Last December, Hot 97 pulled the plug on Ebro in the Morning. Ebro, Laura Stylez and Peter Rosenberg, gone, just like that. And the station’s big answer was The Kid Mero.

What they expected him to do, I have no idea. Mero was never in a position to move a needle that size. And that tells you everything about the people running the building. These executives are out of touch with the entertainment landscape and with the world as it is right now.

Now, ten months later, Mero is on air complaining about the people who hired him.

What happened

On Wednesday, Oct. 14, Mero and his co-host Kazeem “Kaz” Famuyide spent about 15 minutes on air and on the station’s YouTube livestream tearing into MediaCo, the company that owns Hot 97. Pay. Old equipment. No resources. Executives making too much money.

“You can have the best team in the world, but if your GM stinks, or your coach doesn’t know how to coach or run plays, you’re not going to win,” Mero said.

Kaz went further: “This is the worst place I’ve ever worked in my life.”

This all landed in the middle of layoffs at the station. Contributor Bryson “Boom” Paul posted that he’d gotten the email and was “one of the many laid off at @HOT97.” Hot 97 pulled the clip off YouTube. MediaCo hasn’t said a word.

Radio doesn’t run hip-hop anymore

Here’s what Hot 97 still hasn’t figured out. Gone are the days when radio ran hip-hop. It’s the Aks and the Kai Cenats of the world now. If you aren’t paying attention to that, you aren’t going to survive.

In my opinion, a top streamer, somebody on the level of an Ak, is the only kind of person who could save that station. That’s the scale of star power it takes now to drag an audience back to the FM dial.

Mero came in hot. He expected to make waves and save a sinking ship. But he never gave off the energy of “the guy.” He didn’t have the star power to bring a legendary morning show back to life, and everybody watching could see it.

Hot 97 went cheap

So why Mero? Because Hot 97 had very few options, at least very few affordable ones. And it had even less interest in investing in that show without proof it would pay off big.

The real talent most likely cost too much. Or they just weren’t interested in the monumental job of bringing an audience back to radio. Can you blame them? Who wants to sign up to rescue a building that’s already laying people off?

47 likes

Want to see how bad it is? Akademiks put it in perspective on his stream the other night. That now-deleted viral segment, the one everybody’s talking about, sat at an abysmal 47 likes on a channel with 4 million followers, per Ak.

Forty-seven.

The segment the whole internet is talking about, and that’s the number.

Why is Mero surprised?

Mero wants to put this on the GMs and the executives. And sure, he can point the finger upstairs all he wants. But let’s be honest. Nobody is entertained by this cast. People weren’t even excited about the pick when it was made. It took Mero going at Akademiks for a lot of us to even notice who replaced Ebro.

I’m just being factual, no matter how brutally honest it sounds.

So I have to ask. WHY is Mero surprised?

You walked into a station that had just cancelled its whole morning show. You knew what the budget looked like. You knew who you were replacing. Now the clip gets 47 likes and the building is laying people off, and this is the moment you decide something’s wrong?

What it would actually take

Could the show be revived? Possibly. But this wasn’t the talent to do it.

It would take Kai Cenat himself streaming from the Hot 97 studio every day to bring any kind of life back to that station. It would take the youth. It would take executives finally passing the torch, letting go of what worked back then, and betting on what and who brings in views right now.

Until somebody in that building is willing to do that, the layoffs will keep coming, the clips will keep getting pulled, and the next host will be on air complaining just like Mero.

And that’s just the truth. All facts, no feelings.