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Pig Vomit is Dead...
Kevin Metheny — the former WGN-AM 720 program director whose abrupt moves to grow the station's audience grew a well of resentment among some long-time listeners before his 2010 departure just shy of two years on the job — died Friday. He was 60.
Sheldon Patinkin
pMr. Metheny, immortalized by multimedia star Howard Stern first on the air and in his best-selling book "Private Parts" as "Pig Virus" and then caricatured as part of a composite character called "Pig Vomit" in the movie version of Stern's memoirs, was most recently the operations manager at KGO-AM 810 and KSFO-AM 650 in San Francisco, where he started work this summer.
News of Mr. Metheny's death was first reported by allaccess,com, a radio industry Web site.
"Kevin Metheny's sudden passing (Friday) afternoon is a devastating personal and professional loss for his broadcasting family at Cumulus, and for the entire radio industry," John Dickey, vice president of KGO and KSFO parent Cumulus Radio, said in a statement according to allacess.com. "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."
While running WGN-AM, which then shared a parent company with the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Metheny's attempts to advise long-time WGN-AM midday hosts Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey on the kind of show he wanted from them ultimately resulted in their sudden exit from the station in May 2009.
Even those who supported the change thought it could and should have been handled more gracefully.
cComments
The only thing that ever made WGN a station worth listening to was its music programs: Music Unlimited, Great Music from Chicago, Nightside, with hosts such as Franklin McCormick, Jay Andres, Paul Rogers, and the great Mike Rapchak. And one by one, these shows were eliminated and WGN became the...
N. Vastis
at 10:15 AM October 05, 2014
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Other changes on Mr. Metheny's watch at the venerable Chicago broadcasting institution included the controversial hire of convicted former Chicago City Clerk Jim Laski, a radio novice, as well as bringing in Greg Jarrett from San Francisco to handle morning drive and Mike McConnell from Cincinnati for mid-mornings.
Mr. Metheny also hired veteran Chicago radio personality Garry Meier for afternoon drive. He moved John Williams in and out a variety of daytime slots. And he opted not to renew the contract of midday host Steve Cochran, who had been in line to succeed retiring Spike O'Dell in the station's coveted morning slot until he failed to agree to terms on a new deal just before Mr. Metheny's arrival in 2008.
"Our plan may not have been the most elegantly or artfully executed of all possible plans, but we actually understand what it is we think we are trying to do and why we think we're trying to do it," Mr. Metheny told the Tribune in 2010.
At the time of Mr. Metheny's hiring at WGN-AM, Stern remained as crticial as ever of Mr. Metheny.
"Pig Virus landed on his feet again," Stern said on his satellite radio program in 2008. "I don't spend my day thinking about Pig Virus, but it is amazing how guys we know who are pretty unoriginal keep landing on their feet. … Pig Virus really undermined everything I tried to do at NBC and hated me. And then after he got bounced from NBC and the other places he worked, he started programming radio stations and tried to replicate what I did on the radio.
"He was just so mean and vicious," Stern continued. "Not only was he against everything I was doing, which was saving his radio station, he couldn't live with the fact that I was so talented. He couldn't live with the fact that I had these abilities."
Mr. Metheny left WGN-AM in 2010 on the heels of the departure of former Tribune Co. Chief Executive Randy Michaels, his biggest backer at the company.
Mr. Metheny's career started in 1970 in Edmond, Oklahoma. His travels in the radio industry would end up taking him to stations in Ohio, New York, Florida, Minnesota, Maryland, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina in addition to his tenure at WGN-AM.
"His reputation and accomplishments are simply unparalleled and we are grateful for having had the opportunity to work with him as (program director) of WJR in Detroit and most recently, as Operations Manager of KGO and KSFO in San Francisco," Dickey said. "His Cumulus family extends our deepest sympathies to Kevin's loved ones. We will miss him profoundly."
Mr. Metheny is survived by two daughters.
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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion
We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan
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