Untitled Document
There’s change in the air, and we don’t
just mean spring. The airwaves of the capital city are experiencing some
turbulence, with an unusual number of on-air personalities coming and going
and generally playing musical microphones. Behind the scenes, the biggest
change will come in July, when four local stations now owned by Clear
Channel will be reclaimed by former owner Geoff Neuhoff. At Mid-West Family Broadcasting, the juiciest jobs in
radio — morning drive time — are changing hands at three of the
group’s four stations.
At lite-rock WNNS (98.7 FM), a pair of cute young
Gen-Y types are due to arrive May 14 to take over the mics that for years
belonged to Brian Pierce and Kellie Michaels, whose unexpected exodus in
February is still a touchy topic. “I legally cannot talk about the circumstances
of their departure,” says Kevan Kavanaugh, Mid-West Family’s
president and general manager. He’s more eager to talk about the new morning
team, Amy Nelson and Bryan Major, who currently host the same time slot at
WQQB (96.1 FM) in Champaign-Urbana. “We’re very, very excited about them.
They’ll bring a very contemporary, energetic approach to mornings on
WNNS, which is exactly what we’re looking for,” Kavanaugh says.
Nelson says that she and Major are looking forward to
living in a bigger city. “I think it’ll be a ton o’
fun,” she says. She has worked in the Kansas City area; Major has
worked in Grand Rapids, Mich., and they’ve worked together in
Jackson, Miss., and the Lansing, Mich., area. Nelson describes their shtick
as “talk about celebrities, TV, fashion — pretty much what you
would talk about with your friends.” She won’t reveal their
ages, except that they’re “definitely younger” than
Pierce and Michaels. At Mid-West’s hard-rock station, WQLZ (92.7
FM), Kavanaugh bought a syndicated morning show called Free Beer and Hot Wings, which
debuted here April 16. Hosted by four dignity-challenged males — Eric
Zane, Producer Joe, Hot Wings, and Free Beer — the show airs in a
dozen other markets, ranging from little Lima, Ohio, to Nashville. Kavanaugh, who arrived in Springfield from Wisconsin
in September, says that some of these changes were inspired by a
“perceptual study” performed by Coleman, a consulting group
specializing in music, trends, and branding, according to the company Web
site. Coleman’s survey of 600 local radio listeners revealed that the
97.7 FM station then called The River — featuring adult-contemporary
pop — was drawing only about 9,000 listeners, whereas
Mid-West’s other stations drew audiences up to 26,000. The same
survey found a dearth of adult-alternative and adult-contemporary
programming. Kavanaugh decided to replace The River with an
adult-alternative/adult-contemporary format known as Alice.
“We also wanted to add a high-profile morning
show, but not right away. We wanted to establish the music first,”
Kavanaugh says. The Coleman study had revealed the need for the kind
of “dominant morning show” that would fuel water-cooler
conversations on a daily basis — on the FM side of the dial.
Kavanaugh says he looked at a variety of syndicated shows and some
personalities who had come and gone before realizing that he had the right
players on his roster — Johnny Molson and Andy Lee, who are also 3-6
p.m. talk hosts on Mid-West’s WMAY (970 AM). They made their debut as
morning-show hosts on Alice this week. Molson says the pair hasn’t undergone any
personality transplant for the morning gig; it will be just like the
afternoon show. “One thing you notice on morning radio is a tendency
for the hosts to talk over this thumpy music bed, like, ‘We’re
not really having fun, but we can make like it sound like we’re
having fun.’ They have zany characters and kooky sound effects.
We’re not going to do any of that,” Molson says. “That
stuff has all been done, well-done, overdone, and doesn’t need to be
done.”
The changes at Springfield’s four Clear Channel
stations — sports-radio WFMB (1405 AM), country WFMB (104.5 FM),
classic-rock WCVS (96.7 FM), and Top 40 WXAJ (99.7 FM) — may not be perceptible to the average
listener. Neuhoff, contacted at his Jupiter, Fla.-based Neuhoff
Communications office, plans to keep longtime general manager Kevin
O’Dea in place. Neuhoff sold his Springfield stations in 1997, when
the Federal Communications Commission relaxed regulations on the number of
outlets any franchise could own. “The broadcasting industry had been kind of a
mom-and-pop business,” says Neuhoff, whose company is purely
family-owned. “When the rules changed, I knew broadcasting was about
to become much more corporate. I feared for our ability to compete. If [a
corporate entity] didn’t buy me, they’d buy my competitor and
put me out of business.”
He sold to a company that became Clear Channel, which
is sometimes referred to in the radio industry as the “evil
empire” because of the company’s enormous holdings. Neuhoff calls his company “a gnat” in
comparison to the “this gigantic behemoth” that is Clear
Channel. But when Clear Channel announced in August its intention to sell
most stations not in the top 100 markets, Neuhoff says, he immediately
called O’Dea: “I said, ‘I want to buy Springfield
back.’ He said, ‘I was hoping you might do this.’
”
Neuhoff soon found himself in a bidding war.
“The negotiation got extended for a ridiculously
long time,” he says. “Lots of other people wanted Springfield.
I was probably the smallest company bidding on it.” The license
transfer has to be approved by the FCC; Neuhoff anticipates that he will
resume official ownership sometime in July. The fact that so little has changed at his stations
signals, to Neuhoff, that his investment will pay off. “I don’t
think we overpaid. We’re lucky in that we haven’t had format
changes. It’s just a solid thing,” he says. “That’s
another thing you think of when you’re buying stations —
I’ve always looked for a good opportunity. This one is too good to
pass up, and it’s not that often you can say that in this
business.”
At Mid-West Family, there have been a few changes not
predicted by the Coleman survey. Jack Davis, who had been afternoon co-host
on WMAY with Dave Kelm, resigned a few weeks ago during a dispute about the
journalistic integrity of morning-show host Pamela Furr. Davis —
picking up on an observation raised in a State
Journal-Register column — questioned
Furr’s ability to objectively cover the Springfield City Council as a
reporter while simultaneously voicing her opinions on her talk show.
Kavanaugh and news director Jim Leach summoned Davis to a meeting to
discuss the situation, but Davis told the SJ-R that he chose to “go fishing” instead.
“There was never any intention of firing Jack
whatsoever,” Leach says. “Jack just decided he’d rather
not have that conversation, which is his prerogative. I’ve got a lot
of respect for his long career and what he did during his time at the radio
station.”
Leach, who has been filling the 9 a.m.-noon slot on
WNNS in addition to his morning drive-time duties on WMAY, will soon
relinquish that duty to Nelson and Major. There’s one other change taking place at
Mid-West Family, and Kavanaugh is so stressed about it that he took a stack
of papers home with him Tuesday, when he was sick with the flu. “This is the most enormous stack of
applications I’ve ever waded through in my life,” he says.
“We’re hiring a new receptionist. I can’t believe how
many people think they want to answer my phone.”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at
drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2007.
