Industry News

TALKERS News Notes

“The Financial Exchange with Michael Armstrong and Chuck Zodda” adds new affiliate WGAN-AM, Portland to its roster of affiliates. The business radio show is currently heard on 13 stations across New England, including WRKO, Boston. Program COO Jason Wolfe comments, “WGAN is the #1 choice for news and talk in Maine and I’m thrilled to have ‘The Financial Exchange’ join its superb lineup. Adding Portland to the network has been a key goal of ours. The station has an incredibly loyal audience, and we can’t wait to get started.”

Women In Radio is presenting its 8th annual conference on Saturday, March 9 at Atlanta Tech Village. As part of this year’s event, Women In Radio will be presenting iHeartMedia VP of programming Thea Mitchem with its Trailblazer Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field. WIR founder Meaghan Taylor says, “The number of women working in the radio industry has decreased over the last year. However, this event continues to show that women are still fighting to be recognized in this space and will hopefully provide in-depth radio expertise from women working across all platforms.”

Industry News

Talk Host Mark Simone Inks New Deal with WOR, New York

New York City talk radio personality Mark Simone signs a new, three-year deal with iHeartMedia’s news/talk 710 WOR to continue hosting the 10:00 am to 12:00 noon show. Simone says, “There’s no betterim place to be in the radio world than iHeartRadio. Thanks to the finest broadcasting executives around, Tom Cuddy, Thea Mitchem and Bernie Weiss for making it all happen. Walking to work every day is like walking through the Radio Hall of Fame. Just to get to my studio, I pass Elvis Duran, Jim Kerr, Charlamagne tha God, Angela Yee and other all-stars.” WOR program director Tom Cuddy adds, “When I joined WOR almost 11 years ago, Mark was my first hire. Since then, it’s been a blast watching Mark grow into becoming the highest-rated radio talk host in his time slot, along with digital numbers that are among the highest in the country.”

EDITOR’S APOLOGY:  The above story about Mark Simone’s new contract at WOR originally ran yesterday (9/5) in TALKERS.  Unfortunately, our art department utilized a combination of hand-rendered illustration, CGI and AI in creating a headline banner image that apparently missed its mark.  The premise was to depict Simone as the proverbial “800 pound gorilla” of New York radio in which his avatar – a Simone lookalike – inspired by the legend of King Kong, was depicted as a determined figure climbing the Empire State Building.  As it turned out, the King Kong reference was not clear to our readers because there was no actual ape depicted and Simone received a large number of emails telling him that TALKERS ran a photo of the wrong guy.  We meant it to be a caricature but our creative plan backfired.  Simone was upset by the image telling TALKERS, “I have had dozens of caricatures done of me in the past. They are usually somewhat cute.  Never had a problem with them. Yours looked hideous and really cheap. When radio people try to do it, they have no skill at it… no one thought it was a caricature and no one thought it was me. The 13 emails I got from radio execs asked me why you used a picture of someone else, so they never thought for a second it was supposed to be a caricature and no one noticed anything to do with the Empire State Building.”  TALKERS publisher Michael Harrison issued the following statement, “Simone is right.  Looking back at it now, with the increased objectivity of having a full day to think it over, I can understand why he was upset, although there was nothing specifically disparaging about the image. It just wasn’t clear that it was meant to be him and that he was supposed to be climbing a building in an iconic scenario.  After all, a media personality’s sound and image are their brand and they must be protective of its depiction.  We have subsequently pulled the banner from the website and replaced it with a more standard format with the same copy but a different graphic (see above).  The irony is Mark Simone and I have been friendly for more than three decades and I’ve often stated that he is one of the greatest and most successful radio personalities in New York and the nation, not to mention a top notch human being. I still think that.  All of us at TALKERS deeply regret this mistake which was the result of an overly-zealous attempt at being creative. In the world of publicity there’s the old saying ‘as long as they spell your name correctly.’ Well, I guess in this case we spelled Mark Simone’s face wrong.”