April 9, 2018, Issue 596
Show Goes On:WQDR’s Mike Biddle
Curtis WQDR/Raleigh PD Mike Biddle was named to the post in March after January’s tragic passing of Lisa McKay Blake (CAT 1/15). Despite the challenging circumstances of the transition, Biddle is perhaps the best possible fit. He’d worked closely with McKay across two formats and two markets, Raleigh among them. Country Aircheck caught up with the Richmond native to get his thoughts on the shoes he’s filling and what’s on the horizon for the acclaimed radio station. CA: What’s your history in radio how often did it cross paths with Lisa’s? MB: Lisa hired me in 2002 just a couple of months after she got here, but we’d worked together before at [Top 40] WRVQ/Richmond, the hometown station where I got my start in Mike Biddle ‘96 or ‘97. I was just a part-time plug-me-inwhere-you-can, sleep-at-the-radio-station college kid. There wasn’t anything full-time available for me when I graduated, so I made a quick detour to Goldsboro, NC, which is just east of here and also a Curtis property. Eventually I realized it wasn’t quite the metropolis I was looking for, so I took a job doing nights at [Top 40] KWIN/ Stockton, CA, where I eventually moved to mornings and, later, afternoons. I was looking to come back when Lisa got the job here in 2002 and made me, I think, her first full-time hire. I did nights for the first year, then middays along with APD/MD duties and anything else she needed. I left in ‘07 to operate a small group of stations for Inner Banks/Greenville-New Bern, in which [Curtis Chairman/ CEO] Don Curtis was a partner, and finally came back to the Raleigh cluster in 2010 to program our Top 40, which I helped sign on with Lisa. And you’d been out of the business for a while prior to this? I went to work in 2016 for a marketing agency to kind of spread my wings and see if there was life outside of radio. That fell through eight or nine months later, so I’d been hanging out and keeping in touch with Lisa. When she passed – and it happened so fast – I reached out to everyone here just to offer my help with any(continued on page 9)
In The End: Warner Bros./WAR’s Chris Janson and Warner Bros./WMN’s Cole Swindell at the final Reason To Drink Tour stop in Los Angeles Saturday (4/7). Pictured (l-r) are the label’s Rick Young, KKGO’s Michael Levine, Janson, the label’s John Esposito, Swindell, the label’s Katie Bright, KUZZ’s Brent Michaels and the label’s Raffaella Braun.
Lights, Camera, Life Changes
Valory’s Thomas Rhett kicked off his Life Changes headlining tour April 5 in Tulsa, OK with Jillian Jacqueline and Brett Young. KVOO & KXBL PD Brian Jennings, KTGX PD Karla Cantrell and KWEN Dir./Branding & Programming Matt Bradley and MD Jenny Law were all on hand sporting reporter notebooks for Country Aircheck. “The stage design was amazing with a huge LED screen and a cat walk reaching into the crowd,” Cantrell says. “The production and visual artistry during the show is
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