD | | Richard Dixon | | WAPI AM/HD | | The Jox Roundtable | | WJOX FM/HD | | Tony Gates | | WJRW AM | | Jim Villanucci | NULL | KKOB AM | | Knoxville News Sentinel Sports Page | Dave Hooker & John Adams | WNML AM | | SportsTalk with John & Jimmy | John Wilkerson & Jimmy Hyams | WNML AM | | Hallerin Hilton Hill | NULL | WOKI FM | | Little Rock First News | Bob Steel | KARN FM/HD | | Morning Buzz | Richard Todd | WTMA AM | | Lou & Heather | Lou Sipolt & Heather Burnside | KWQW FM/HD | | Richard Randall | | KVOR AM/HD | | Thinking Out Loud | | WJCW AM | | Kruser & Krew | | WVLK AM | | Sue Wylie | NULL | WVLK AM | | The Morning Press | | WGOW FM | | FRED the show | Jeff Styles | WGOW FM | | Nate Shelman | | KBOI AM/HD | | Idaho's First Morning News | | KBOI AM/HD | | Dale Jackson | | WVNN AM | | Tony Reno & Friends | | WICC AM | | Dan Mason | | KKOH AM | | Jon Sanches | | KKOH AM | | Reno's Morning News | Ross Mitchell & Monica Jaye | KKOH AM | | Lou Lobsinger | | WWCK AM | | Bloomberg - Live from London | | WLBY AM | | Lucy Ann Lance | | WLBY AM | | Riley & Scot | | WROK AM | | Lynn Wooley | | KTEM AM | | Curtis Wright | | WAAV AM | | Wakeup Call | Ken Walsh | WFTW AM | | Patrick Reusse | | KROC AM | | Rich Peterson | | KROC AM | | Garage Logic | Joe Soucheray | KROC AM | +-------------------------------------+---------------------------------+-------------+
Darn, those guests discussing chupacabras and sasquatch at 3 am just won’t be as ‘fascinating’ without Russ’ booming bass voice.
Maybe the aliens can snatch Noory and the other lame guest hosts that have destroyed the show that Art Bell at least made entertaining.
WFNR is Talk is a Cumulus station. They run news in the morning, allegedly powered by the Washington Times. (Where Byron York use to be)
Then at 9am Its dave Ramsey, Then Rush. At 3pm its sometimes Hannity and sometimes Dave Ramsey again. Dave Ramsey is on most of the weekend.
Is Dave Ramsey in any agreement with cumulus ?
The guy that runs WFNR is a big LIB and hates Limbaugh and Hannity. They use to have Bill Bennett & Beck in the morning but got rid of them years ago. I am sure he would get rid of Hannity and Limbaugh if they could take the ratings hit.
Parrott
Dave Ramsey’s only connection with Cumulus is he works cheap. Ramsey got in a fight with Clear Channel maybe five years ago. Someone at Clear Channel decided that his shows were sounding too much like infomercials selling stuff rather than an advice show, and said that if he wanted to stay on Clear Channel he would have to pay for the time.
Ramsey said he would be damned if he would pay for radio time and then Found Jesus and moved to a number of “for profit” religious stations and eventually built back a network of more traditional talk radio stations (along with being on TV). So Cumulus doesn’t have to pay him for the show, and his shows are “everygreen”, meaning you can play them when they aren’t live as much as you want.
Here is who carries him (warning: not terribly accurate or complete)
+——–+————————+
| scount | parentname |
+——–+————————+
| 82 | NULL |
| 36 | Cumulus |
| 30 | Clear Channel |
| 6 | Townsquare Media |
| 4 | NRG |
I’m a little fuzzy on his business model, but he has these authorized agents who he refers people to that call his 800 number – it may be that the local people are arranging and/or paying for the show to be on the air. The Adam Bold Mutual Fund show works in a similar way, I think
The beginning of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” was used as a bumper on the Beck radio show a while back and Glenn’s buddy Pat launched into a very funny off-the-cuff sendup of Ross Mitchell giving out the phone numbers to talk to Art Bell (“From west of the Rockies, call…”). I associate Ross’ voice with that song as well. I know there were a number of regular Bell bumper songs, but that one sticks out the most, maybe because it seemed such a weird fit with Bell’s subject matter.
Like G Gordon Liddy, Art Bell is a HUGE ABBA fan, thus the tradition of ABBA bumper music on Coast to Coast.
Aha, that explains it!
This afternoon, Clear Channel issued an official press release, saying the Ross had left to pursue other interests. Two different announcers are replacing him, one of them being more diverse.
Hopefully we will still hear those powerful pipes on “Art Bell’s Time-Release Space Capsules” or whatever his rerun show is called.
Nope. The press release specifically said one of the new announcers will be doing the intro on Art Bell’s Somewhere in time show
I heard one of the new announcers last night (I don’t know his name). Big shoes to fill, but he sounded incredibly generic to me. I hardly ever listen to Coast to Coast anymore, now I have one less reason to even try. Hopefully I will be getting a day shift job again very soon, so I won’t have the dilemma of what to listen to at 3 a.m. when I am trying to nod off. 🙂
This could be case of hearing what you want to hear – but it sounds to me like Ross is in pain doing those Cumulus liners – like a bear whose leg is caught in a bear trap.
Hey Art: well WFNR changed the cumulus line up again. They have have news to 9am, then Ramsey for three hours to noon. Then Limbaugh , and Hannity at 3pm. At 6pm Dennis Miller is dumped and Mike Huckabee came on.
It was definitely more of the Kinder/softer side of talk. Kinda reminded me of John Tesh playing music and dropping tidbits of useless information like” women prefer Dove chocolate to Hershey chocolate”. Huckabee was in a interview with S.E. Cupp and it was “I love you” and “I love you too. ”
That ain’t going no where.
Unfortunately I know what John Tesh radio sounds like trapped in a car with several people getting in-touch with their inner ‘ Fem’ traveling back from Richmond VA.
“This is Casey Kasem and back to the countdown”
Parrott
You may have noticed I soured on Huckabee very quickly. He twice made the assertion that bloggers and people on the internet need to be “controlled” – they don’t have editors making sure they don’t just make things up. This desire to “stop bloggers” died about 5 years ago, and now blogs are even obsolete, being pushed aside by facebook and twitter.
The person who IDed that Huckabee’s first caller was his boss was not “making things up”. It was damn embarrassing to Cumulus and rightly so.
There was another news item this morning involving Three Eagles, a smallish radio owner out in the midwest. As often happens, they parted ways with a morning host and got the typical pushback from people who thought they made a mistake. In this case, Three Eagles sent “Nasty Lawyer Letters” (Cease and Desist notices) to three of their listeners who were organizing a campaign to bring the guy back.
When the newspaper become aware of this, they were told it was “none of your business”
http://journalstar.com/entertainment/small-screen/television-and-radio/local-radio-company-threatens-listeners-with-lawsuits/article_756aee61-2114-53cf-b6c7-84588cd51a4f.html
So what part of Free Speech doesn’t Three Eagles understand? (in addition to being really stupid to piss off your most loyal listeners)
Three Eagles is owned by GGHG Enterprises Inc of Charlotte, NC – consisting of three owners – Harrison Campbell Grams, Gretchen Meridithe Grams, and David Grams. The address on the FCC ownership reports comes back as Pamlico Capital Management, which was the private equity firm known as Wachovia Capital Partners, which was spun off after Wells Fargo took over Wachovia