Contact: Kathy Johnson

Tom Godell

"We are very excited about Tom Godell joining the staff at WUKY. He has an accomplished career in public radio and brings enormous experience in building university radio stations. I'm confident that Tom, along with the talented team already in place, will move WUKY to a new level of success."

-- Tom Harris,
associate vice president,
external affairs,
University of Kentucky

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 13, 2004) -- Public radio veteran Tom Godell has been named the new general manager of WUKY-FM, the University of Kentucky’s public radio station.

Godell, who will begin his new job Monday, April 19, comes from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC) where he had served as associate director of SIUC Broadcast Service and general manager of WSIU Radio since 1995. In that position he oversaw all aspects of the WSIU radio stations, which include WSIU in Carbondale, WUSI in Olney, and WVSI in Mt. Vernon, Ill.

A graduate of the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, Godell was station manager of WSIU-FM in Carbondale, Ill., from 1988 to 1995. Prior to that, he was program and operations director at WLRH-FM in Huntsville, Ala., and a senior producer at WBHM in Birmingham, Ala.

He has served as vice president of the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council and has been successful in securing grants and underwriting for radio and television programming at Southern Illinois University.

Godell succeeds Roger Chesser who retired after a 21-year career with WUKY, the last 15 of those years as general manager of the radio station.

"We are very excited about Tom Godell joining the staff at WUKY. He has an accomplished career in public radio and brings enormous experience in building university radio stations,” said Tom Harris, associate vice president for external affairs at UK. “I'm confident that Tom, along with the talented team already in place, will move WUKY to a new level of success."