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Published on Friday, 17 August 2012 09:10
With the Chicago-based industry website Radio-Info coming to an end (at least as it is currently known) and being
taken over by a new ownership group as of this weekend, the last remaining newsletter writer at Radio-Info.com said his goodbyes this morning. Tom Taylor, who has been the website's Executive News Editor and writer of the weekday morning "Taylor on Radio-Info" newsletter, officially exits the company as of today.
Taylor has been with Radio-Info and its parent company In3media, Inc., since May 2007. Prior to that, Taylor was a writer & editor with Inside Radio, first from 1989-1987, and then from 2002-2007. In the middle time (2002-2007), he was the Editor of the M Street Daily and M Street Journal, until the M Street Corporation merged into Inside Radio, thus bringing him back to the company he left a few years before. He also wrote for FMQB for a short while before first joining Inside Radio.
Before writing about the radio industry for a living, Tom Taylor worked in it. While still in college (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Taylor began working at WCHL-AM in Chapel Hill, NC. By the time he graduated college, he was the station's Program Director. He went on to program stations in Lexington, KY, before spending many years as Vice President of Operations and Programming for Nassau Broadcasting's WPST-FM in Trenton, NJ and WHWH-AM in Princeton, NJ.
Tom Taylor truly has radio in his blood, as his father was Bill Taylor, a radio (and television) executive for over 30 years. Young Tom Taylor spent many of his formative years in and around radio stations.
Just as Radio-Info's owners, Diana and Rick Fleming, are leaving the business to enjoy retirement, Tom Taylor is also going to enjoy some well-deserved free time. Unlike the Flemings, Taylor isn't using the "r" word. With Taylor being only 62 years old, there is still plenty of writing work inside of him. He is just going to enjoy some time away from spending his days typing up media news items before deciding on what is next.
Near the start of his
final T-R-I newsletter, Tom Taylor said this morning:
"With the transfer of Radio-Info.com to Michael Harrison of Talkers, I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on some sleep and do a little traveling. I grew up around a radio station, and I've been lucky enough to have had not one but two careers in the business -- first, programming radio stations and now writing about the business. I still think it's special -- or can be -- and I'll bet you do, too."
After doing a final wrap-up of yesterday's radio news items, Tom Taylor concluded his final newsletter with these words:
"After five years and three months, since May 21, 2007, this is the final daily TRI Newsletter I'll be writing. The Radio-Info.com site that's the home of TRI has been sold to Michael Harrison of Talkers, and I absolutely wish Michael well, going forward. After writing a million words a year, I'm choosing to take some time off. (As my wife reminds me, we haven't taken a vacation since 1995.) It's been my great privilege to be associated with Rick and Diana Fleming, the owners of our parent in3media. After seven years in their unplanned role as publishers, Rick and Diana are retiring. So here are the "thanks" -- To the Flemings, for their steadfast support. To patient editor/idea person/unmatched radio history resource Robert Unmacht. I don't know anyone else like him, and radio will never know how much he's contributed to our industry. There's also graphics phenom Nathan Peters, a partner in producing TRI every late-night for more than two years. Thanks are also due to his worthy predecessors in that role. Also the folks at the website such as executive editor Dana Hall, the fine crew in the Chicago office, and a magnificent cast of contributors at the other newsletters you've read about here. Thanks to the tireless editors at the Discussion Boards. Thanks to the advertisers who've supported TRI and the site, and to our own diligent salespeople. Special acknowledgement to Doug Fleming, a true radio geek who started the Radio-Info.com discussion boards back in 1999, and who died all too young. (That's when his parents got into the business.)
Thanks to you -- for your time and your engagement. The level of engagement with readers at TRI is the highest I've seen in two decades of covering the business. People cared about what they read, and they responded. Radio is important, and the next steps it takes are critical to its place in American life. We need to give it our honest best effort. This is also the last time I can apologize for my "Sins," to everybody whose name, title, call letters or frequency I mangled. I recently delivered 20 boxes filled with radio trade publications to the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland, and I was awed by the number of publications that have surveyed the radio sector since the 1920s. Some endured for decades, others for just a few months. This one ran five years -- not bad. TRI was based on a simple idea -- learn the facts, report them fairly, and interpret them in an interesting, even slightly addictive, fashion. That's what I try to do. "Au revoir" means "until we see each other again." After today, you can reach me here --
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
. Be well -- Tom"
Tom Taylor and his wife live in the greater New York City area.
The newly-formed company, Radio Info, Inc., majority owned by Michael Harrison, Publisher of Talkers.com, takes over ownership of Radio-Info.com on Sunday, August 19th. The company and website will no longer be based out of Chicago, but rather be operated out of Springfield, MA.
