D-C Radio: Here's What Killed Personality Kane At 43

Peter Deibler, a high-energy, mischievous radio personality known to listeners in the Washington area and across the country only as “Kane,” died March 6 at a hospital in Rockville, Md., of acute respiratory distress syndrome, according to his attorney, David Bulitt. Mr. Deibler was 43.

The Washington Post reports Deibler had spent more than two decades as a purveyor of largely PG-rated fare designed to attract teens and their mothers to his morning show on WIHT Hot 99.5in Washington and on stations in Baltimore and Tampa; his afternoon show on a handful of other outlets; and his Sunday evening syndicated program, which aired on more than 100 stations.

Deibler, whose Hot 99.5 show launched in 2006, had been off the air since last spring, but he remained under contract to the station’s parent company, iHeart Radio, Bulitt said.

In the years before satellite radio, the Internet and podcasting dissolved broadcast radio’s near-monopoly on the ears of American commuters, “The Kane Show” was one of the more popular examples of an entertainment package that found a middle lane between raunchy shock-jock programming aimed at young men and more serious news and talk fare.

As parents ferried their kids to school each morning, he played Top 40 hits, delivered celebrity gossip, highlighted community charities and enticed his mostly female audience with outrageous tales about nasty, clumsy, two-timing men.

Deibler had “the sort of buzz around him . . . that we haven’t heard on many broadcast radio morning shows in the last 20 years,” Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Research, said.