Radio host: Physicians advised me to relocate

Toledo news radio talk-show host Brian Wilson on Thursday told listeners he was forced to move out of the Toledo area because living here was making him ill.

Wilson, who hosts the three-hour Brian Wilson and the Afternoon Drive that airs weekdays on WSPD 1370-AM, has been talking about the Toledo region and its politics while broadcasting from Virginia more than 500 miles away.

Since arriving in the fall of 2005, Wilson has filled the dual role of WSPD program director and host of the 3 to 6 p.m. weekday talk show that follows Rush Limbaugh.

According to records from Bedford County, Virginia, Wilson and his wife, Carolanne Wilson, paid $340,000 for a home in Huddleston, Va., on Dec. 15, 2009. The couple still own a home in Perrysburg according to Wood County records, but it is empty of furniture, and a neighbor on Tuesday said the Wilsons moved out five or six weeks ago.

At the same time, Wilson has led his listeners to believe that he was still in Toledo. Three weeks ago, Wilson was conveying the impression to listeners that he was still one of them.

"Living out in Wood County, not having kids in school here," he said on air May 6.

"The reason that 'Cassie' and I were forced essentially to leave the Toledo metropolitan area is because Toledo was making me sick," Wilson said during his show.

"And I don't mean that in the political sense, like I mean the deal with mayor pant-load and so on, but if you have known people who have moved in from other areas, there is something in the air, in northwest Ohio and the Toledo area," he said.

Ms. Wilson, also known as Cassie, resigned as Clear Channel Toledo director of news operations and news anchor in May, 2009, following a station decision to replace WSPD's local midday news programming with newscasts from the firm's Cincinnati talk-radio station, WLW 700-AM.

Wilson continued: "What I have been told is that there is a residual of Toledo having been constructed on the former Black Swamp and if you're not born here, you don't enter the world with, I don't know, the immunities or you grow up being able to deal with it."

He said he saw doctors who told him to move out of Toledo or he would "have a severely truncated career."

Richard Spurr, who lives next door to the Wilsons' Virginia home, told The Blade that Wilson had attempted to broadcast the Toledo show out of the home there but was unable to do so.

"It's pretty rural here," Mr. Spurr had said.

Instead, Wilson went to Lynchburg, Va., Mr. Spurr said.

An employee at Clear Channel Communications in Lynchburg, which is home to WYYD 108-FM and three other stations for the company, said Wilson was broadcasting from that location but he had not been there for about a month.

Clear Channel refused for a second day to make Wilson available for an interview.

Yesterday, Wilson said a Blade story on his move contained factual errors, but he did not elaborate or correct any such inaccuracies on the air.

The politically right-leaning WSPD broadcasts at 5,000 watts.

Andy Stuart, WSPD's vice president and market manager, declined to comment yesterday about Wilson's broadcast location.

He also said he was unaware what factual errors Wilson was referring to.

Contact Ignazio Messina at:

imessina@theblade.com

or 419-724-6171.