“Joe Thomas in the Morning” has been pushed off the morning airwaves by order of an Albemarle County judge.
The longtime conservative radio personality was found to have violated the noncompete clause he signed to work at his prior station, WCHV. Judge Claude Worrell issued the temporary injunction on July 23 forbidding Thomas, for 180 days, from serving as a morning host on WTON, the Staunton-based station he purchased earlier this year because its signal reaches places within the market of WCHV, which is owned by Monticello Media LLC.
“Monticello Media is entitled to its market,” said Worrell. “He can’t be on the air in the metropolitan statistical area.”
Monticello Media, which owns five Charlottesville-area stations and four more in the Blacksburg area, sued Thomas on May 31 accusing him of violating an employment agreement containing a noncompete clause.
The two-hour civil injunction hearing on July 23 offered a glimpse into the radio business, particularly the contentious exodus of Thomas, a veteran conservative talk show host and program manager fired from WCHV in the spring after he told his boss he planned to buy the Staunton station.
“I was offering to let the two stations coexist,” Thomas testified. “We had hoped to make it a matching station.”
Thomas said that he and his wife Elaine inked a deal in February to buy WTON, an AM station with a pair of FM repeaters, for $275,000. At first, he said, WCHV management embraced the idea of sharing content, revenue and the on-air services of Thomas himself.
“There was an acceptance of the proposal,” Thomas testified.
But shortly thereafter, Thomas said, Monticello Media owner George Reed soured on the deal and, when Thomas revealed that the purchase was complete in late March, fired him. In an April 2 Facebook post, WCHV defended its action by comparing the situation to two restaurants.
“Imagine you owned a Burger King and your manager decided to open a McDonald’s next door, but still planned on managing your Burger King,” WCHV posted. “Would you allow him to do both?”
“He made his rightful choice, and we had to make ours,” WCHV concluded.
Appearing in Albemarle County Circuit Court wearing a sport coat whose gray hue was slightly lighter than his expansive ponytail, Thomas heard praise from the other side for his 16 years of service, even as they tried to prevent him from working at his new station.
“We readily admit it was a successful relationship over a long period of time,” said Monticello Media’s lawyer, John Buford.
With WCHV station manager Mike Chiumento sitting silently beside him at the plaintiff’s table, Buford complained that since Thomas departed, so did $25,000 in advertising revenue.
“Give us 180 days to get our feet under us,” Buford implored the judge. “Give us the ability to reset.”
However, Thomas’ lawyer, Elliott Harding, suggested that Monticello Media has itself to blame for losing advertisers — and not Thomas.
“He hasn’t curried them,” said Harding. “He hasn’t told them to stop advertising.”
Buford conceded that while working at WCHV Thomas bolstered the audience and generated goodwill.
“Now that goodwill is competing with us,” Buford complained.
“The goodwill ended when your clients fired him,” the judge noted with raised eyebrows. “They discarded it.”
While Worrell ultimately granted the 180-day ban on Thomas’ voice transmitting into Monticello Media’s morning market, interjections such as this hinted that the judge took a dimmer view of enforcing the business side of the injunction request. The company sought to prevent Thomas from contacting advertisers, grabbing syndicated programs and using “trade secrets” learned at WCHV.
“Tell me why the injunction is in the public interest,” Worrell demanded.
“There’s a public interest in enforcing contracts,” replied Buford. “What we’re asking for is the benefit of our bargain.”
Buford said that Monticello Media relied on that contract when it invested in Thomas. Buford continued that WCHV, which broadcasts at 1260-AM and 107.5-FM, promoted Thomas’ brand, with extensive advertising and funding for his travel to political conventions and other events.
“We’re competing against our own intellectual property in that sense,” said Buford. “You can’t listen to two radio stations at once.”
Thomas’ attorney, however, attempted to downplay the competition from WTON, which airs news, talk and sports at 1240-AM in Staunton, at 101.1F-M in Harrisonburg and at 98.9-FM atop Bear Den Mountain in Afton. Harding called the areas where WTON’s signal bleeds into northern Nelson County and western Albemarle County “a very small sliver” of WCHV’s market.
While Worrell ultimately declined to prevent Thomas from ditching his business roles at his new company, he found the similarity of hosting a conservative morning show too close to Thomas’ old role at WCHV.
“It’s the same guy doing the same thing,” said Worrell, shortly before leaning back, tilting his head, and smiling at the defendant and his lawyer.
Court documents indicated that Thomas’ last job before he joined the broadcast business was, in fact, running a Burger King restaurant on Long Island. But for the past 37 years, he testified, he’s been in radio.
“He’s not resourced like they are,” said Harding. “Taking him off the air for 180 days will significantly impact his living.”
Noncompete agreements have recently been criticized for enriching corporations at the expense of workers. Thomas testified that his last salary at Monticello Media was $55,900, an amount below the $73,320 threshold that Virginia sets for finding wages too low for enforcement of any noncompete agreement signed after July 1, 2020.
And while the Federal Trade Commission appears headed toward outlawing nearly all new noncompetes, any national law, like Virginia’s, would not likely apply retroactively, and Thomas’ agreement was inked in 2007.
The 60-year-old defendant seemed unruffled by the judge’s ruling.
“There’s a whole afternoon out there,” Thomas told The Daily Progress afterwards. “We’ll just have to figure it out.”
Monticello Media’s Reed, citing the absence of a written court order, declined comment.
Thomas seems to have found a temporary workaround since the ruling. He has been substituting syndicated shows in the morning and airing his own show in the afternoons. For online listeners, he’s still the morning guy.
On the morning of July 25, for instance, at wtonradio.com, Thomas could be heard criticizing NIMBYs in Greene County, complaining about the property tax system, and interviewing Lance Izumi, the author of “The Great Classroom Collapse,” a new book urging greater rigor in American schools.
Other voices on WTON include longtime Charlottesville-area sports commentator Mac McDonald and former CBS19 weatherman Tommy Stafford. Thomas has a fan in fellow conservative radio host Rob Schilling.
“I just hope that it works out,” Schilling told The Daily Progress, “and that Joe can be back on the air soon, because the community he’s based out of and this community are well served by his voice.”
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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