The reduction in staff at the Beasley Media Group complex in St. Petersburg, FL has continued this summer. In early July, Froggy was let go from the MJ Morning Show in a shocking move. Now, less than two months later, another member of the program has moved on.
Pat George, who served as the main “traffic guy” for the MJ Morning Show and Q105 since the broadcast returned to the airwaves in October of 2020, had his position eliminated. His final day was on Friday, August 23. Following his departure, Shriner has taken over handling traffic reporting duties for the show.
In addition to his Q105 duties, Pat provided traffic updates to other stations and served as a producer on other programs. He would seemingly always bring his cheery personality to the office every day. He would pop into the MJ Morning Show studio on occasion to talk about breaking traffic situations and other things happening in his life. He was also known for cooking grilled cheese sandwiches and cheese quesadillas for Roxanne and other staff members around the building. In fact, according to MJ, he would simply melt slices of Kraft cheese on bread in the microwave to fix a grilled cheese. His wife, Amy, who works as a hairdresser, also appeared on the show earlier this year to talk about a man who was harassing female hairdressers around Tampa.
Pat spent parts of 45 years in Tampa Bay radio, launching his career in 1979 after briefly doing some law enforcement work. He also worked for iHeart Media and other iterations of that company over the years. Plus, he was even part of the Radio Disney network at one time.
While Pat’s voice was only heard on the MJ Morning Show a few times per morning, it is still sad that Beasley continues to make cuts. At this point, we can only hope that these cuts are done for a while and that the morning show will carry on without any further hiccups.