Nathan Skid
When yawning and bleary-eyed metro Detroiters begin their day on March 29, absent from their car radios for the first time in 45 years will be the voice of Dick Purtan.
Known for his humor, charity work and trademark mustache, Purtan announced on Feb. 11 that he’s retiring next month from oldies station WOMC-FM 104.3, ending a career that began more than 50 years ago. That includes on-air stints at different Detroit stations since 1965.
Widely considered a pioneer of the modern morning radio format of comedy bits, chatter and music, and the recipient of nearly every imaginable award in the business, Purtan exits the industry at a time of immense change.
Some of that change has been pressure from radio station managers and owners to talk and laugh less on air, and play more music instead.
It’s the result of increasingly detailed and instant audience measurement technology, such as Arbitron Inc.‘s Portable People Meters that replaced the traditional written diary method in recent years.
“That’s been a problem. Music radio is music radio, and talk radio is talk radio,” Purtan said. “It’s harder to be a so-called personality and entertain on music radio. There’s not as much time as there used to be. Owners want to play more music.”
That pressure isn’t the primary reason Purtan is retiring, however.
Purtan, who has six adult daughters — including Jackie, who works on the show — told his family last summer that he planned to retire at some point in the next 12 months.
He reached the final decision during time off at Christmas after his wife, Gail, tearily told him she didn’t want him to go back to work.
Gail Purtan has survived ovarian cancer for the past 13 years and breast cancer for the past five years — diseases her husband has used his proven on-air fundraising abilities to fight.
“I decided it was time I devoted 100 percent of my time to her instead of 90 percent,” he said, adding that they plan to spend time in Florida and cruising while he mulls writing an autobiography and podcasting in retirement.
Some local radio insiders speculate the cost-cutting within the industry, which dwindled Purtan’s large cast of on-air sidekicks and production staff, also significantly fueled his decision to quit.
“I remember when Purtan’s studio looked like a circus,” said Dick Kernen, vice president of industry relations at Southfield-based Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts and a 50-year veteran of the radio industry who worked with Purtan over the years.
“This isn’t just somebody that decided to resign only to spend more time with his family. This resignation was because it wasn’t fun anymore,” Kernen said.
WOMC’s owner, CBS Radio Detroit, declined to renew two more of the show’s staffers last year, and Purtan doesn’t hide his displeasure at the state of the radio business.
“I wasn’t happy with that, but that was the situation,” he said. “Things have tightened up a great deal.”
That’s a departure from what he calls the freewheeling early days of his career, when he once interviewed John F. Kennedy from the lip of a stage during a 1960 campaign stop in Jacksonville, Fla. — Purtan still remembers the questions he asked — and scraping up with other disc jockeys the $12,500 needed to bring The Beatles to perform in Cincinnati in 1964.
The next year, he hired on at Detroit’s WKNR-AM, better known as Keener 13.
He would work at several other local stations, and at one point had an equity stake in WKQI-FM 95.5, before launching his “Purtan’s People” morning show on WOMC in 1996.
His retirement opens an enormous gap in WOMC’s lineup, the lucrative morning drive-time slot sought by advertisers.
“At some point, when the time is right, we’ll talk about the evolution (of the morning slot),” said Deb Kenyon, senior vice president and market manger for CBS Radio Detroit. “We’re a great station today and we’ll be a great station six months from now.”
Kenyon said the station will be honoring Purtan on air in coming weeks.
“He’s not replaceable. There’s no talent like that,” she said.
A few names to take over the morning slot have been floated among radio insiders.
“It will have to be with someone who is well known, recognizable and has a proven track record of success in Detroit morning radio,” said Don Tanner, a partner in Farmington Hills-based Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications and radio veteran who just published an updated version of his book on the radio and music industries, No Static At All.
Tanner believes Jim Johnson or Lynne Woodison, who for many years did the “J.J. and Lynne” morning show WCSX 94.7 FM until 2008, are possibilities — but separately, because Woodison is suing station owner Greater Media Inc.
“Also intriguing is the duo of Chris Edmonds and Stacey Duford (formerly morning show hosts at WNIC 100.3 FM and recently teamed on WOMC’s Sunday Brunch program),” Tanner said. “A wildcard might also be Ann Delisi, who is doing her weekend show at WDET. She has a large, loyal following out there although has traditionally worked more with alternative music, including the original “River.’ “
Whoever takes over will do it in an uncertain economic climate.
Purtan said he’s heard that $100 million in radio advertising revenue has evaporated from the Detroit market, mirroring an industry trend that has forced the major radio corporations to cut jobs and belt-tighten.
“The economic situation has hurt radio a great deal. It’s a tough business now to be in,” he said.
“It could be $100 million or close to it,” said Bill Burton, CEO of Troy-based Detroit Radio Advertising Group, which sells advertising on behalf of a consortium of member stations. It gave Purtan a lifetime radio achievement award a few years ago.
“It’s a tough struggle, but it’s still a very good business,” Burton said.
Such lifetime awards are going to be harder to earn because the economics and culture of radio today make it much more difficult now for someone to spend decades in a market doing the same thing, radio industry watchers say.
“It takes a very long time to become what Purtan and people like that have done. It takes years and years to establish being part of people’s day,” Kernen said.
Matching how many years Purtan did it to his age is impossible because he’s coy about his birth date.
However, he did confirm that he was a senior at Syracuse University when he turned over his programming director job at the campus radio station to a hand-picked sophomore: future television newsman Ted Koppel, who turned 70 this month.
In the 1990s, Purtan was able to move from the traditional revenue-sharing model contract — in which he would get a cut of the advertising dollars from airtime sold during his show — to a straight salary deal that his lawyer, Henry Baskin of Birmingham-based The Baskin Law Firm P.C., said makes him the highest paid non-syndicated radio personality in the nation.
But it’s raising money for charities that may be Purtan’s real forte.
His annual radiothon benefiting The Salvation Army’s Bed and Bread Program, scheduled for Friday, has raised more than $22 million for the program since 1988.
After retirement, he intends to stay involved behind the scenes with the charities, but not on air, he said.
Even when Purtan is wistful reflecting on his career, the trademark wit isn’t far off: “Forty-five years is a pretty good stretch of time to be doing a show in one town. The audience must have had strong stomachs to accept me for that long of a time.”
And don’t look for him shilling on television commercials, either, which he steadfastly said he will not do. Nor will his lawyer of 34 years allow him.
“I told him if I catch him selling windows or a piece of furniture, I’d come over and kill him,” Baskin said.
