WOMC drops Ted 'The Bear' Richards in consolidatio

LINK
WOMC drops Ted 'The Bear' Richards in consolidation
Susan Whitall / The Detroit News
CBS Radio Detroit is consolidating two of its stations: Country WYCD-FM (99.5) will move out of its Farmington space and into the Ferndale studios of "greatest hits" broadcaster WOMC-FM (104.3). As part of the consolidation, WOMC afternoon drive personality Ted "The Bear" Richards was let go Wednesday.

"They bought out my contract," said Richards, who was severed from the station immediately.

"We own the 'OMC building and our transmitter is there, plus it's actually a very large building, so it makes sense from a sharing of resources standpoint to put them together," said CBS Detroit market manager Debbie Kenyon.

Advertisement

The WOMC building on Woodward Heights in Ferndale includes some six studios and two editing stations; one of the studios recently underwent a state-of-the-art renovation.

WYCD evening air personality Dave Fuller will take over Richards' afternoon drive slot on WOMC today. Asked if Fuller would be doing his regular 7 p.m. to midnight shift on the country station, Kenyon said only, "he'll help out in certain areas" on WYCD.

No other jocks are slated to work on both stations, she said.

But one benefit of consolidation that Kenyon touts is having extra staff to help out during big events, like the WYCD-sponsored Downtown Hoedown, and the WOMC-sponsored Woodward Dream Cruise.

"During Hoedown time, it's such a mess and now we can share it with WOMC staff, that will be so helpful," Kenyon said. "Dream Cruise, same thing. Plus (program director) Tim (Roberts) runs the two stations, so it'll be good to have them in one building."

What the future holds for WOMC is unknown; CBS has dropped the word "oldies" from its tagline again, and, just weeks after John "Ankles" Stewart and Dana Mills were fired from "Purtan's People," the last hour of the morning show, from 9-10 a.m., was dropped, in favor of a block of music programming. The show now airs from 5-9 a.m. weekdays.

Richards, a veteran of CKLW-AM (800)'s Big 8 glory years, was brought to Detroit 15 months ago. Everybody who works in radio is used to being fired and hired -- repeatedly -- but the changes in Detroit radio in the last eight months have been more frenetic than usual. Still, Richards is thankful that he and his wife were able to move closer to her parents (who live in Windsor) for a time at least.

If work calls him out of town, he'll leave Detroit once again.

"Maybe I should call up Arthur Penhallow and have lunch!" Richards quipped of the former afternoon jock at WRIF-FM (101

---------------

One thing's for damn sure, CBS has sucked all the fun out of WOMC. They play songs I would not consider as oldies, In the last 2 years they've fired, Ted the bear, Ron T , Ankles, Dana Mills , Tom,Mindy and Dana Masucci and a few others . Things are not looking good for Dick Purtan. I think its time for Detroit to develop another classic Oldies station. We all know it has the talent available.........

Thanks for the info. I was wondering what happened to him. He seemed like such a nice guy and he was really funny too. And you're right, we should start our own radio station. Detroit needs a decent oldies station, one that is not simply a carbon copy of all the other stations on the channel. Hey man, we can hire back the d.j.s from WOMC and maybe Arthur P too!! Oh, and let's take Beau Derek away from them...now that would tick them off...