Access Atlanta > Entertainment > Radio Talk > Archives > 2007 > December > 04
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
12/4: Sean Demery leaves 99X
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In an unusually volatile year for Atlanta radio morning shows, 99X’s New Morning X has lost Sean Demery, who decided to move to Utah to be with his wife.
99Xwatch.org provided the audio of Demery’s announcement Tuesday morning.
Demery had been working in Atlanta and flying to the West Coast every other weekend the past 14 months and it was wearing on him. He’s literally on the road to Utah as I write this.
“I’m leaving the show and that bums me out because Atlanta is one of my favorite towns on the planet,” Demery said on the air. “Some things have gotten in the way. I have to work on my marriage as well and my wife can’t come out here as soon as she’d like to.”:
“The separation. I’m surprised you did it as long as you have,” Leslie Fram said.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this long. As a matter of fact, it was supposed to be five months ago that she was supposed to be out here. It just didn’t work out.”
“We made fun of your quirkiness and your Cliff Claven-esque ways,” said Rob Jenners. “I will miss playing the Cheers theme every three and a half minutes.”
‘I’m going to miss your taste for music and passion for music,” Fram said.
The Morning X has tried to resurrect the 1990s heyday, but the 2.0 version has not quite gelled with listeners. Is it an edgy morning show chasing a young male Regular Guys crowd? Is it going after a more sophisticated older adult crowd who loves good music? Or has it simply been trying to please too many people at once, failing to establish a true point of view?
In the fall of 2006, the show opened with promising numbers but its ratings slipped sharply in successive months, falling from 7th in the fall to 11th in the winter to 16th in the spring among 18 to 34 year olds. The morning show rebounded slightly in the summer to 14th place. (To be fair, it often takes a new morning show at least two years in this town to hit stride. The Bert Show didn’t start making decent ratings numbers until its third year.)
Demery was a successful afternoon jock and music director at 99X in the 1990s. He then became program director at a San Francisco alternative rock station. Last year, Leslie Fram convinced him to come back and try mornings again. (He briefly did mornings in the early days of 99X but given his penchant for going to late concerts, it didn’t work with his schedule.). Demery is an incredibly nice guy but this didn’t translate into a compelling morning personality although you could tell he loved the music. He wasn’t so much into the pop culture stuff or the goofy stunts. In recent months, he sounded increasingly disengaged, giving Jenners more and more responsibility and airtime.
John Dickey, the head of Cumulus programming, agreed that “Sean had a lot on his mind. He loves the station and loves Atlanta. He left a great job in San Francisco to come here. The magnetic pull of his family was too great. I respect that. It happens.”
Dickey said the station will seek a new person to replace Demery, hopefully by the spring. The other players, including Mark Owens, Tim Andrews, Fram and Jenners, will remain in place. “We will look for someone else to come in and provide that same perspective and contribution Sean did,” he said. He described Sean as quirky but a man of “civility,” too.
So far this year, besides 99X, we have or will see morning show changes at Dave FM, Star 94, the Bull, Project 9-6-1, Praise 97.5 and WGST-AM, to name a few.
