R.I.P.: Jerry Thomas, Former Cincy Radio Personality, Programmer

Jerry Thomas (1939-2022)

Jerry Thomas woke up Greater Cincinnati radio listeners with "punch lines you missed" and quips from his "Granny" character for four decades on WKRC–AM, and helped build sister station WKRQ-FM (Q102) into a rock powerhouse with the hiring of a young programmer named Randy Michaels.

He died Thursday morning at age 83.  Cincy Media Watcher John Kiesewetter at WVXU. org reports the news was announced by his son Brian Thomas, who took over the WKRC-AM morning show after his father's retirement in 2006.

"Dad passed away early this morning. He was a wonderful father and husband," he wrote.

The 1957 Elder High School graduate was a WKRC-AM fixture for 44 years, including when his morning show was No. 1 for most of the 1980s — a significant accomplishment considering the station broadcasts on 5,000 watts, compared to WLW-AM's 50,000 watts, with an AM sound quality inferior to FM radio.

Thomas survived by adapting with the industry, playing hits by Madonna on the radio in the 1980s, then going home and listening to Stan Kenton and other jazz artists.

After retiring in 2006 at 67, Thomas continued to be heard voicing commercial endorsements on Cincinnati radio for years, often on his son's morning show.

"I believe he was the best pitch man in the business," says John Phillips, the longtime traffic reporter and radio personality who started his career at WKRC in 1974. "He related so well to the listener. If Jerry said it was worth it, you could take it to the bank."

Born John Gerald Crusham on Nov. 11, 1939, the Price Hill native started his broadcasting career in 1957 as a WLWT-TV "floor boy" helping set up Ruth Lyons' 50-50 Club and Bob Braun's Bandstand show.

He worked at Kentucky radio stations in Paris, Lexington and Louisville before coming home to the 1-6 a.m. shift on WKRC-AM on May 1, 1962, when the station began 24-hour broadcasting. He legally changed his name to Jerry John Thomas in 1965, before Brian was born.

In his four decades at old Taft Broadcasting — which once owned WKRC-AM, WKRQ-FM and WKRC-TV — he did about everything. He was a DJ; radio program director; Q102 station manager; salesman; sales manager; morning personality; and conservative talk host paired in mornings with Craig Kopp. He also co-hosted PM Magazine on Channel 12 in 1984-85.

After doing his 9 a.m.-noon shift on WKRC-AM in the early 1970s, Thomas worked as station manager at WKRQ-FM as it was transitioning from automated rock music to live DJs. In March 1974, he hired Chris O'Brien to join FM staffers Pat Barry, Jim Fox and Ted McAlister. Soon after he brought Randy Michaels here from Buffalo as program director.

In 1992, he made headlines by abruptly leaving WKRC-AM after 30 years after failing to reach a contract renewal with the station's owner, Great American Broadcasting, which had proposed a 40% pay cut, he said.

But by the end of 1992, he returned to the WKRC-AM morning show after the station was bought by Clear Channel, owners of rival WLW-AM and managed by Michaels.