Life Of Jason

The promos are running on KWTO about former Fox Sports host and occasional Fox News commentator Chuck Booms taking over the morning show on 560 AM.  Art Hains was talking up Booms’ arrival on SportsTalk on Friday night and he made it sound like it was the biggest thing to hit Springfield radio.  (Art’s so good at what he does.)

The problem is that Chuck Booms coming to KWTO is only the second most important personnel move that has happened recently.  The biggest move was bringing back someone to lead their programming team who is not only well versed in his field but also someone that garners respect among his peers, his employees and even among his competition.

That man is Tom Ladd.

Ladd left a few years ago to take a job with the Springfield Cardinals and my sources confirmed to me that he is returning to head up programming for Meyer Communications.  Ken Meyer needs to be commended for the very smart move to bring Tom back into the fold.  Other stations in town that saw the combined ratings of Meyer Communications properties over the last 12-18 months suddenly have to consider that Mr. Meyer has a programmer in the building who can stop the bleeding and turn things around programming wise.

There are very few men that I have worked with during my twenty years in radio for whom I would walk through a wall for but Tom Ladd is one of them.   Tom is one of those guys who has earned by respect to the point that if he made an emergency call to me at 3 am one day because he needed someone to cover a sporting event and his only staff member called off I would drag myself out of bed and go help him even though I wouldn’t be employed by Meyer Communications.  Heck, I probably wouldn’t even ask to be paid for the time.  (Gas money, maybe.)

I’m really looking forward to seeing what Tom does with the stations.  The difficulty rating of the radio game in Springfield just went significantly higher.