99X guts its on-air staff as Cumulus Media makes massive cuts nationwide
Atlanta-based Cumulus Media axed on-air staff at 99X on Friday in a brutal move that reflects major financial challenges faced by the radio company.
The news first came out courtesy of a social media post from Steve Barnes, a key “Morning X” host during the station’s heyday in the 1990s as a Gen X magnet for fans of alternative music by the likes of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers and No Doubt.
Barnes, who came back to lead the morning show again for the station’s resurrection in late 2022, wrote a social media post Friday night calling it “The End.”
“Thanks to all the listeners that made history bringing back a historic brand for an unprecedented second run,” Barnes wrote. “It’s never been done before like this.”
Brian Philips, chief content officer for Cumulus who helped launch 99X in 1992, hired back several key on-air talent from the station from the 1990s including Barnes, Leslie Fram, Steve Craig, Will Pendarvis, Matt Jones, Christopher “Crash” Clark and Jill Nelson.
Ramp, a radio industry news site, confirmed that Barnes, his morning co-host Clark and producer Leslie “LT” Tillery were all cut Friday. Evening host Nelson posted online Friday: “Bye, y’all. Thanks for all your support for the reboot. We love you.” Earlier in the year, the station let Fram go.
Barnes, Clark and Tillery did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Nelson declined to comment.
It’s unclear the status of midday host and program director Craig, weekend host Jones and afternoon host Pendarvis. Craig and Jones did not answer texts from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Pendarvis said on Saturday he had not heard anything from management about his status.
On Friday, Philips declined to comment about the 99X cutbacks or the future of the station.
These cuts comes on the heels of sister station Q99.7’s Kristin Klingshirn losing her afternoon job as part of job losses across the board at Cumulus, which owns nearly 400 stations nationwide, the second largest radio group in the country behind iHeartMedia.
Ramp also reported that Q99.7 night host Laura Dickerson lost her job along with promotions director Jake Bennett, who oversaw the entire Atlanta radio cluster which includes New Country 101.5 and classic hip-hop station OG 98.9.
“It’s a brutal business and everyone knew that when they came back,” Barnes wrote in his Instagram post.
Jimmy Baron, part of the morning show with Barnes in the 1990s, is now a real estate agent and came back on the morning show every so often to catch up with his friends. He noted that 99X did draw decent ratings among older men, based on Nielsen ratings, until Cumulus stopped paying for the service in January.
“This was not a 99X ratings problem but a systemic problem,” he said. “The music sounded great. The marketing sounded great. But the business model isn’t tenable anymore. Back in the 1990s, advertisers recognized radio was one of the best ways to get their messages out. That’s simply not the case anymore.”
Baron called 99X’s success in its prime “lightning in the bottle” and stays in touch with not just on-air staff but also others who worked at the station. “I just played golf with three former 99X sales guys,” he said. “We talked and reminisced. We were part of something unique back then. 99X affected culture in a way it can’t now.”
Scott Mahaffy, who created a 99X fan site on Facebook which now has more than 5,000 members, said he was grateful for the three and a half years the station has been around again for Gen Xers to relive their youth.
“How many people get to resurrect their favorite station with the original people like that?” Mahaffy said. “Unfortunately, Cumulus has had to make Swiss cheese of its portfolio to survive.”
Cumulus filed for bankruptcy protection in March. A judge cleared a reorganization plan a few weeks later that helped wipe out some of the company’s debt.
Barnes runs his own high-end production studio and didn’t need the money to be on 99X. He said he did it for the love of radio.
“Without digging into all the crap, just know that everyone here loved to entertain you and were diehard music fans just like you,” he wrote. “Cumulus did what they could but it’s a complicated puzzle. It’s no one’s fault and hopefully will be a great memory for you when 99X came back and killed it on a signal 1/7th the size of the original signal.”
(99X is actually on 100.5 on the FM dial, not the stronger 99.7 position it used to have. Plenty of people now listen to the station online.)
Axel Lowe was a host at 99X for its entire original run and worked briefly for the resurrected version before moving to mornings at rival rock station 97.1/The River.
“To my brothers and sisters at 99X, today is a tough day and I feel your shock and pain,” he wrote in a public social media post Friday night. “I hate to see so many talented people lose the job they love doing and do it so well. I hate that the listeners, the biggest part of the fam, lose something in this too.”