Kyle Santillian arrives from North Carolina
WGCI is hoping someone from Mayberry can turn around its morning luck.
As first reported by RobertFeder.com on Tuesday, iHeartMedia’s urban contemporary station has hired Kyle Santillian to anchor its new morning show, beginning this Thursday. Santillian arrives from Entercom-owned urban contemporary station WJMH-FM (102 Jamz) in Reidsville, N.C., which serves the Greensboro-Winston Salem-High Point market, also known as the Piedmont region. Santillian was the morning personality at WJMH for eleven years, until he was released last July. Santillian also hosted a two-hour live community affairs program on Sunday mornings called Straight Talk.
Joining him is Kendra G, whose last local gig was on Power 92’s Trey the Choklit Jock morning show. In 2013, she was an on-air contributor to WVEE-FM’s morning show in Atlanta, which like Chicago’s WVAZ, is also branded “V-103”, though with an urban contemporary format as opposed to an urban adult one.
A hold over from WGCI’s previous morning show (Leon Rogers) is also joining Santillian’s new program.
There were rumors WGCI would replace the previously canceled Morning Riot with the nationally syndicated Breakfast Club out of WWPR New York, which like WGCI is an urban contemporary outlet owned by iHeart Media and runs on some of the company’s urban outlets. But at the end of the day, WGCI decided to stay live and local.
WGCI’s track record in the morning hasn’t exactly been stellar: this is the station’s fourth program in the daypart in ten years.