Radio sidekicks come and go, generally with little notice by the public.
But when WTMJ-AM 620 fired afternoon personality Phil Cianciola in September, the action lit a fire among his fans. Even more surprisingly, the protests spanned the ideological spectrum, from James Rowen’s lefty Political Environmentblog to the rightward Badger Blogger.
For 14 years, Cianciola was lieutenant to TMJ’s curmudgeonly afternoon drive host Jonathan Green. Cianciola did the main prep for the show, scouring the news for topics on which Green would offer his idiosyncratic take in the 3-6 p.m. slot.
Green is a 40-year veteran of the station, but his current show, with Cianciola assisting, began in the mid-’90s as TMJ made a transition to more sharply opinionated talk radio. The station needed to counter-program against WISN-AM 1130’s Mark Belling, the reigning afternoon talk radio personality. Trying to out-Belling Belling was a losing strategy, so a different approach was tried. “They both discuss events of the day, but the Green House does it in a completely different way, with humor,” says a longtime station observer. To his fans, Green brings a down-to-earth “Wisconsin sensibility” to hot topics.
As Charlie Sykes developed into TMJ’s morning drive conservative, Green stood out as a leavening agent on talk radio. Cianciola’s largely nonideological voice in a right-wing sea advanced the contrast. As Rowen writes, “The show absolutely sang when Green was on vacation” and Cianciola bantered with now-departed fill-in Mark Reardon, who’s since gone to KMOX in St. Louis. Some listeners have never warmed to Green’s “Wisconsin sensibility,” hearing instead a not-especially-well-informed crank.
Rowen speculates on his blog that Cianciola’s firing presaged a harder turn to the right for TMJ. But Cianciola wasn’t really a liberal. Indeed, it’s worth noting that right-wing readers of Badger Blogger are also Cianciola fans. “I’ll no longer be listening to the Green House. Phil was the only voice that made listening worthwhile,” wrote one.
Cianciola declined to discuss his firing with Pressroom, other than to say, “I have been flooded with supportive e-mails, letters and blog comments.” So why was he let go? “Phil was fired for not making Jonathan Green look good enough,” grouses one Cianciola partisan.
In fact, says a station insider, that’s exactly what Cianciola was expected to do. “He could never come to terms with the fact that he busted his hump all day to put together a show, and Jonathan got all the acclaim and accolades for what Phil saw as his work and Jonathan’s laziness,” says the source. “Which totally missed the point of the show.”
The point, of course, was to make the station’s star shine. “Jonathan Green is a legend in that market, and he deserves to be,” says Reardon.
Somewhere along the way, Cianciola coined a nickname for himself: “The Biggest Name in Milwaukee Radio.” It was a play on his long last name, but also carried a not-so-subtle double meaning: “Almost from the beginning Phil fancied himself as the star,” says one observer.
TMJ management declined to discuss the firing, but economics also may have played a role. Green now gets support from existing staffers, usually news director Jon Byman or midday anchor Jodi Becker, so the station still gets by while cutting salary.
Meanwhile, Cianciola’s exit also illustrates how recent cutbacks at the Journal Sentinelare affecting its coverage. The departure of a B-list radio personality once was worth a few lines in Tim Cuprisin’s daily Journal SentinelTV and radio news column. Now Cuprisin writes at OnMilwaukee.com,having joined 70 colleagues in the paper’s most recent round of buyouts and layoffs in late summer. Not surprisingly, he was the first to break the news of Cianciola’s firing, which the broadcaster first reported on his own Twitter feed.
With Cuprisin no longer at the paper, though, the JS was silent on the news. Bloggers and other online media quickly took note. AVClub.com headlined its story, “If WTMJ sends an on-air personality packing, does it make a sound?”
Cianciola hopes to land elsewhere in the market. While searching, he’s begun podcasting his own show; OnMilwaukee.compicked it up in late October shortly after its debut. In the early going, it’s a little low-rent, and because it’s prerecorded and has no call-in element, it lacks the electricity of talk radio.
But it does exemplify a trend that may have contributed to his layoff. Radio was always known for its volatile employment security. But podcasts, other Internet offerings, and especially iPods give listeners a lot less reason to tune in to either the FM or AM dial, whether they’re commuting to work or puttering around the house.
So it’s not surprising that TMJ, even as it retains the No. 1 position among Milwaukee radio stations, may be casting about for ways to tweak its formula in a changing marketplace. The question, though, is whether tossing Cianciola got rid of an ungrateful team member – or instead dumped a utility infielder who could save some games.
