Tom Oakes has announced he will retire from his role as Operations Manager for SummitMedia Springfield MO at the end of the year.
Oakes, who also serves as Program Director and afternoon host for Country 94.7 KTTS, originally joined the cluster under Scripps ownership in 2018 for what was supposed to be an interim role. He would follow that with interim duties as Program Director of WCYQ Knoxville TN and Operations Manager in Omaha before returning to Springfield in July 2019 and taking the role permanently in September 2020.
Prior to those roles, Oakes was at Ohana Media Group in Anchorage AK from 2011-2018 where he was the company’s VP/Programming and local Operations Manager before rising to cluster General Manager preceded as VP/Programming for New Northwest Broadcasters and Operations Manager for their Billings MT and Anchorage properties. He also has been OM for Federated Media South Bend IN, programmed WBYT South Bend, WOW/WOW-FM Omaha, and WHIT/WWQM Madison WI.
Oakes shared:
This is a bit long (I’ve never been one to be brief in comments LOL)…
Back in June of 2018 after 13 years I left Alaska to return to Minnesota to be closer to my family. After fighting cancer, those 2500 miles between Anchorage and Minneapolis seem a bit too far. My goal was to settle down in Minnesota or Wisconsin, find a job and enjoy more time with the family.
Then Beverlee Brannigan (at the then-Scripps Media) called with an unique opportunity that was similar to
“rent a cop” or in this case “rent an OM-PD.” Off to Missouri I went, SummitMedia purchased the stations andI continued my travels on their behalf to Knoxville and Omaha and eventually back to Springfield.
Now, nearly six years later after starting this part of my career, the time has come to depart Springfield and return to the great north and live life near my brother Steve, sister-in-law Diane, my nieces Jen, Katie, Hannah and their families and my cousins and friends across the upper-Midwest.
So on December 31, I will be retiring after more than 49 years of a fantastic career in an incredible industry.Much has changed since I started in the 70’s from playing music off of 45’s and albums and commercials on carts and live radio around the clock to everything on computer, systems that work hand-in-hand, groups of stations that use to be competitors and an industry that went wall street. But it’s still a people person (though sadly fewer these days).
My thanks to our incredible leader, Springfield President-Market Manager Janelle C Grove Moffett, the great staff of SummitMedia-Springfield, and to Randy Chase, John Olsen, the late Bill Tanner and everyone at SummitMedia for allowing me to be part of this journey. And to those individuals who mentored, help, suffered and put up with me over all these years.
Thank you to my family and friends for everything.
And on December 31st it’s on to the next stage of life.
