Houston Radio: Demise Of News92 Leaves 47 Jobless

When Radio-One pulled the plug on News92 on KROI 92.1 FM Wednesday it meant 47 employees, from news anchors, traffic reporters to sportscasters, must face an uncertain future.

The Houston Chronicle reports among the longtime journalists let go were longtime radio news anchors J.P. Pritchard and Lana Hughes, former KRIV (Channel 26) anchor Mike Barajas, traffic reporter Lanny Griffith and sports anchors Craig Roberts and Jorge Vargas.

Employees were notified shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday that the news format was being dropped and the station rebranded - for the moment - as B921 All-Beyoncé.

Bonnie Petri, Lana Hughes, Lanny Griffith, Maria Todd (Chronicle photo)

Several employees gathered at an area pub to trade phone numbers and email addresses and to toast what they felt was a successful, if not profitable, three-year run.

"What we did was bring a local voice back to radio," said Griffith, whose rapid-fire overviews of Houston's freeways were a staple of the morning drive-time newscasts. "We had great, veteran newscasters who knew their hometown. We put local people and local listeners on the forefront."

Pritchard and Hughes, who were laid off by KTRH in the spring of 2011 before they were reunited at KROI, said they enjoyed the chance to work again in radio news.

"It was a real treat and an honor to be able to do this again," Pritchard said. "We worked with great people, and we worked our hearts out. We were doing news like you learned it in Journalism 101, and we did a great job of covering Houston in a way that was interesting to people."

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After losing millions of dollars and posting three years of anemic ratings, the news watch stopped yesterday on “News 92” KROI.

Radio One made a valiant effort to bring Houston its first all-news FM, sparing no expense to assemble a seasoned staff of well-known local anchors, reporters, writers and producers, including J.P. Pritchard and Lana Hughes, morning news anchors for 27-years at “News Talk 740” KTRH.

The company spent aggressively on TV and outdoor marketing. But despite seemingly doing everything right, KROI consistently ranked in the bottom tier of the market in the ratings.  “People in Houston haven’t shown an appetite for FM news,” radio division president Chris Wegmann tells Inside Radio.