Drew Lee

In the radio industry I grew up in – especially the one I came of age in, in my later twenties, at places like KDWB – competition in radio was a constant, ugly thing. Especially in big-market music radio, getting ratings was mortal combat, a bloodsport where morality and ethics (and, often as not, sobrieity) got chucked before the first break of the morning weather. Pirates looked at major market radio executives and thought “arrrrr, cut off the cutthrrroat stuff, matey”.

Some of that faded after the 2008 recession, when most of the money left music radio. And talk radio has usually been, if not genteel, at least a little more civilized.

Among talk radio people in the Twin Cities, the comity was almost unsettling. While AM1290 and AM1130 competed for the same audience, the wrenching animus just wasn’t there.

For years, now, the personalities at the various stations [1] – Bob Davis, Sue Jeffers, Ben Kruse, Jon Justice and Walter Hudson from the 1130, all us NARN guys from the 1280 (and Jack Tomczak, who’s been at both), and even to a lesser extent the likes of Blois Olson and Jason DeRusha from ‘CCO – have gotten along very amiably, socially. It’s disconcertingly far from the cage match I grew up in.

And so it’s with more than collegial wishes and sympathies that I note that Andrew “Drew” Lee, long-time morning guy at the 1130, has passed away:

I won’t say I knew Drew well – but we met many times. He sat in on bass with my band a few years ago, and at various points made overtures about trying to get all of us local talk show hosts together under the 1130 banner (for which I thanked him, but genuinely like working for Salem, and they’ve treated us all way too well for any of us to walk away lightly – which Lee, as a radio lifer, understood).

He was a big-hearted guy, a devoted family man, and the kind of radio road warrior you just don’t find anymore. .

Prayers and condolences to his real and radio families.

[1] Heck, even the MPR folks let their sense of monastic above-it-all-ness drop for a couple years, there. Management put an end to that nonsense a few years back, unfortunately. It’s been their loss.