People in the News

Veteran talk show host and multimedia journalist Michelle Jerson will launch “Michelle Jerson’s Passport” on AM 970 The Answer on Sunday, February 7 at 2p.m.

Justin Ragland has been the Marketing Director for WZZK, WBPT, and WEZZ for 10 years. He’ll now oversee all of SummitMedia Birmingham’s stations.

Bryan “B-Dub” Washington has been appointed Assistant Program Director/Music Director and afternoon host of the New KMLE @ 107.9. He replaces Chris Matthews – who is moving to mornings – as the Assistant Program Director/Music Director.

Alpha Media, Portland, announced that they promoted Danny Dwyer and Amanda "ICE" Habrowski (pictured) to Music Director.

A big congratulations to Nicky Sparrow for her promotion to Market President for the iHeartMedia Jacksonville cluster where she'll be in charge of seven stations. Sparrow has been a Radio Ink Radio Wayne finalist and identified by Radio Ink as one of Radio's Future African American Leaders.

O'Grady was the radio industry's point of contact with the ratings firm up until now as Executive Vice President and Managing Director of local media. Nielsen Catalina Solutions is an analytics company that helps marketers and media companies measure advertising performance by linking what consumers watch, see, or hear (whether on television, the Web, in print, or on the radio) with what they buy. Brad Kelly will now be radio's main contact at Nielsen.

Kelly is radio's point person at Nielsen after the O'Grady departure. Kelly came over to Nielsen when the company purchased Arbitron. He was the VP of National Group Sales at Arbitron from 2005 to 2007. One of his major career highlights, according to his LinkdIn page, is the negotiation of PPM contracts with radio's largest groups.

The WPRO Providence website carried the following statement about the death of Buddy Cianci. “It is with profound sadness that the WPRO-AM and Cumulus Providence family acknowledges the passing of Buddy Cianci, a dynamic force on our airwaves all over Southern New England for the past nearly nine years."

Tommy Mattern (pictured) has been named Operations Manager responsible for overseeing programming at KFTK, KSHE, KNOU, and KPNT. Since joining Emmis in 1996, he has programmed six different stations for Emmis. In addition, Kyle Guderian has been named Director of Marketing and Events.

Greater Media announced Thursday that Ellen Rubin has been promoted to the position of Senior Vice President and General Counsel. Rubin joined Greater Media as General Counsel in June 2003. She was promoted to Vice President and General Counsel in February of 2007.