Radio One Shakeup

We're late to the party - but as we don't really have any new information, we're not missing anything.

Yesterday, word came that Radio One had fired Regional Vice President Rick Porter and Cincinnati market GM Lisa Thal. Today's Taylor on Radio-Info Newsletter (available free at Radio-Info.com) cited John Kiesewetter as the source of the story.

Whatever happened, it was apparently so serious that Radio One's radio division president Barry Mayo had to come from Maryland to do the firings himself, and he's now running WIZF 101.1/Erlanger, WMOJ-FM 100.3/Norwood, and WDBZ-AM 1230/Cincinnati out of the Cincinnati cluster's front offices on Central Avenue downtown. But Radio One won't say anything more than that Thal and Porter are no longer with the company.

As Kiese notes, Thal and Porter both worked for Clear Channel before coming to Radio One. Thal jumped to Radio One just before they bought the "Mojo" intellectual property off of Cumulus (but not the 94.9 frequency), starting the 2006 radio shakeup here where half a dozen moves were made in a 3 month span. (This doesn't count WIZF's move one spot higher on the FM dial from 100.9 to its current 101.1, done three months before.)

We can't comment on the circumstances - as we simply don't know, and again, Radio One won't say anything. But something had to have gone badly wrong for the radio division's head honcho to come here...