Sean Valentine, we hardly knew ye.
Correcting yet another mistake in the all-important morning drive slot, Adult Contemporary WLIT – the official music station of your local office and drugstore (and your official Christmas music station during the months of November and December) – will launch a brand new local morning show featuring Jeff Corder being paired with news anchor Karen Williams, with the title of the show Corder & Karen In The Mornings.
The news was first reported Monday afternoon by Time Out Chicago’s Robert Feder.
The move comes as a bit of a surprise as WLIT’s owner (Clear Channel) is more known for tracking any voice it can onto the radio airwaves. Valentine’s morning show was a perfect example – Valentine, a Los Angeles-based radio personality, voice-tracked (or pre-recorded) much of his tracks to use during morning drive.
In addition to his work at WLIT, Valentine also voice-tracked mornings for Clear Channel sister station WKSC-FM from 2001-03, when he was replaced locally by Drex.
The new show is a huge break for Corder. The south suburban native spent thirteen years as a night and weekend jock at Hubbard’s WTMX-FM before being let go in late 2010. Talk about working your way up.
The pairing of Corder and Williams marks WLIT’s fifth morning show in six years – in August 2006, longtime live and local morning personality Melissa Forman was dropped for Whoopi Goldberg’s unsuccessful syndicated show. After Whoopi bit the dust in October 2007, Melissa Forman returned to The Lite – but was shown the door again in August 2009 for the mostly voice-tracked Valentine. Now its Jeff Corder’s & Karen Williams’ turn – let’s just hope their new live and local – let me repeat that – live and local – morning talk show last more than two years.
The new show should launch in the next week or so, as no starting date has been determined. In the interim, WLIT is going jockless in morning drive.
And Chicago radio listeners – even though I was joking around a bit, aren’t you glad this didn’t happen?
Coming up next, a Chicago radio station will hire "Survivor" villain Russell Hantz for AM drive. Yep, the bar has been lowered THAT much.
— T Dog Media (@tdogmedia) July 5, 2012