Posted by wow on June 15, 2009 at 13:56:10:
WGN-AM stunner: John Williams to 'Kathy & Judy' slot, replaced in morning drive by Greg Jarrett
from Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune
John Williams, who in December took over a WGN-AM 720 morning show that had only had three hosts over the previous 43 years, is being moved to mid-mornings after just six months in morning drive, the station told staff this afternoon.
In a one-two punch almost no one fully anticipated, Greg Jarrett, most recently an afternoon cohost at San Francisco's KGO-AM, is being brought in as new 5-to-9 a.m. host beginning next Monday and Williams will replace Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey, whose 9 a.m.-to-noon program was pulled off the air last month by the station after 20 years.
Although Williams will provide fans of "The Girlfriends" a familiar voice in a more flexible format for talk than the morning drive format, WGN has traditionally been slow to make changes. So the idea that he would be pulled from the morning show so soon after Spike O'Dell's self-imposed early retirement in December is a shock.
Even more of a surprise is the selection of a complete outsider in Jarrett, who brings a newsman's sensibility to his work as host.
Jarrett's style and approach is anything but a radical departure from WGN's tradition. But the station has been talking about dramatically shaking up that approach in a bid to engage more listeners and has had a string of opinionated, sometimes politically charged hosts in what seemed to be high-profile on-air tryouts.
Jarrett was not among those auditioning and his name had not been among those rumored to be in line to join WGN, which is owned by Chicago Tribune parent Tribune Co.
As a college intern at WGN, Williams got to work around legendary morning man Wally Phillips, who had unmatched dominance during his 21-year run in the morning slot before handing the baton to Bob Collins in 1986.
Williams returned to the station as a full-time staffer in 1997 after stints in Minneapolis and Peoria, and last year was named successor to O'Dell, who had taken over after Collins' death in a 2000 plane crash.
At the time of his appointment, Williams acknowledged the challenge he would have in adapting his afternoon broadcast style to morning drive, which is peppered more liberally with breaks for news, traffic, weather, sports and ads.
"I will miss the 12-minute windows that I have on the 1-to-4 p.m. show," Williams said at the time. "In the morning show, it's four to six minutes. You have to be tighter. You have to swifter. I don't like that, but I also don't think you should change that. The world's changed."
Jarrett, who is not to be confused with Fox News Channel anchor Gregg Jarrett, was caught in a wave of layoffs at Citadel Broadcasting's KGO-AM. Like WGN, KGO is a legacy news/talk station with a decidedly local bent.
All told, Jarrett spent 16 years at KGO. He first joined KGO in 1986 as aviation and space reporter, leaving in 1994 to become a staff correspondent for ABC, covering the O.J. Simpson trial, the Oklahoma City bombing, the trial of the Unabomber, among other stories over the next four years. After a two-year hitch at the former KEWS-AM in Portland, Ore., he returned to KGO in 2000.
Jarrett has reported from Iraq, Africa, Bosnia, Hurricane Katrina and Air Force One. Coverage he co-anchored of last year's Northern California wildfires was recently honored as regional winner of the Radio Television News Directors Association Edward R. Murrow Awards for broadcast excellence (listen to an excerpt here).
He gained attention in 2003 when, while embedded with U.S. troops in Southern Iraq, he helped Marines rescue civilians during sniper fire in Southern Iraq.
"Someone has tried to kill me at least three times today," Jarrett said in a live phone report for the station, according to an Associated Press story at the time. "We were fired at with anti-aircraft fire at one point. At another point, we settled near a village where a fire fight was taking place. ... They opened up on us with small arms fire as we were loading their people onto helicopters to bring them back for medical care."
When Williams was named the new morning host, station boss Tom Langmyer reflected on the unique relationship WGN and its morning hosts have had with listeners "back even before the days of Wally Phillips ... in which the station is a trusted friend" and said that's why the station was as successful as it did.
"When you have a successful institution that performs well, not only from a listener perspective but from a business standpoint, you want to be very sure that the changes you are making are strictly driven to make the station more relevant rather than to make a change for the sake of change."