John Hakim has spent the last five years sitting across from Charleston business owners asking them to trust radio with their money. That may be one of the better preparations anybody could have for the job Saga Communications just handed him. Hakim has been promoted from Director of Sales to General Manager of Charleston Media Solutions, succeeding Paul O’Malley as O’Malley moves into a larger corporate revenue role with Saga. On paper, it is an internal promotion. In Charleston, it is somebody who has spent years learning how the Lowcountry actually does business being given responsibility for six very different local radio brands.
I like promotions like this because there is nothing theoretical about the education Hakim has already received.
Charleston is growing fast. The Charleston Regional Development Alliance says the metro has added more than 70,000 people since 2020 and is now approaching 890,000 residents, with more than 40 newcomers arriving in the region on an average day. The labor force is pushing toward half a million people. Tourism contributes roughly $14 billion to the regional economy, while manufacturing, aerospace, logistics, technology, healthcare and the Port of Charleston give local sellers a business community far more complicated than the postcards of Rainbow Row and horse-drawn carriages might suggest.
That is the market Hakim has been selling.
Not an abstract DMA.
Charleston.
Mount Pleasant.
Summerville.
North Charleston.
James Island.
Daniel Island.
Goose Creek.
Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties.
A region that keeps changing while still being fiercely protective of what makes the Lowcountry the Lowcountry.
Hakim arrived at Saga after working with Cox Media Group in Jacksonville and has spent the past five years overseeing sales for the Charleston operation. Now he moves from responsibility for revenue into responsibility for everything that eventually affects revenue anyway: programming, people, digital, community relationships, expenses, culture and the daily question every local media company faces in 2026.
How do we remain indispensable here?
That question gets interesting when you look at what is actually inside the building on Clements Ferry Road.
Saga’s Charleston portfolio includes 92.5 Kickin Country, Mix 95.9, Star 99.7, 101.7 Chuck FM, Heaven 1390 and 100.1, and 99.3 The Box. Those are not six variations of the same audience. Country listeners are not necessarily the same people listening to Star. Heaven has a relationship with Charleston’s faith community that is completely different from what 101.7 Chuck FM is trying to accomplish. The Box has its own audience and culture. Mix 95.9 is built around contemporary Pop and personalities.
That diversity is where the job gets difficult.
A good cluster GM understands the temptation to make everything easier by making everything the same.
Same promotions.
Same digital strategy.
Same sales pitch.
Same community partnerships.
Same corporate language with a different logo sitting in the corner.
That is also how you drain the life out of local brands.
Charleston Media Solutions already has plenty of evidence that these stations can operate as individual pieces of the community.
Mix 95.9’s current schedule still includes a heavily personality-driven morning show with Tanya Brown, Brooke Ryan and Jay Shadix, along with local dayparts throughout the workday. Its community calendar looks like Charleston because it includes things such as the Lowcountry Cajun Festival, events at Boone Hall, local charity runs and the Blessing of the Fleet in Mount Pleasant.
Star 99.7 is serving a completely different audience while doing the same basic local job. The station maintains information around Charleston-area schools, community organizations and local events, and its weekday lineup combines Steve Harvey with local personalities and locally produced dayparts. Earlier this year, the station promoted hurricane preparedness with Charleston County emergency officials because that is the kind of information a coastal station should be talking about before anybody sees a cone of uncertainty headed toward South Carolina.
101.7 Chuck FM has tied itself to Charleston institutions ranging from the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition to Credit One Stadium concerts, Lowcountry festivals and community events. When a station is giving away SEWE tickets and referring to the event as the unofficial beginning of the Charleston social season, that is at least trying to sound like the place where the transmitter lives.
Heaven has gone even further into a particular part of the community, offering locally focused faith programming and a Pastors Network alongside music and other content. 99.3 The Box operates in another lane again, with a schedule built around Urban personalities and syndicated shows surrounded by local presentation.
Those distinctions are valuable.
They are also something Hakim should understand especially well because salespeople discover very quickly that audiences are not interchangeable.
A client does not walk into the building asking to buy “radio.”
They are trying to sell a house.
Fill a restaurant.
Move cars.
Hire employees.
Sell concert tickets.
Reach a particular neighborhood.
Grow a medical practice.
Find customers who may look very different depending on which station is sitting across the table.
A Director of Sales lives inside those conversations every day.
Now the conversations get bigger.
Charleston itself gives Hakim an extraordinary laboratory for what local media can become. The regional economy is expanding, and that growth brings new advertisers along with new listeners. The Charleston Regional Development Alliance says more than 18,000 new business applications were filed in the region in 2024, more than double the level of a decade earlier. That is a remarkable amount of entrepreneurial activity entering a market where local media companies should be positioning themselves as business partners rather than people selling thirty-second units.
That is probably the most important part of Hakim’s promotion.
Radio sales is not just radio sales anymore.
It cannot be.
A local business owner has Google sitting on one shoulder, Meta on the other, somebody selling connected television in the lobby and another person explaining why the company needs to completely rebuild its website because apparently the internet changed again during lunch.
Radio has to walk into that meeting with more than a rate card.
Saga has been moving its local operations toward that broader marketing model, and even the Charleston identity reflects it. The operation is branded Charleston Media Solutions rather than simply Charleston Radio Group because the expectation is that the company can combine its broadcast brands with digital products and marketing services.
Hakim has been living in that environment for five years.
That makes the move logical.
Paul O’Malley’s promotion is part of the same story.
O’Malley moves into Saga’s Senior Vice President of Revenue Development role, taking what he has learned in Charleston into a position where he can work on revenue strategy across the company. He is also staying involved as Hakim settles into the GM chair, which gives Charleston something leadership transitions do not always provide: continuity.
There is value in that.
Especially because Hakim does not need six months to learn who everybody is.
He knows the building.
He knows the clients.
He knows the competition.
He knows which sellers can close.
He knows which promotions advertisers actually care about.
He knows what happened when something was tried three years ago.
He knows who calls when the commercial is wrong.
He probably knows which client will send an email at 4:58 Friday afternoon asking whether the campaign can start Monday morning.
That is local radio management.
The glamorous stuff.
😂
There is another piece of Hakim’s local involvement that I like. He has participated in Charleston’s broader marketing community, including work around an American Marketing Association initiative that paired area college students and marketing professionals with local nonprofits to build campaigns. The 2026 event brought students and professionals together at the College of Charleston School of Business to solve actual marketing problems for nonprofit organizations serving the Tri-County area.
That may sound small compared with running six radio brands.
I think it says something useful.
A healthy local media company should be connected to the people learning the business, the people buying the advertising and the community organizations trying to get something accomplished.
That is how you build a bench.
It is also how you keep radio from becoming a building full of people talking only to other radio people.
Hakim now inherits responsibility for making sure that connection stays alive.
And I hope he leans into it.
Charleston is too interesting to produce generic radio.
This region has a massive tourism economy, a globally important port, Boeing, Volvo, growing technology and professional sectors, one of America’s best-known restaurant scenes, enormous military history, beaches, colleges, rapidly changing suburbs and a culture that can tell within about twelve seconds whether somebody actually understands the Lowcountry.
Use all of it.
Make the stations sound like Charleston.
Get the personalities outside.
Let the salespeople bring the community back into the building.
Use digital to extend what the stations already do well instead of treating digital as some separate department everybody has to remember to mention during the meeting.
And keep the individual brands individual.
Hakim’s promotion also represents something else this industry desperately needs.
A visible path upward.
Director of Sales.
Five years doing the work.
General Manager.
That matters to the person sitting two offices away wondering whether there is still a career path in radio.
We spend plenty of time talking about the people leaving this business. We should pay attention when companies develop people internally and give them greater responsibility too.
Saga has done that here.
The corporate announcement will talk about leadership, trust and continued growth. That is what corporate announcements are supposed to say.
The real test comes Monday morning.
Will the stations continue serving the Lowcountry well?
Will the clients grow?
Will good people want to work there?
Will Charleston hear itself in these brands?
Will Hakim protect what is local while building a media business prepared for whatever advertising looks like five years from now?
Those are General Manager questions.
John Hakim spent five years learning the market from the side of the desk where somebody has to convince Charleston businesses that these stations matter.
Now he gets the other side of the desk.
He gets to make sure they do.
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