Courtesy the St. Louis Post Dispatch

(March 11, 2011) Bob Stelton bids adieu Friday at WXOS (101.1 FM), signing off at the market's top-rated sports-talk station and does so with mixed feelings. He's headed to Seattle in a similar hosting role, and the chance to work in his home town and be close to family after being gone for nearly a decade is the big draw. But it wasn't an easy decision to leave despite being in town only about year.

"I had settled in to a comfortable place here, the people of St. Louis have been very welcoming, very supportive,'' he said. "Even during the show changing (when Bryan Burwell was fired in August), I was hoping the listeners would stick with me and they did to a very large degree. The show, ratings-wise, has been even bigger than I anticipated or management did. I give all the credit to the listeners for that..

The show, from 9-11 a.m., has the fourth-best market share in sports-radio's target audience, men ages 15-24, among the three stations in the format despite airing at a time when a lot of people don't listen to radio.

"It's definitely a challenge, but the listeners hung with me and hung with a guy who's not from here,'' Stelton said. "There were so many people who went out of their way to tell me, ‘Aw, you're going to St. Louis, they don't like people who aren't from there, they're never going to accept you.' The listeners proved them all wrong, which as a host is extremely satisfying and rewarding. And it was a hard decision to make to leave, the people here in this building couldn't have been classier or nicer.''

Staff turnover usually is about as common as commercials on sports-talk radio, but the lineup of hosts at 101.1 has been a bastion of stability with one notable exception - the mid-morning slot. Stelton was brought aboard in January 2010 to replace Pat Parris, who had been fired. Then the Stelton-Burwell tandem lasted only about six months, now Stelton is leaving. Interestingly, that time slot is the only one that has had any movement of hosts in the station's 271⁄2 months in the sports format.

"It's just the way things work out when you're trying to build a product,'' 101.1 program director Jason Barrett said. "Obviously, this (move) is a little different than the others'' because the host is leaving on his own accord, the first WXOS host to do so.

He'll be replaced by STAA client Zach McCrite, who has been in sports radio in Louisville, Ky., and is from that area, and Rick Venturi - a longtime assistant coach with many NFL teams, including the Rams. He also had brief stints as an interim head coach (with the Colts and Saints) was an NFL analyst for WXOS last football season. They begin March 21.

blog comments powered by Disqus