(Thanks to Radio-Info poster “bierkenstock” for the heads up.)
This pretty much came out of nowhere, but Friday, syndicated liberal radio host Jerry Springer (“Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”) tapped an unusual fill-in for his show heard on a number of Clear Channel liberal talk stations, Air America’s network, and CC Cleveland’s WTAM/1100.
And that latter affiliate is where he went for the substitute host – Kevin Metheny, better known locally for his day job as Director of Programming for CC’s Cleveland cluster. According to Jerry’s site, Metheny was slated not only to talk about breaking news (of which there was a lot, politically), but was supposed to be surveying the show’s listeners on “what is good or not” about liberal talk radio.
This appearance brings OMW to the question – has Mr. Metheny done talk radio before? A quick look at his resume shows roughly 7 years of on-air work under the name “Kevin O’Brien” (and others) early in his career, but doesn’t show what kind of on-air work he’s done.
He’s been in programming management for the bulk of his time in the business…and is best known outside of Cleveland for being Howard Stern’s program director at WNBC in New York City in the early 80’s. (And yes, he was dubbed a porcine-related name by Howard on the air and in Howard’s movie “Private Parts”, which we’re sure he’s sick of hearing by now.) As far as we know, Metheny hasn’t been on the air regularly since the late 1970’s.
His stint doing Jerry’s show reminds us of another large market radio programmer who does regular on-air work here in the Buckeye State – Darryl Parks, the programming chief at Clear Channel’s Cincinnati cluster. Parks does a regular Saturday midday talk show on the mighty WLW/700, and from what we’ve heard of it, he’s actually a very good host.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear the show hosted by Parks’ Cleveland counterpart, as we only found out about it this evening.
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