Talk about throwing one’s voice…
Listeners to "NewsRadio" KMBZ are a little confused re the whereabouts of midday talk show host Chris Merrill.
"I think he’s still on the air in Kansas City, but he was supposed to go to San Diego," says one. "Is he out there phoning it in?"
In a word, yes.
However many – if not most – KMBZ listeners don’t have a clue.
That’s because Merrill does such a good job of researching local and area topics online and constantly bantering with his board op 
/ producer as if they’re about to go out for lunch beers after the show.
The talk among insiders however is KMBZ would not let Merrill out of his contract until a replacement could be found.
So Merrill continues to phone it in, starting at 7 a.m. San Diego time and ending at 9 a.m. – that’s 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. in Kansas City. Which leaves the former Lawrence-ite plenty of time to prep for his 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. show on KOGO AM & FM on the left coast.
As for where Merrill’s loyalties may lie, check out the shirt.
Monkey radio guy
gotta eat in monkey radio climate. Next paycheck is what matters in the hard scrabble reality.
He’s on the KOGO line up….
I guess that cements that rumor.
You dumb ass
Hearne,
As usual, your reporting is about 90% correct. And, as usual, you leave it up to the reader to guess which 10% may be nothing more than your opinion.
Take a good look at the photo of me in the SoCal sweat and then use your still of deduction to figure out if my giant head belongs on that skinny ass body or if maybe my executive producer photo-shopped that pic as a gag. Feel free to dig deeper into my facebook pics than you did with the one you stole (without copyright permission, might I add) and pull up the one of me in my Royals jersey at the Anaheim game for the opening series. Guess you forgot that one.
I know it’s rough, but here’s a novel idea when reporting on contracts: call somebody. I would’ve been happy to give you the truth. It’s like this, I had a contract with Entercom and they expected me to fulfill my obligations, as they should. I got an offer that I couldn’t refuse for both professional and personal reasons, so I asked Entercom if they would consider releasing me. They were reluctant, negotiations began and in the end we came to an amicable resolution. As for me on the air still, I happily offered that I would do everything in my power to make any transition to a new talent as smooth as possible. KMBZ has, as you reported with 90% accuracy, gone through some changes recently and I didn’t want to add to the stress any more than I already had.
Feel free to pick up your fancy reporter phone the next time you want information instead of relying on speculation of people who are twice removed from the situation.
Hey, nice touch…
Let me get this straight; what I wrote was correct but you take issue with the fact that I didn’t ferret out that your So Cal pic was photoshopped onto another person’s skinnier body?
And that I didn’t contact you for a comment? Actually, I tried.
There’s no message option I could find on your Facebook page, so I contacted the station for a comment. You can check that if you like. The man in charge declined to address your leaving and why you were still phoning it in from San Diego.
Don’t know how much if any I’ll be writing about you now that you’re basically gone, but why don’t you send me your contact information to hearne@kcconfidential.com and we can take it from there?
Thanks for weighing in.