Twin City Observer

Merle Jones, veteran radio executive and former manager of the Columbia Broadcasting System's KMOX in St. Louis, last week (June 30) was named manager of WCCO in an announcement by Howard S. Meighan, CBS vice president in charge of station administration.

Jones succeeds A. E. Joscelyn who resigned May 1 to become vice president of Northwest Linseed company. Associated with CBS for eight years until October 1944, Jones resigned his position with KMOX to become vice president and general manager of WOL in Washington, D. C., which post he left seven weeks ago to serve as chairman of the program executive committee of the National Association of Broadcasters and as a member of the Standards of Practice committee, which is formulating a new set of standards for the broadcasting industry. He has also been serving as a member of the Broadcast committee of the advisory council to the bureau of the budget, which has just submitted its recommendations for revision and simplification of federal communications commission forms.

Jones was born August 14, 1905, in Omaha. In 1929 he graduated from the University of Nebraska Law school and practiced for two years in Omaha, leaving the legal field to devote his full time to the rapidly expanding broadcasting industry.

His first radio activities were with the Omaha World-Herald station, WAAW (now KOWH), where he served as salesman, announcer and script writer at various times. In 1935, he went to Kansas City to become a salesman for KMBC and shortly thereafter was named KMBC sales manager. In 1936, he joined CBS as assistant to James D. Shouse, then general manager of KMOX, and about a year later was transferred to Chicago to become the network's manager of the Western office for radio sales. When Mr. Shouse left KMOX to head WLW in Cincinnati, Mr. Jones was named KMOX manager.

Gene Wilkey, who has served as acting manager of WCCO during the interim since Joscelyn's resignation, continues as the station's program director.