Kevin Metheny, Howard Stern Rival & Radio Executive, Dead at 60
Kevin Metheny, a longtime radio programmer and operations manager, has died. Metheny died Friday at the age of 60.
Kevin Metheny, a longtime radio programmer and operations manager, has died. Metheny died Friday at the age of 60.
His death was first confirmed by allaccess.com and later reported by The Chicago Tribune. The Daily News reports he died of a heart attack.
Metheny was best known to Howard Stern fans as Pig Virus after their paths crossed at New York’s WNBC. That was the moniker the radio personality referred to him as in his book “Private Parts.” A version of that character, Pig Vomit, later appeared in the movie version, played by Paul Giamatti.
A rep for Stern had not responded to Billboard’s request for comment by press time.
“Of course, this isn’t the way I’d prefer to be known,” Metheny told the Daily News of the name. “You just have to roll with it. . . . Howard is an entertainer and this was part of his material.”
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Metheny most recently worked at KGO-AM 810 and KSFO-AM 650 in San Francisco as the operations manager.
“Kevin Metheny’s sudden passing [Friday] afternoon is a devastating personal and professional loss for his broadcasting family at Cumulus, and for the entire radio industry,” John Dickey, vice president of KGO and KSFO parent Cumulus Radio, said in a statement. “Kevin was a legendary broadcasting talent who touched many lives in his remarkable 44-year career, and whose successes made an indelible mark on radio.
“His reputation and accomplishments are simply unparalleled and we are grateful for having had the opportunity to work with him as [program director] of WJR in Detroit and most recently, as Operations Manager of KGO and KSFO in San Francisco,” he added. “His Cumulus family extends our deepest sympathies to Kevin’s loved ones. We will miss him profoundly.”
He worked at stations in Ohio, New York, Florida, Minnesota, Maryland, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina. He also worked at WGN-AM 720 in Chicago before leaving in 2010 after a nearly two-year tenure there. His hiring at that company caught the attention of Stern.
“Pig Virus landed on his feet again,” Stern said in 2008. “I don’t spend my day thinking about Pig Virus, but it is amazing how guys we know who are pretty unoriginal keep landing on their feet. … Pig Virus really undermined everything I tried to do at NBC and hated me. And then after he got bounced from NBC and the other places he worked, he started programming radio stations and tried to replicate what I did on the radio.
“He was just so mean and vicious,” Stern continued. “Not only was he against everything I was doing, which was saving his radio station, he couldn’t live with the fact that I was so talented. He couldn’t live with the fact that I had these abilities.”
He is survived by his two daughters, Eleanor Mutheenee and Maeve Eilish.