DC Radio: Tommy McFly Profiled In WaPo

FRESH Morning Show: Tommy McFly, Jen Richer, Kelly Collis (Washington Post photo)

Today WIAD 94.7 FM Morning personality Tommy McFly will be hosting the annual Whie House Easter Egg Hunt.  For the fourth time.  (See Original Posting: Click Here).  And Sunday, the magazine of The Washington Post, did a profile piece on the 27-year-old radio host, calling him DC's Ryan Seacrest.

The White House official in charge of the Easter Egg Roll, Director of the Visitors Office Ellie Schafer, says staff members who listened to him on the radio brought Tommy to the office’s attention. “He is young and fun and is a great emcee for the event.”

Washingtonians seem to agree. At 27, Tommy is a prince of D.C. media, with his highly rated morning show, regular appearances on WJLA-7, red-carpet interviews at the Kennedy Center Honors, and perma-host status not just at the White House but also at a stream of Washington charity events.

Although Tommy is always hyper-aware of his brand, he also comes across as unfailingly nice, completely without guile. He operates with an unedited candidness that often seems quaint, by Washington standards. But that’s his appeal, especially early in the morning.

Tommy is most easily compared to Ryan Seacrest, another “multi-platform” wunderkind. But, notes Barbara Martin, a principal in the public relations firm BrandLinkDC who has hired Tommy for various hosting duties, “Ryan Seacrest did not just happen.”

Neither did Tommy McFly.

At 15, he became the costumed mascot for Scranton’s WGGY 101.3 FM, a country music station whose FROGGY 101 bumper stickers (thanks to Tommy’s efforts) can be glimpsed in some episodes of “The Office.” “If I’m on the air at 30,” he says, “I will have been on the air for half of my life.” He was dubbed Tommy McFly because all of the station’s personalities had frog-themed monikers; at the time, there was also an Ann Phibian and a Polly Wogg.

Tommy went from playing Mr. Froggy, and pulling stunts such as stealing a car from a dealership lot, to on-air talent. By his senior year of high school, he had moved to mornings.

Tommy moved to Washington in 2006 when longtime DJ Jack Diamond, who calls him a “natural” radio personality, chose the 20-year-old to co-host his morning show on Mix 103.7 FM. In 2010, McFly became an afternoon host at 94.7 Fresh FM, but program director Steve Davis quickly moved him to mornings. “What convinced me was how hard I saw him work off the air,” he says. “He was out every night, shaking hands, kissing babies, bringing opportunities to the station. He was like a small-town politician soliciting votes.”

Tommy not only designed the format of the new morning show, which he describes as “three friends with a microphone living their lives on the radio,” but he also selected as co-hosts two friends with no professional on-air experience: Kelly Collis, who ran a shopping e-mail publication, and Jen Richer, who bonded with Tommy when she was an early morning producer at 105.9 FM WMAL, 107.3’s sister station.

“There was a lot at stake to take on three unproven talents, put them on a morning show in the number seven market … and have it work out the way it did,” Davis says. The show rose in the Nielsen ratings from 12th place to fifth place among 18- to 49-year-old women, its target demographic, with approximately 250,000 listeners per week. “I’ll tell you,” Davis says, “the gods are smiling on us.”

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