Bobbi Maxwell, who resigned last month from WRRM-FM after more than 30 years on radio here, says we haven’t heard the last of her.
“I’m not done with radio. I still love it,” she tells me.
Maxwell left Cumulus’ WARM98 when managers refused to ease the burden of doing on-air and production (commercials) for 130 Westwood One stations – plus her own WARM98 afternoon drive shift.
Cumulus added more work to its employees in August after firing 70-plus Westwood One employees. She couldn’t take the stress any more.
“It was effecting my health and my local show. I couldn’t do anything with the phones (talking to listeners), or much of anything local,” she says. “Doing an afternoon drive in a show the size of this market (also) was just impossible. WARM98 was the biggest market I was on, and I was really missing my focus being there."
Her cheery voice got us home with a smile after our worst days at work. Bobbi was No. 25 on my “Top 40 Radio Personalities of the last 40 Years” list in 2013.
The 1978 Lakota High School graduate broadcast on the school’s WLHS-FM (with WVXU-FM’s Mark Heyne), and was once heard on WEBN-FM. She started her career on WKRQ-FM (Q102) in 1983. At WWNK-FM (1988-97), she was honored as one of Billboard magazine’s top five large-market adult contemporary music directors and DJs. She joined WARM98 as afternoon DJ in 1997.
Last August, Maxwell was given additional duties after returning from her honeymoon with GE software engineer Steve Stier.
“I knew after a few weeks I didn’t want to be part of this,” she says. She asked managers to change her Westwood One assignment or ease her workload, but it didn’t happen. She asked again in December. So she resigned two weeks ago.
Before starting double duty, she had done some “voice tracking” (recorded shows) for stations in Salt Lake City, Oregon and Mississippi. She’s considering doing that again, while devoting more time to her voice-over business (BobbiMaxwellvoiceovers.com) from the studio in her Finneytown home.
“I’m keeping my options open. I’m going to send out some demo (tapes) for voice-tracking jobs. It’s very easy to do that if the right job opens – or if someone up at Hubbard calls,” she said. Hubbard owns WKRQ-FM (Q102), where she started, and country stations WUBE-FM (105.1) and “The Wolf” WYGY-FM (97.3), and WREW-FM, “Cincinnati’s Best Mix” (94.9).
Maxwell doesn’t name names, but she says other workers at Cumulus here (WGRR-FM, “Fox” WOFX-FM, “NASH” country WNNF-FM and 96 Rock WFTK-FM) are stressed out too. Stay tuned.
