The Freak is Gone!
Jon Scaptura
Jon
RChinnis
Jon Scaptura
John Renshaw Fired From One-on-One!
Greg Hall
John Renshaw was fired Thursday from his job as the mid-morning sports talk
host for One-on-One Sports, the syndicated sports talk radio network based
near Chicago. To quote from the email I received Thursday from Renshaw
alerting me to this news: "swear to god."
"I'm incredibly depressed," said Renshaw while retelling how he was canned
minutes after his show ended at 1:00 p.m. Thursday. Renshaw was called into
the office of Mark Gentzkow, the vice president of programming and
broadcasting for One-on-One, and told they were making a change. "This
decision was about performance," Gentzkow told me late Thursday afternoon.
"We needed to make an upgrade."
That comment suggested to me that One-on-One was not happy with Renshaw's on
air performance. I asked Gentzkow how long they had been thinking Renshaw's
performance had fallen off. "Over the past four months," replied Gentzkow.
Renshaw and One-on-One Sports have been absent from the Kansas City Radio
scene since severing their affiliation with their original KC affiliate,
KCTE 1510 AM, in late March. The Kansas City listening audience has not been
able to listen to Renshaw the past four months except via the Internet.
"We needed to make an upgrade," continued Gentzkow. "We needed a guy who
wants to compete on an everyday basis, not just once in a while," said
Gentzkow. "We needed to make a change and this was the right thing to do."
Both Renshaw and Gentzkow said there was no one incident that triggered the
firing. "They just called me into the office after my show and fired me,"
said Renshaw. "I started getting dizzy when he said they were going to make
a change. I felt sick." After getting the news, Renshaw said he stood up,
shook hands with Gentzkow and Matt Nahigian, Gentzkow's assistant, and
thanked them for the opportunity they had given him.
"It was a series of incidents that led to this," explained Gentzkow. "There
was nothing that happened today (that triggered the firing)." When Gentzkow
was asked to identify the "series of incidents" he declined.
"I was definitely caught off guard," said Renshaw. "Surprised? Yeah, you
could say I was surprised. And shocked, and stunned. I know I often talked
on the air about them firing me but deep down I never really thought they
were so unhappy with me that they would do it."
Renshaw, who Gentzkow admits is very popular in Kansas City, is not
popular - according to Gentzkow - nationwide. "The ratings just were not
there nationally for John," said Gentzkow.
One-on-One will be replacing Renshaw with Chicago Times sports columnist Jay
Mariotti, who currently hosts a weekend morning show at One-on-One. "Despite
the fact that we said good-bye to John Renshaw, this has been a significant
day here at One-on-One Sports," said Gentzkow. "We continue to reinforce our
lineup to compete in a very competitive industry." Gentzkow said Mariotti
gives One-on-One a "competitive edge" and "bona fide credibility."
In addition to replacing Renshaw with Mariotti, Gentzkow announced the
hiring of a three-man team to host One-on-One's morning show. The new
morning show will be made up of Bruce Jacobs out of Phoenix, another host
hired from the Phoenix market and a personality from Atlanta. This show will
begin August 30th.
When asked if he had any future plans, Renshaw said no. "I have always
wanted to do three things with my life; acting, write song lyrics and be a
sports talk radio host,: said Renshaw. "I love doing my show. I cannot
comprehend not having that relationship with my listeners anymore. I have no
idea what I'm going to do. If someone has a job offer or wants to contact me
they can email me at TER...@aol.com. It looks like I'll have some free time
to answer them."
Gentzkow is not blind to Renshaw's enormous talent. "If John would commit
himself to excellence, he could be scary good in this industry," said
Gentzkow. But for now, Renshaw has been silenced. It remains to be seen if
his fans can be.
RChinnis <rchi...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19990808150250...@ng-fl1.aol.com...
crackers81
Peter Brown.