St. Louis Radio: After Six Weeks, Dino Costa Exits KFNS

Dino Costa

Dino Costa roared into St. Louis last month on KFNS 590 AM The Fan nsfull of brashness and spunk, vowing to quickly take over the local sports-talk radio business.

“If I don’t dominate this market in a year, I will crawl on hands and knees back to Wyoming,” he said then. (See Original Posting, Click Here)

But now, Friday, final day of his sixth week on the air as the morning host,  was his last at the station. That’s because he perceives a management restructuring of the station is imminent, and he’s uncomfortable with that.

According to stltoday.com, Costa was hired by Randy Markel, a newcomer and renegade in the local radio business who wanted a swashbuckler to shake things up. And Costa has done that. He has made his mark locally with strong opinions interspersed with name-calling and coarse language.

“I’ve loved every minute I’ve been in St. Louis,” he said. “It was my desire to come to the market and provide a most unique and impactful radio endeavor and I believe I have done that by providing ... something that is clearly a radical departure from the status quo of St. Louis radio. I’ve enjoyed meeting so many great people in St. Louis. The Blues have treated me so well, I love their fan base. I’ve been looking forward to the Cardinals’ season. I really became attached in the six weeks I’ve been there. We were prepared as a family to move there, we just closed on a house and we had to put the breaks on that. I was looking forward to the future with a lot of excitement and thought it would be something I’d love to spend the next 20 or 25 years in St. Louis. But things change, the dynamics of the situation have changed.

Costa, 52, is an East Coast native who has worked in numerous markets, including Denver, Jacksonville, Fla., as well as Wheeling and Huntington, W.Va. His most prominent job was on Sirius XM Radio, for which he has a show for five years. He also has made TV guest appearances on Fox News.