WMCS-AM (1290) has dropped its "Morning Magazine," replacing it from 6 to 9 a.m. with a syndicated show hosted by Grammy-winning gospel singer Yolanda Adams.
The syndicated Warren Ballentine Show will air from 9 a.m. to noon.
The program changes start Monday morning.
"Morning Magazine" co-hosts Cassandra Cassandra and Joel McNally have lost their jobs in the change, according to general manager Bill Hurwitz.
Tyrene Jackson, who hosted mid-day programming as "TJ," will remain with the station as operations director/program director, and appear on Earl Ingram's afternoon show.
"It is a financial decision," says Hurwitz, who stresses that WMCS continues with its mission to "super-serve" Milwaukee's African American community. "It would be very easy to change WMCS totally. That's a very expensive station to run."
I'll have more details in Monday's OnMedia column.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
