After a career spanning 51 years with KGY Radio, Olympia, Washington broadcasting legend Dick Pust’s career with the station ended suddenly Wednesday when he was let go as the station’s general manager.
He hosted his final early-morning radio show Wednesday at the iconic station that overlooks Budd Inlet, the last installment of a six-day-a-week broadcast that began at 5:30 a.m. and has run since 1967.
“I’m in shock,” said Pust about the sudden end to his connection to KGY, which broadcasts at 1240 on the AM dial and at 96.9 on FM.
Accounts varied Wednesday about why Pust no longer is with the station, according to a story at theolympian.com.
Pust said he was fired and that tensions had been building between him and KGY Inc. President and Chief Executive Jennifer Kerry, a resident of St. Petersburg, Fla., who visited the station in December and was there Wednesday.
Pust said Kerry approached him two weeks ago and asked him to prove his loyalty to the station by firing a particular staff member. Pust says he told her he could not, in good conscience, do that.
“It was so abhorrent to me that it felt like I was being initiated into a gang,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t “play their game” and was fired.
Kerry, whose mother, Barbara, used to own the station, sees it differently.
She said the station likely faces a typically slower first quarter for advertising revenue. With that in mind, she asked Pust to step down as general manager, likely taking a salary hit, because the station could not afford to continue paying a general manager. He was asked to continue with his show and work in the community, she said.
“Dick made the decision to leave the company because he did not choose to continue on in a lesser role,” Kerry said.
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