Posted by Bud on December 15, 2009 at 21:16:32:
Harvey Wells to step down from Newsweb Radio in February
Harvey Wells, a local radio fixture for nearly 35 years, told staff Tuesday that he is stepping down as vice president and group station manager for entrepreneur Fred Eychaner's Newsweb Radio after his contract runs out in February.
Wells will have been with Newsweb for six years but remains best known for his decades-long association with WXRT-FM 93.1.
"I'm going to be 60 years old on February 24th," Wells said, "and frankly, if I count college, I've been in radio nearly 40 years and taken one vacation of more than one week in all that time -- and that was only two weeks. ... I don't know that I'm done with radio. I'm a radio guy. That's all that I know. But I do need a break."
Most recently Wells has supervised Willow Springs political talk outlet WCPT-AM 820 and its simulcasts on WDEK-FM 92.5 in DeKalb, WKIE-FM 92.7 in Arlington Heights and WRZA-FM 99.9 in Park Forest for Newsweb. For a time, the trio of FM stations had combined with a music format under the "Nine FM" banner.
A graduate of Niles East High School in Skokie and Southern Illinois University, where he helped launched campus radio station WIDB in 1970, Wells broke into Chicago radio as a weekend overnight disc jockey at WXRT in 1975. He settled into middays at WKQX-FM 101.1 before returning to WXRT in 1979, rising through the sales department to become the station's vice president and general manager in 1990.
Two years later, also as GM, Wells launched WSCR-AM as Chicago's first sports talk station. He would eventually become general manager of the old WCKG-FM and WUSN-FM 99.5 and continue to oversee WXRT for Infinity, which was part of CBS.
"It's been much more than I could ever have dreamed of," Wells said of his career to date. "Just getting to 'XRT was the pinnacle for me. Just becoming the weekend overnight guy was a dream of mine. I could never have imagined that, so to have had a career for this long has been really more than I ever could have dreamed of or imagined. I've got a lot of people to thank along the way, but I'm not going to do it now or this is going to sound like an Oscar speech."
Before Wells' arrival at Newsweb, Eychaner's stations primarily offered time-brokered ethnic and foreign-language programming. Wells helped push them toward the mainstream.
"I'm glad I was able to work for Newsweb," Wells said. "I have nothing but great things to say about Newsweb. They gave me an opportunity to build some new brands, and I'm a true believer in progressive talk radio.
"I'm a brand guy and I always will be," he said. "I'm an old fashioned radio guy who still believes there are only a few things that matter. What really matters most is putting on a great product to serve your audience. And if you have a great product for your audience, then you'll serve your advertisers and serve your community. It's only about three things ... the audience, the community and then the advertisers. That's the way I was taught, and that's the way I continue to think radio should be."