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Slew Of Longtime Local Radio Voices Take Buyouts At WTOP
12:54 PM
Slew Of Longtime Local Radio Voices Take Buyouts At WTOP
Colleen Grablick https://twitter.com/colleengrablick
Eight veteran WTOP journalists, including several whose voices many Washingtonians hear on air every day, will leave the station at the end of year after accepting voluntary buyouts.
Reporter Kristi King, morning anchor Bruce Alan, sports anchor Dave Johnson, and anchor Debra Feinstein — all who have been at the station since the 1990s — accepted the buyout, according to an all-staff memo sent out this week and obtained by DCist/WAMU. Rick Massimo and Colleen Kelleher, digital editors, and anchors Sarah Jacobs and Joan Jones will also be departing. The station’s general manager, Joel Oxley, did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment.
The trade publication Radio Insight first reported the news.
“It has been my honor and privilege to be part of the WTOP Family for 32 years. It’s been thrilling and fulfilling. I could not have asked for a better team of leaders and colleagues,” King wrote of her departure in an emailed statement to DCist/WAMU. The seven other departing employees did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment.
The station announced in late October that it’d be offering voluntary contract buyouts, according to Radio Insight. WTOP’s listening audience and revenue had “gone backwards” from 2021 levels, Oxley told staffers in a memo at the time. The station brought in $70 million in 2021, up from $62 million in 2020 and almost the same as its 2019 revenue of $69.8 million, according to BIA Advisory Services.
{snip}
Slew Of Longtime Local Radio Voices Take Buyouts At WTOP
Colleen Grablick https://twitter.com/colleengrablick
Eight veteran WTOP journalists, including several whose voices many Washingtonians hear on air every day, will leave the station at the end of year after accepting voluntary buyouts.
Reporter Kristi King, morning anchor Bruce Alan, sports anchor Dave Johnson, and anchor Debra Feinstein — all who have been at the station since the 1990s — accepted the buyout, according to an all-staff memo sent out this week and obtained by DCist/WAMU. Rick Massimo and Colleen Kelleher, digital editors, and anchors Sarah Jacobs and Joan Jones will also be departing. The station’s general manager, Joel Oxley, did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment.
The trade publication Radio Insight first reported the news.
“It has been my honor and privilege to be part of the WTOP Family for 32 years. It’s been thrilling and fulfilling. I could not have asked for a better team of leaders and colleagues,” King wrote of her departure in an emailed statement to DCist/WAMU. The seven other departing employees did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment.
The station announced in late October that it’d be offering voluntary contract buyouts, according to Radio Insight. WTOP’s listening audience and revenue had “gone backwards” from 2021 levels, Oxley told staffers in a memo at the time. The station brought in $70 million in 2021, up from $62 million in 2020 and almost the same as its 2019 revenue of $69.8 million, according to BIA Advisory Services.
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