WMYX-FM (99.1) morning show co-host Kidd O’Shea announced on the air Wednesday that he is leaving the station to work in television at WJLA-TV the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C.
In an email he confirmed that he will be social media anchor for “Good Morning Washington.”
O’Shea, a Milwaukee native, is also a lifestyle reporter for WISN-TV (Channel 12).
He attended Homestead High School and Cardinal Stritch College. He joined WMYX in 2004 after working at WKTI-FM for eight years. He started at WKTI when he was 16-years old.
O’Shea became WMYX morning show host in 2006 and is currently teamed with Elizabeth Kay.
Their show was always in the top five among female listeners 25-54.
In 2012, after Pres. Obama announced his support for same sex marriage, O’Shea announced on the air that he was gay. “I had to ask, ‘Why don’t these people I spend every morning with know yet?’” he told the Wisconsin Gazette. He is the only openly gay member of Milwaukee’s broadcast media.
“There was never a fear,” about coming out publicly, said O’Shea, who came out to friends and family when he was 18 years old. “I was never really worried about how it would go,” he said in a phone interview.”
“I knew I had grown up with this audience and they had known me for a long time. And there was a part of my life I wasn’t sharing with them and they deserved to know about. And once I shared that piece and it was a minor piece … I was able to connect with them on a different level.”
“I was living in my truth and I could be who I was and … not skirt around anything and not pretend. I didn’t want to come out on the air and be the gay show. I wanted to be who I was. And it happens I’m a radio host and I’m gay.”
O’Shea is the second high profile departure from Milwaukee morning radio. Earlier this week WKLH-FM (96.5) announced it did not renew veteran morning show co-host Carole Caine’s contract.
Caine had been with the station for nearly thirty years, teamed with Dave Luczak.
Tags: Carole Caine, gay, Kidd O'Shea, WKLH, WMYX Posted by