John Crenshaw has spent enough years in Ohio radio to know how this movie ends when somebody starts using the word restructuring. This week, his latest chapter in Columbus came to a close as he exited the Operations Manager role at North American Broadcasting, where he had responsibility across 99.7 The Blitz, 103.9 The Maverick, Fox Sports 920 and Star 94.1. Crenshaw described the situation with the kind of dark humor you usually develop only after surviving more than one round of radio cuts. Unfortunately, he has.
The important part of this story, though, is not that another programmer is suddenly available.
It is that Columbus just lost somebody who knows this market unusually well.
Crenshaw’s connection to Central Ohio goes back to the 1990s. He first arrived at WCOL during that decade, left for Virginia, then returned in 2001 when the Country station needed a program director. By 2005, Clear Channel had expanded his responsibilities beyond WCOL and put him in charge of programming across a Columbus cluster that included WNCI, WTVN and several other major local brands. Contemporary industry coverage from the period shows just how firmly established he had become in the city by then.
That first long Columbus run ended in December 2012 when Clear Channel made company-wide cuts. Country Aircheck documented Crenshaw among the programmers eliminated in that round.
That history gives his latest description of another layoff a little more weight.
He has seen this before.
And he came back before.
After Columbus, Crenshaw kept moving through radio management and programming roles that took him through Michigan, Youngstown, Florida and Charlottesville. He eventually found his way back to Central Ohio again when North American Broadcasting hired him to oversee programming as the company moved out of the Hal Fish era.
That return turned out to be much more than maintaining somebody else’s stations.
One of Crenshaw’s first major moves after coming back was helping take WJKR out of the long-running Jack FM format and into Country in April 2022. Country Aircheck documented the flip that week, and North American’s own material later placed Crenshaw directly inside the station’s programming operation.
There was something wonderfully circular about that.
The man who had spent years programming WCOL came back to Columbus and suddenly found himself helping build another Country choice across town.
That is not the kind of thing you learn from a market overview.
Crenshaw knew Columbus Country radio because he had already lived a large part of its modern history.
WJKR eventually evolved again, moving into the Classic Country lane as 103.9 The Maverick, where the current presentation leans heavily into the artists and songs that defined Country radio in the 1990s and 2000s. North American still positions the station as a Central Ohio alternative built around familiar Country hits, and even now the company’s website continues to list Crenshaw under programming while the digital side catches up with his departure.
That tells you how fresh this is.
It also tells you how much of the current operation still has his fingerprints on it.
The same is true at The Blitz.
99.7 has been part of Columbus Rock culture since the early 1990s. The station went through its own evolution over the years, but the Blitz name became one of those durable local brands that survived multiple music cycles and changes in how people consume Rock. Historical coverage from the early years shows just how quickly the station connected with younger male listeners after its 1992 launch, and later industry coverage documented its return to a more aggressive Active Rock identity after an experiment with a broader Rock presentation.
Crenshaw inherited a station with that kind of history.
That is different from programming a startup.
With a heritage brand, every decision comes with ghosts in the room.
Listeners remember what the station sounded like twenty years ago.
They remember personalities.
They remember promotions.
They remember concerts.
They remember when a song first broke.
A programmer’s job is to move the brand forward without convincing the audience that the station they loved disappeared while nobody was looking.
Crenshaw had to do that while also overseeing a Country station, a sports station and a Soft AC brand.
That is a lot of different radio living under one roof.
North American Broadcasting itself is unusual in 2026 because it remains a locally owned Central Ohio company. Its roots go back to the late 1950s, and the company still describes its entire operating philosophy around making programming, marketing and sales decisions specifically for Central Ohio.
That local ownership is what makes Crenshaw’s departure particularly interesting to me.
Because when radio people talk about local ownership, they usually talk about it as an automatic cure for everything wrong with broadcasting.
It is not.
Local owners still have budgets.
Local owners still make difficult decisions.
Local owners still reduce staffs.
Local ownership can give a station more freedom to respond to its market, but it does not somehow remove economics from the building.
That is reality.
Crenshaw’s exit is another reminder of it.
What makes the departure sting is the amount of institutional knowledge involved.
He is an Ohio native.
His career started in Youngstown.
He worked Akron.
Canton.
Cleveland.
Columbus.
Then Columbus again.
Country Aircheck’s current reporting notes that his career has also included Youngstown, Grand Rapids, Fort Walton Beach and Charlottesville, along with more than two decades of involvement with the Country Radio Seminar board and agenda committee.
That is not simply a résumé.
That is a lot of radio stored in one person.
Crenshaw knows what it feels like when a Country station is winning.
He knows what it feels like when it is not.
He knows what a Rock audience expects.
He knows what it takes to program multiple stations without turning them all into different versions of the same station.
He knows Columbus.
And he knows what happens when the budget meeting goes badly.
The irony here is difficult to ignore.
In 2012, Crenshaw’s first major Columbus chapter ended during a large corporate reduction.
Fourteen years later, another Columbus chapter ends with Crenshaw again describing himself as caught in a layoff.
Radio has changed enormously between those two moments.
The economics have changed.
Distribution has changed.
Streaming has changed.
Cars have changed.
Phones have changed.
Artificial intelligence is now sitting in meetings with us whether people like it or not.
One thing apparently has not changed much.
Experienced broadcasters still occasionally wake up one morning and discover the company has decided the spreadsheet no longer includes their chair.
That is not an indictment of North American Broadcasting.
It is simply where this business is.
And it is exhausting.
Because somebody like John Crenshaw is exactly the kind of person the industry keeps saying it needs.
Experienced.
Local.
Multi-format.
Able to coach talent.
Able to program.
Able to go on the air.
Able to build a station.
Able to understand Country culture and Rock culture without treating either one like a demographic exercise.
Then the same industry turns around and periodically removes people like that in the name of economics.
Those two ideas cannot coexist forever without consequences.
North American now has to decide what programming leadership looks like from here.
The company still has strong brands.
The Blitz is still The Blitz.
The Maverick still has an interesting lane in a crowded Country market.
Fox Sports 920 still gives Columbus another sports outlet.
Star 94.1 still fills its own Soft AC space.
None of that disappears because one executive leaves.
But the knowledge walking out the door does matter.
A market programmer is not simply the person who approves the music log.
Done correctly, that person is the memory bank.
Why did we try this before?
Why did it fail?
Why does that listener event matter?
Why does that personality work here?
Why does that promotion sound great in another market and wrong in Columbus?
Why does this station need to sound different from the one across the street?
Those answers take years to acquire.
Crenshaw already had them.
That is what Columbus is losing.
I have no idea where John Crenshaw lands next, and I am not going to manufacture some happy-ending prediction because that is what trade stories are supposed to do.
What I do know is that radio has already given him more than one reason to start over.
And he has done it.
More than once.
Maybe that is the real lesson here.
Companies come and go.
Titles come and go.
Budgets change.
Formats change.
But a broadcaster who actually understands people, markets and stations carries that knowledge into the next building.
John Crenshaw has been carrying a lot of Ohio radio around with him for a very long time.
Wherever the next microphone, programming office or cluster takes him, that part does not disappear just because his name comes off the North American website.
Columbus radio will sound a little different without him in that building.
And after this many years, that alone makes the departure worth more than a two-paragraph personnel note.
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