Was it just a matter of time?
Joel McNally says there were no inklings until he and Cassandra Cassandra were fired last week that their “Morning Magazine” on WMCS-AM was toast – other than the station’s ongoing financial struggles.
“We had a pay freeze all last year, and we hadn’t heard about anything this year yet,” he tells Pressroom. “We were always aware around there that anything could happen at any time.”
McNally says he and Cassandra were let go Friday about an hour after finishing their air shift. General Manager Bill Hurwitz “told us it was totally financial; it didn’t have anything to do with performance.” Syndicated programs replace the signature morning talk show.
MCS has been battling falling revenues for some time. Last year its highest-profile personality Eric Von quit the station after refusing to take a pay cut. Hurwitz at the time acknowledged that times were tough but insisted that MCS would strive to maintain its distinctive role as a forum for the city’s black community. (You can see more in Pressroom’s July 2009 column.) Still, McNally contends some of the station’s straits may be self-inflicted: “There’s only one advertising salesman there,” for instance. And, as Von has before him, McNally complains of lackluster to non-existent promotion at the station. The station’s cutbacks all but eliminate the station’s once-proud role in black Milwaukee. Killing McNally’s and Cassandra’s show leaves Von’s afternoon replacement, Earl Ingram , as the only local talk host on the station. What will fill that gap? “I don’t see anything at all,” McNally says. “To me the saddest part is that the whole mission of that station has been to have a forum for the African-American community and other people in the community who don’t think that other radio stations who concentrate on angry, middle-aged white guys represent what’s really going on,” he adds. Monday morning he heard the nationally syndicated show airing in what had been his slot carrying conspiracy-laden talk about the Trilateral Commission. “That isn’t the kind of information that is all that valuable to the community.” McNally, whose four-year stint at the station capped a career that was primarily in print, says he’s not ready to retire and not ready to just retreat to print. “It really was a great experience,” he says of his time at MCS. “And there’s nothing else like it going on in town.” Pressroom is waiting to hear back from Hurwitz. But as Tim Cuprisin notes, local radio is suffering all over the country. (Speaking of Cuprisin and his Journal Sentinel successor, Duane Dudek, check out February’s Milwaukee Magazine for Pressroom’s column on their new/old roles as rival media columnists. It’s worth the cover price just for the illustration.) * Comment below, or write Pressroom at pressroom@milwaukeemagazine.com.
