Update: Local Audacy layoffs

 We now have some names associated with the local Audacy layoffs.


Veteran traffic reporter Denise Fondo is exiting KNX. She started with L.A. Network traffic "to pay bills while I wrote fiction and non-fiction." She is a graduate of Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania with a degree in Political Science and Philosophy. She arrived in Southern California to originally work for the Hollywood Entertainment Radio Network, writing radio dramas. She also has written for the Discovery Channel and feature films.

She assured us she's going to be OK. "I was planning on retiring soon, anyway, so Randy (Fuller) and I are absolutely fine and looking forward to traveling." Fondo had a 15-year run at the all-news outlet.



Bill Nesbitt is considered a production guru. He got his start in Southern California at KWIZ-Santa Ana in the mid-1980s. Before his most recent gig at KNX, Nesbitt worked at KEZY, KYSR, KACD, and KFWB. Among his distinctions, he was the voice at Disneyland telling who told riders "please keep your hands inside the vehicle." He also produced a regional Edward R. Murrow award winning documentary in 2011.

Nesbitt was Director of Programming for the now defunct Entertainment Radio Networks, whose shows included "Fight Back" with David Horowitz and "The Weekly Top 30 Country Countdown with Charlie Tuna."

No replacement for Nesbitt has been named, with speculation his KNX production responsibilities will now be assigned to staff currently employed by other local Audacy stations.



For 28 years, Tony Dinkel was part of the team maintaining KFI's blowtorch 50,000 watt signal as well as other Clear Channel (now iHeart) L.A. properties. He moved up the I-15 in 2014 to oversee the CBS Radio (now Audacy) stations in Las Vegas until this week. The multitalented engineer will likely continue to offer his consulting services for broadcast and commercial microwave systems. 

Thanks once again to LARadio.com for providing background info.

We'll keep you posted on whatever else we learn.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Breaking news: Don Barrett in his own words

Image
If you have not yet heard, LARadio.com , which stopped publishing new material but has continued to reprint stories from the archives, will go dark in a few days. In his own words, Don Barrett offered the following on social media: An amazing two loves for the founder of LARadio.com as an era comes to an end.  I discovered the writings of Joan Didion late in life. She coined the phrase, ordinary instant. Perhaps the phrase leaped off the page because death comes in such a rushing finality. She wrote: Life changes fast/Life changes in the instant/You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. Joan’s husband was robbed of 3,500 days. In an ordinary instant. For the past two months, I have been in constant pain. Doctors, hospitals and ERs. Yesterday I was in the San Luis Obispo ER for more tests. And there it was in an ordinary instant – advanced stages of liver cancer that had spread. The doctor was sorry to pass on the news and couldn’t hold back tears. Cherie and I looked at each
Read more

Bulletin: Layoffs at KNX

Image
We're hearing from "sources on the street" some veterans of Audacy's all-news outlet have been let go. Frank Mottek , business correspondent and Randy Kerdoon , morning sports anchor have exited KNX, along with Rich Hudson, a production coordinator. Mottek arrived at KNX from South Florida via WMJX ("96X") -- where he started when he was 16 years of age -- and then all-news WINZ. He was heard nationally along with CBS News correspondent Christopher Glenn  when they covered the Challenger explosion in 1986. For the past 29 years at KNX, Mottek has served as field reporter and news anchor, but is perhaps best known for his work reporting from the financial desk. He hosted a weekly program entitled "Mottek on Money" and previously anchored the daily "KNX Business Hour." Mottek was also seen on both TV on KTLA and KCBS-TV. When he arrived at KNX, one of his first field assignments was to cover the festivities at the West Hollywood Halloween c
Read more

So what happened at KFI?

Image
  My mailbox has been full over the past few days. I first became aware of the controversy involving evening host Tim Conway Jr. and executive producer Sheron Bellio  via a May 14 article in AsAmNews , a publication that offers both original stories and aggregates news about the Asian American community (read it here ). Louis Chan, their national correspondent, wrote about a skit done during Conway’s May 3 program. Among the highlights from the story:   ·        When (listener) Keith Kawamoto heard a bit by Tim Conway Jr on KFI-AM 640 imitating a Japanese American woman, Kawamoto “couldn’t believe” they were doing that. The sketch on May 3 involved the long time Los Angeles radio host supposedly interviewing the wife of (KLAC-AM 570 LA Sports) sportscaster  Vic “the Brick” Jacobs , Yuko Sakamoto.   ·       “The imitation was so stereotypical with the character saying “Moshi-moshi” & “Ah-so” type comments in a sing-song voice interspersed with karate screams with gongs gonging
Read more