Posted by The Gamble Gamble Rolls On on March 31, 2010 at 13:20:08:
Bill Gamble, the Program Director for WUSN-FM/US99.5 and WCFS-FM/Fresh 105.9 has been relieved of his duties and fired from CBS Radio as of this morning. Multiple sources with CBS Radio Chicago and Gamble himself have now confirmed the surprise exit.
Gamble, who has programmed Chicago radio stations to varying degrees of success for most of his 31 year career, was brought back to Chicago just over 8 months ago to program two of CBS Radio's Chicago stations. The two stations had been without a program director for almost a year before that. US99.5 was already a well-oiled machine, bringing in top ratings and not needing much by way of a change in programming. That station also has a strong Assistant Program Director & Music Director in Marci Braun. Gamble's main focus was on trying to get the failing Fresh 105.9 station noticed.
Unfortunately for CBS, under Gamble's short 8 month leadership, WCFS went from bad to worse. One of the first things Bill Gamble did was to fire the talented morning host, Mike LeBaron, who was gaining in popularity and helping the station grow. After the morning show sat with no regular host for over two months, Gamble finally hired an old friend and co-worker of his, Steve Fisher, bringing him out of retirement. The hiring of Fisher was still a good move, as was the hiring of former B96 personality Roxanne Steele for afternoons and the hiring of another former co-worker, Brooke Hunter for evenings & weekends. Those three hirings were the extent of his highlights, though. The new airstaff, along with original Fresh personality Rick Hall, were still stuck with the same problem the airstaff before them faced: a lack of airtime and the fact they were not allowed to fully use their personalities on the air. It may even have been worse for the new team, as they had even less microphone time than the team before them. They were given a few short sentences to read approximately 3 times per hour and that was it. There was little chance to connect with the audience. The music was the focus.
Under Bill Gamble, not only was the music the focus, it was also yet another problem. The playlist was ever-evolving. It never seemed to find a groove and stick with it. Some weeks, it focused more on current hits, to compete more with WTMX; some weeks it focused more on songs from the last 15 years, to compete against WILV & WLIT; some weeks it focused just on top hits from the last two years competing against ???. There were even some nights and weekends where the station played only hip-hop. The music on WCFS was becoming farther and farther removed from the music played on the New York sister-station, WWFS-FM/Fresh 102.7. With CBS Radio looking to franchise out the "Fresh" format to smaller markets, having two different "Fresh" stations became a problem for them.
Advertising campaigns slammed competitors, but still left no real reason to listen to the station. While ratings in the Female 25-54 demo were respectable, as was the station's monthly cume reports, it still lagged far behind in every other ratings category. Worse of all, it has been reportedly lagging badly in billings. A situation that worsened while Gamble was guiding the station.
Perhaps the last nail in the proverbial coffin came earlier this month when he chose to part ways with the station's brightest star, Roxanne Steele. The station's best ratings came in the afternoon drive, as this popular personality did all she could with the extremely limited amount of time she was allowed to talk. Steele also used new media to promote her show and an old radio standard: live appearences. When she asked to do even more, she was shown the door. (Steele currently is now only doing weekends for the station.) Ironically, this is almost the identical story of former morning host, Mike LeBaron. Gamble could have replaced Steele with Brooke Hunter, another name very familiar with Chicago audiences, but instead chose to immediately replace Steele with Jen Toohey, a voice tracker from Ohio, with no connection at all to Chicago audiences. While it is too soon to know if this will kill the afternoon ratings momentum that Steele had rolling, it is widely expected that will indeed be the case. Some insiders have also quietly reported that WCFS Account Representatives were extremely upset by the change. It is one thing to sell a big name personality willing to do live appearences. It is quite another to try and sell an advertiser on some unknown voice tracker that few will listen to.
Rod Zimmerman, CBS Radio Chicago's Senior Vice President and Market Manager for CBS Radio's seven-station Chicago cluster will not comment on an exact reason for the dismissal of Bill Gamble. It may have a lot to do with the reasons above. It may also have to do with some possible opportunities that could be coming that station's way in a few months and perhaps CBS felt Gamble was not the right person to handle those opportunities.
WCFS has quite often come up as a possible frequency rumored to simulcast either WSCR-AM or WBBM-AM, both CBS-owned stations that are doing well on the AM band and looking to expand their reach to a younger & wider demographics that the FM band offers. However, today's firing of Bill Gamble does not mean that either of those rumored simulcasts will be happening anytime soon. While those may be options for CBS Radio, their top option is to try and correct Fresh 105.9's mistakes and hopefully find somebody who can help the station achieve its potential.
More than likely, a pair of successors will be named to take Gamble's place; one for each of the stations he worked with. In the interim, his duties will be handled by Rod Zimmerman and Marci Braun.
Quickly after his dismissal, Bill Gamble contacted industry website All Access to ask them to publish his email and phone number, as he is now seeking employment again. Gamble said to All Access, "I'm proud of the accomplishments that we were able to make in the time that I was there."
Well, at least there was one person happy with the results..