Monday, October 6, 2014

10.6.14 Hero of the Day: Kevin Metheny


Bee-otch of the Day honors are awarded Monday through Thursday, Bee-otch of the Week is awarded Friday on Chuck69.com.



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HERO OF THE DAY!


Name: Kevin "Pig Virus" Metheny
Age: was 60
Occupation: deceased
Last Seen: telling God to pronounce "Heaven" as "hEEEEEEEEEven"
Awarded For: making Howard Stern a stronger man

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He was one of the most-hated bosses that Howard Stern had to endure. Now, he'll probably talk about him in great detail on Monday's show.

Kevin Metheny was a larger-than-life radio station programmer. He programmed everything from small-town stations to massive 50,000-watt clear channel stations such as WJR Detroit, WGN Chicago, KGO San Francisco and yes, WNBC - or as he forced his jocks to call it, Dubya-ENNNNNN-B-C - in New York. He'll be remembered mostly for his contributions to Stern and all of the restrictions he put on his style of show to the point that Stern himself referred to him as "Pig Virus" because he looked like a pig and made him sick.

In Stern's 1997 film Private Parts, based from his autobiography, he renamed Metheny "Kenny Rushton" and called him "Pig Vomit" in the movie, in which he was portrayed by Paul Giamatti. In the movie, Howard disobeyed Rushton's orders to keep his show clean and ended up having the top radio program in New York City. Of course, Stern was fired by NBC in 1986 only to be hired by K-Rock shortly thereafter.

In recent years, Metheny programmed WGN in Chicago. However, under his tenure, ratings fell and listeners were angered over his messing with the schedule. He then moved over to WJR in Detroit and recently was operations manager for KGO in San Francisco.

According to some sources, Metheny was at his desk when he suffered a fatal heart attack on Friday. He leaves behind two daughters. Metheny's death is the second Stern Show-related death in two weeks after the passing of Eric "The Actor" Lynch, a regular caller to the show.

While many in the radio biz hated Kevin's guts, he helped made Howard - and maybe a lot more others - stronger people. He was one of those bosses who taught us all the lesson that the best thing to do is not to listen to them. It worked for Howard, especially after WNBC signed off for good in 1988. People want edgy, not watered down. Pig Virus wanted watered down and lost. That's why he was one of those radio people who moved from city to city every two minutes and not staying put. Maybe that's why he had that heart attack: low ratings = stress and stress = myocardial infarction.

Like I said, today's Stern Show should be interesting.

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