Chris Williams has announced he will depart as General Manager/Chief Product Officer of the iHeartRadio app next month.
Williams has served in his current position since December 2014 after rising through the programming ranks. Williams joined the company in 2005 as Program Director of Rock “105.3 The Buzz” WBZY Atlanta and successor “Project 9-6-1” WKLS. He would add duties as PD for the company’s Premium Choice Alternative and Active Rock formats in 2009 and Active Rock Brand Coordinator in 2011. He would move to Cincinnati in 2012 as VP/Programming for their seven station cluster. The following year, Williams moved to the New York offices as SVP/iHeartRadio Programming overseeing all digital content programming, curation, and marketing strategies for the iHeartRadio app.
In a LinkedIn post announcing his upcoming departure on Labor Day weekend, Williams writes, “Unlike Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, there is no drama or ruined bedsheets involved in this separation. It is a voluntary and amicable departure. I shared my intentions with iHeart months ago and I’ve continued to work throughout the summer to make this a smooth transition. While this isn’t breaking news for iHeart, it was time to make it Linkedin official. I’ll continue as GM & Chief Product Officer through Labor Day to ensure a productive hand-off and then my 17-year run at iHeartMedia comes to a close. What a run! The opportunities and trust that iHeart has placed in me have changed my life, and the lives of my family and opened up an entirely new career trajectory going forward. We have accomplished so much; established iHeart as a legitimate digital media brand, exploded onto the podcast scene and rose to become the #1 podcast publisher globally, expanded iHeart internationally, grown our footprint to over 250 platforms, poised to launch in the metaverse and we continue to innovate in the audio space to make radio and podcasts more personalized and participatory. That’s all well and good, but the legacy that I hope I leave from my time at iHeartRadio is a collection of amazingly talented and generous people that we have assembled over the years. That’s my greatest accomplishment and source of pride and also the thing that makes chasing new horizons bittersweet.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com