Posted by Bud on April 30, 2010 at 23:17:04:
Cleveland.com looks at what WGN's Program Director is doing right now compared to what he had done in Cleveland, OH (Kevin Metheny's last radio home). It is not necessarily a loving report...:
Kevin Metheny, a.k.a. 'Pig Virus,' riles WGN Radio's Chicago fan base
By Michael Norman, The Plain Dealer
April 30, 2010, 5:00PM
Kevin Metheny, the controversial radio executive who Howard Stern once nicknamed “Pig Virus,” had a volatile seven-year run as the head honcho of Clear Channel’s Cleveland operation, cutting budgets, firing people and revamping programming at the radio giant’s six area stations. Metheny left Cleveland in late 2008 for Chicago, taking over as head programmer for the Tribune Company’s legendary flagship AM news-talk station, WGN. He seems to be up to his old “Pig Virus” tricks, there, too, judging from the hue and cry from WGN fans on the internet, some of whom have even started their own Facebook fan page, “WGN Radio: Fire Kevin Metheny.”
Since his arrival, Metheny has embarked on a major overhaul of WGN’s programming and on-air staff. Former Chicago Sun-Times television-and-radio columnist Robert Feder has been following the story in his blog. He recently wrote that Metheny’s moves seem to be intentionally “designed to anger and alienate WGN’s tradional listeners and break the bonds of trust between the station and its audience that date back more than 80 years.”
"It has been more traumatic than you can even imagine becuse 'GN is such a heritage, important station," Feder said in a phone interview Friday. "Metheny is not just coming in and changing any old station. It was the No. 1 station in the market, the No. 1 billing station in the market. And what he has done is just unbelievable.
"That is why you are seeing things like this Facebook page. "This is a grass-root effort from listeners. These are people who are just outraged. These are not people with an ax to grind, these are not competitors. There is a real bond that people have with WGN radio. They really feel a kinship to the station. What he has done is squander all that good will and all of that good reputation in some weird effort to lower the demographics and to remake the station."
WGN is one of the oldest and most established news-talk stations in the United States, a power in the industry for decades because of its close association with the Tribune Co., and its flagship newspaper the Chicago Tribune. It has the radio home of the Chicago Cubs and has a national reach, too, with a powerful signal at 720 on the AM dial that reaches half the country at night.
“They were a well-respected station for decades,” says Cleveland-based radio consultant John Gorman, who helped build Cleveland’s WMMS into an FM powerhouse in the 1970s and ‘80s. “But when you start slashing people and cutting costs, the quality suffers. Then, all it takes is one person. It’s really about cutting costs. When you start replacing people who are established in the market with less experienced people, the quality level goes down and it begins to affect the time spent listening to the station. It doesn’t take long to upset the audience.”
During his tenure in Cleveland, Metheny was Clear Channel’s “ax man,” says Gorman, trimming on-air talent and production staff and pushing other consolidation measures at the company’s six local stations – WMMS/100.7, WGAR/99.5, WMJI/105.7, WMVX/106.5, WTAM/1100 and WAKS/96.5.
“He had a volatile time here,” says Gorman. “People in radio say he was not an easy guy, that dealing with him was like a daily root canal. His big focus here was trying to build WTAM into the city’s top radio station. He is the one who really put Mike Trivisonno front and center and turned Triv into whatever he is today. He definitely turned WTAM into something. But I’m not sure it is something to be proud of.”
We left a message for Metheny on his WGN voice mail, asking for comment. We'll update this post as soon as he gets back to us. Interestingly, Metheny is listed a "fan" of the "Fire Kevin Metheny" Facebook page.