Cumulus Media and former “The Ticket” 1310 KTCK Dallas/96.7 KTCK-FM Flower Mound TX midday hosts Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp have announced they have mutually agreed to a resolution of their litigation against each other.
The duo exited their 12-3pm “Hang Zone” show in July and immediately launched a Patreon based podcast “The Dumb Zone” after their contract renewal negotiations came to an end.
Cumulus first filed a lawsuit against the duo on August 4 alleging that McDowell & Kemp’s podcast violated the terms of their noncompete agreements, taking over digital assets previously belonging to the station’s “Hang Zone” brand for their show and repurposing them, and the show focuses on identical subject matter attracting the same audience as the station. Last Friday, United States District Judge Karen Gren Scholer denied a request from Cumulus that a temporary restraining order be issued against the duo to stop them from releasing podcasts until after the trial as Cumulus “failed to ‘clearly carry the burden of persuasion.’”
The settlement comes a day after the Washington Post brought the story to national audiences noting that the potential trial could have served as major test of the National Labor Relations Board’s guidance issued in May that deemed “that the proffer, maintenance, and enforcement non-compete provisions in employment contracts and severance agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act except in limited circumstances.”
Terms of the settlement were not released.
McDowell had been in the midday slot at KTCK since 1999, first as co-host of “BaD Radio” with Bob Sturm until 2020 and since then with Kemp. Kemp joined the station in 2009 as a producer and then rose to co-host when Sturm moved to afternoons in February 2020. Kemp has also hosted Dallas Cowboys pregame and Dallas Mavericks postgame shows for the station.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com