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Tuesday, May 9, 2006
5/9: WGST update
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stumbling news/talk station WGST-AM appears to be dismantling veteran afternoon show host Kim “The Kimmer” Peterson’s support team one piece at a time.
Last December, Jim Gossett, the comic who did celebrity impersonations on Peterson’s “newsmaker” line, quit after his girlfriend and newscaster Kari Dean was fired. Then GST got rid of long-time sports guy Pete Davis in February. Last Friday, Peterson’s sidekick Wayne Kitchens was booted after nine years.
Kitchens, who produced the show, said management was upset when he didn’t bleep out an anti-Muslim statement Peterson said on the air last week. Nonetheless, Kitchens suspected he had been on the chopping block for awhile: “I knew I was next. And I think they’re trying to make the Kimmer quit.” He has nothing but good things to say about Peterson, noting he’s an “equal opportunity offender” on air and remains “a fantastic friend. He made me.”
Program director Randall Bloomquist, who arrived last fall, said he couldn’t comment on Kitchen’s firing since it was a personnel matter. But he called the departures “side dishes. The steak and potatoes is the Kimmer.”
Peterson, a GST fixture for more than a decade, has seen his ratings drop sharply in recent months. “I have no comment,” he said Tuesday.
As for the awful ratings over the winter, Bloomquist said there tends to be a delay in results and that this is a vestige from all the changes over the summer and fall. Denny Schaffer, who came aboard last fall, “is still very new. I think if you went back to any successful personaltiy, they didn’t have great books early on. There are no overnight successes, particularly in talk radio.”
On the Tom Hughes show, which had some of its worst ratings in history over the winter (when GST has to power up relatively late anyway), all he could say was “we’re working on that,” without providing specifics.
Bloomquist also has no replacement yet for departing evening syndicated host Phil Hendrie, who’s quitting to pursue acting. (You can see him in the short-lived NBC sitcom “Teachers.”)
As for hiring 99X’s Jimmy Baron, he said “I’ve had a couple of conversations with Jimmy. Seems like an interesting guy. We may talk some more.”
As for the simulcast with 96rock of the Braves games, he acknowledges that “they have a bigger benefit with a magnificent signal.”
Bloomquist was once a radio reporter but has since programmed news/talk stations in DC and Charlotte, too.
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5/9: 99X/Q100 cont’d
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s an inside baseball commentary about the 99X/Q100 cuts but the basic gist is that Cumulus is cutting not just fat but bone and muscle and though the cuts were made mostly behind the scenes, this will degrade on-air product. Just offering it up for folks who like to know that different companies take vastly different approaches in how to make the sausage.
