If you look at the list of Marconi Radio Award nominations, you’ll see few stations garnering multiple nominations. But 102.3 KRMG in Tulsa — led by Director of Branding and Programming Levi May — earned two nods in separate categories.
102.3 KRMG is one of five finalists for the Medium Market Station of the Year award, going up against other news/talk stations like KBOI-AM (Boise), WTIB (Greenville, NC), and WBEN-AM (Buffalo.
Skyler Cooper, the afternoon news anchor for the brand, is also a finalist for Medium Market Personality of the Year.
When asked what emotions he felt when finding out about the nominations, Levi May couldn’t have been more excited.
“It’s just exhilarating, because your team worked so hard, day in and day out, around the clock, severe weather, breaking news, and traffic incidents,” he shared. “We go out at night and on weekends. So to be recognized as one of the nation’s best in whatever category, every single station should be extremely proud to be one of the top five in any of the categories that they are nominated for.”
He shared he was particularly excited about the nomination for Cooper, whose father, Bob, was a Tulsa radio legend, helping launch K95.5 in the city.
“I am extremely excited for him. This is his first nomination. You can go your entire career and never even be nominated for one, let alone win one,” May said. “He’s been a part of our team for 14 years. And to be nominated for a personality award, as his counterpart, Dan Potter has won two himself — our morning host for the KRMG Morning News is — I’m just extremely proud of him.”
The news/talk brand has won both the Medium Market Station of the Year and News/Talk Station of the Year in the past. May joked that it’s hard to pick which one is more impressive.
“In news/talk, when we were able to take that award home in 2022 as the news talk station of the year, that is our format. That’s what we specialize in, and with that there’s no market size,” he said. “So we beat out markets that are size number two in Los Angeles, all the way down to Tulsa, which we’re market number 63. It does not matter what the market size is. It’s just how good you are at doing your unique skill set.
“So that, in itself, is an accomplishment, which we’re very proud of, because that’s the format that we specialize in. But when you say there’s no format with a medium market station of the year nomination, that’s all formats,” he continued. “I can’t really put one above the other.”
Marconi Radio Award nominations are hard to come by. But the reason 102.3 KRMG keeps securing nominations is because of the team chemistry built by the brand, May believes.
“We’re all very different, and what we like to do in our personal lives, but we all have a commonality, and that is to serve the Tulsa community,” he stated. “It doesn’t matter what our target demographic is. It doesn’t matter what is happening in the community. We like to focus on Tulsa and what really matters to us here, what affects us in our daily lives, and we are able to translate that to our audience. And we’re very candid about it. We’re very open about it. We interact with our audience quite frequently.
“We want feedback from our audience, because we don’t know how to get better if we don’t listen to them,” May added. “We do our market research, and that’s always been our North Star. So it’s things of that nature that we like to really just dig our heels into and really focus on where we work, where we live, and where we play.”
May also said he believes that programming strategy transcends market size.
“If you focus on your local community, those are the folks that really matter. And even when we have our syndicated host, we build great relationships with them at KRMG. We will bring them in on market visits, and love our audience to interact with them. We want to show off Tulsa,” May said, calling the Oklahoma city a “hidden gem.”
Earlier this year, Cox Media Group sold 102.3 KRMG — and its three other stations in the market — to a local ownership group led by optometrist Dr. Robert Zoellner.
May, who worked for Cox Media Group for 25 years in both Orlando and Tulsa, had nothing but good things to say about the former ownership group.
But local ownership has its perks.
“It’s local radio again, where Tulsa is the crown jewel,” May said. “Our four radio stations are the main focus of this media company. And for anybody out there that might be part of a larger broadcast company that think that local media might be dead, it is far from it. This just shot a surge of excitement into the building, because now, when we need something, we need to talk to somebody, or we need decisions made, we can walk down the hallway and whether it’s a yay or nay, we have a person and the decision makers right here.
“It’s very different from the corporate structure,” he continued. “We can pivot, we can be nimble, and we can put the focus right here in our community. That’s what’s really exciting, to be able to grow that from the ground up … I could open my door right now, yell down the hallway, and have decisions made. I really like that. I like that aspect of local ownership.”
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
