Kevin Metheny Is Dead

A man who once held a high-level radio programming job in Cleveland has passed away.

All Access had first confirmation that former Clear Channel Cleveland cluster programmer and regional programming VP Kevin Metheny died suddenly on Friday afternoon:

Tragic news out of the BAY AREA: Sources confirm to ALL ACCESS that CUMULUS Talk KGO-A and KSFO/SAN FRANCISCO OM KEVIN METHENY has passed away from an apparent heart attack.

Our content partners at RadioInsight passed along this from Cumulus:

“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm what many have contacted us about tonight. Kevin Metheny, legendary broadcaster and friend to many in our industry, passed away suddenly this afternoon.” (Cumulus’ John Dickey:) “Kevin Metheny’s sudden passing this afternoon is a devastating personal and professional loss for his broadcasting family at Cumulus, and for the entire radio industry. Kevin was a legendary broadcasting talent who touched many lives in his remarkable 44-year career, and whose successes made an indelible mark on radio.”

Metheny had some notable stops on his programming resume, both before and after he was the top programmer at Oak Tree.

Before talking the OM job at KGO/KSFO, Metheny was not far away from Ohio…as program director of Cumulus talk WJR/760 Detroit, a signal that’s very easy to hear in most of Northern Ohio.

Before Cleveland, Kevin Metheny is best known for being Howard Stern’s hands-on program director at then-WNBC/660 New York (today’s WFAN), and that stint (“WNNNNBC”) led to Stern calling him “Pig Virus” on the air. That’s a name and character that morphed into “Pig Vomit” in Stern’s “Private Parts” movie.

While the New York City media feeds on that, here near the shores of Lake Erie, Kevin Metheny was the ultimate programming boss for personalities including now-retired classic hits WMJI/105.7 “Majic 105.7” morning icon John Lanigan, and talk WTAM/1100 afternoon star Mike Trivisonno.

At one point, the former on-air personality took the microphone himself in Cleveland.

WTAM was carrying liberal talk show host Jerry Springer in 2005, and Metheny (the trash TV host’s radio “talent coach”) himself once filled in for Springer on his network show.

Metheny left Oak Tree after a 10 year run atop the programming department in 2008, at the end of his then-current contract.

He later kicked up a lot of dust when he rejoined former Clear Channel radio head Randy Michaels at Tribune in Chicago, where he programmed talk WGN/720.

You might not be overstating it to say that it “didn’t end well”, and Metheny barely outlasted Michaels’ stormy tenure running Tribune. (Among Metheny’s moves at WGN: bringing aboard WTAM weekend host Simon Badinter for weekends there. Simon is now nationally syndicated with Kim Iverson on the evening show “Rendezvous with Simon and Kim”.)

But Kevin Metheny bounced back, taking a short-term consulting gig to start a new country station in Minneapolis, before heading to Detroit and until his death, San Francisco.

It’s not his long career that strikes us the most as we talk about the death of Kevin Metheny.

Certainly, the man had many who were not fans. That’s usually the case with larger-than-life personalities in the radio business (just ask the aforementioned Randy Michaels).

But the many tributes from those who worked with Kevin at Oak Tree are among a very large river of tributes from all over that have been posted on his Facebook page and on Twitter. (We were going to excerpt some here, but there are far too many to copy from his former Northeast Ohio colleagues alone.)

Kevin Metheny’s “style” may have rubbed some the wrong way, particularly those who competed with him.

But the outpouring of tribute messages from Cleveland and all over the country shows that many were very fond of him not just as a boss, but as a man.

We’ve noted many posts from those who started interning under Kevin’s management, who note that he provided not just feedback, but encouragement…and paid attention to them.

That sentiment is also coming from many not on the air, in all corners of the radio business, who’ve worked with him.

We said it when Akron radio legend Joe Finan left this earth…your character is often measured by what you do when no one is looking.

And it appears that would be easy to say about Kevin Metheny, though we’ve never met the man.

At the very least, he certainly had a lot of friends (the real kind) in the radio industry…