Industry Mourns Steve Young

[reeves]

Just wanted to post this for some of the guys that knew and worked with Steve, like Rick, Jay and others...

Industry Mourns Steve Young



Industry Mourns Steve Young
By Keith Berman

R&R extends its sincerest condolences to the friends and family of veteran programmer and consultant Steve Young, who suffered a heart attack and died on Monday (Dec. 8 ) while on a cruise to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Young most recently served as Dial-Global's senior program consultant.

Dial-Global executive VP of programming Beau Phillips tells R&R, "Steve had been under a lot of stress lately. Ironically, his brother in Toronto is suffering from terminal brain cancer and Steve had been flying back and forth from Seattle to Toronto to see his brother and that was wearing on him, as were the other stresses of life. He called me last Thursday [Dec. 4] and said he had just come from a doctor appointment where the doctor told him he was suffering from exhaustion and that he needed to go away to a beach somewhere to relax."

Phillips says that while on the ship bound for Cabo San Lucas, Young had a heart attack and was rushed to a hospital in Cabo where they stabilized him, but he had a second massive heart attack and died.

Young, who spent the last eight years working with Jones Radio Networks (now Dial-Global), had an extremely successful career, during which he programmed such high-profile stations as WAXQ (Q104.3)/New York, KISW/Seattle, CJAY/Calgary and CITI-FM/Winnipeg. He also was operations director of WNEW/New York and spent some time as Nationwide's western region group PD, overseeing a roster that included KLUC/Las Vegas and KRQQ/Tucson. He joined Jones Radio Networks in October 2000 as director of rock and pop programming, transitioning to senior programming consultant when the company became Dial-Global in June of this year.

Young had also spent a couple of decades as a consultant, starting with a gig at Joint Communications Corp. in 1986, and eventually opened his own firm, Youngradio Management, in 1995, working with a lineup that included WHTZ (Z100), WKTU and WTJM (Jammin 105) in New York.

"Radio lost a great leader today," a statement from Dial-Global on Tuesday morning (Dec. 9) said. "Our company mourns Steve Young, a friend and a mentor. Steve was Dial Global’s senior programming consultant. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Steve's family in Canada."

Phillips added, "In order to hire a Canadian program director in the U.S., you must first show that no American PD is as competent. But I really wanted to hire Steve Young at KISW. So, I filled out all the forms necessary to import him from Toronto. And those forms proved to be true. I've never met a smarter radio programmer than Steve Young."

Young and Phillips recently co-hosted a dinner at the NAB/R&R Convention in Austin, Texas, with some of the best programmers in the business. To honor Young, Dial Global has announced that the dinner will now be an annual event. Each year, the company will invite America’s top programmers to share food, drink and ideas.

-- Additional reporting by Mike Boyle

[Jay Nunley]

Steve was exceptional, both personally and professionally.

[Swing'n Dick]

This is very disappointing news. Thanks for posting this. And it's unfortunate that this news seems to have flown under the radar due to this being the radio hell months. Hopefully, Steve will be honored at next year's R&R Awards.