Bronx’s Kid Mero Joins Hot 97 Morning Shift, Banter Unabated

The appointment of a Bronx-born podcast icon to Hot 97’s famed morning slot signals both continuity and change for urban radio in New York’s restless media landscape.

At 5:45am in Midtown Manhattan, long before most New Yorkers have finished their first “bodega coffee,” Juan “The Kid Mero” Martinez is already riffing into a microphone at WQHT’s Hot 97 studios, his irreverent baritone ricocheting between soundboards and glass walls. This is not, strictly, a debut—Mero has already amassed a dedicated following as half of the podcasting duo Desus & Mero, whose banter blended Bronx savvy with sharp-eyed social commentary. But climbing behind the console at Hot 97, the city’s main artery for hip-hop and morning commuters—a gig synonymous with both status and scrutiny—marks a new phase in his career, and the station’s.

Hot 97, owned by Mediaco, has long been more than just a frequency on the FM dial. Since the 1990s, it has functioned as both launching pad and lookout post for hip-hop culture, crowned by its influential “Ebro in the Morning” show—a fixture since 2012. This spring, Ebro Darden announced his departure from daily mornings (he will remain elsewhere in the Apple Music galaxy), setting the stage for Mero’s coronation in June 2024.

For the new host, the switch involves more than holding court with celebrities and trading jibes about Knicks woes. Morning radio in New York is an institution: a hybrid of hyper-local journalism, music curation, civic boosterism, and periodic chaos. The challenge, for Mero and his producers, is to preserve that multicast energy while translating what made his longform podcast work—unfiltered candour and jagged wit—to the more punctuated, advertiser-driven slots of terrestrial radio.

Canny programming decisions at Hot 97 will ripple out far beyond midtown. The morning drive show remains commercially lucrative in an industry where nearly $11bn in annual revenue still flows through AM/FM dials, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. Yet the gravitational pull of streaming, podcasts, and TikTok has made each year trickier than the last for broadcast stalwarts. The station’s hope is that Mero can bring his millions of YouTube and Spotify devotees along for the ride—and perhaps reanimate younger listeners’ flagging attachment to old-school radio presets.

For New Yorkers, a local born-and-raised host resonates. Mero’s story—immigrant parents, public schools, a first act as a schoolteacher before podcast infamy—matches the city’s mythos far better than most airwave interlopers. In a metropolis where pop culture careers are often imported from Los Angeles or Atlanta, Hot 97’s choice portends a return to native voices. It could also nudge the city’s wider media sector, currently navigating layoffs and tepid ad markets, to invest again in recognizably New York talent rather than generic influencers.

But existential questions lurk amid the bravado. Can a 64-year-old radio station, even one with Hot 97’s legacy, stave off what many in the industry see as an inexorable, digital-ward drift? National metrics bear out these anxieties. Edison Research has found that AM/FM radio’s share of Americans under 35 has shrunk below 25%, the rest claimed by streaming platforms where algorithms outpace any DJ’s taste. The hope is that Mero’s cross-platform fluency—he is equally at home on TikTok as on landline calls—will cushion the generational fall-off.

The transition is not merely about ratings silicon or podcast download counts. Morning radio in America, for all its bravado, plays a subtle civic role: mediating debates about policing, transit, rent regulation, and public schools in accessible, bite-sized morsels. Mero’s skill in the podcast realm has been less about hot takes, more about deflating pretension and needling sacred cows, a potentially potent pairing for a city where every mayoral misstep or subway snafu deserves both context and comedy.

A Bronx story remixed, amid shifting frequencies

There is precedent for this blending of digital cool and terrestrial reach. Across the Atlantic, BBC Radio 1 has deployed YouTube-savvy talent to anchor legacy shows, modestly slowing its audience attrition. In Los Angeles, Power 106 tapped podcaster Nick Cannon for a morning slot, only to discover that viral success does not always transfer perfectly to traffic-and-weather breaks. The results in New York will be watched closely by programme directors nationwide.

For advertisers and the wider New York economy, Mero’s abduction from the walled podcast gardens portends both risk and reward. At Hot 97, his platform can still make or break new albums—witness Cardi B’s meteoric rise after key station spins. Yet, as ad buyers increasingly favour algorithm-targeted spots, traditional radio must now sell more than audience size; it must sell authenticity, locality, and—ironically—a form of slowness. If Mero can thread that needle, both station and sponsors could reap rewards. If not, expect further contraction.

And what of New Yorkers themselves? For daily riders of the 4 train, the micro-economies of street vendors and deli owners, and the city’s million-background soundtrack, morning radio is less a lifestyle statement than a part of the urban commons—available, free, and vital, internet connection or not. In a city where the cost of living is “gargantuan” and bandwidth is not always reliable, Hot 97’s ongoing relevance feels—like pizza and potholes—unusually robust.

Yet, scepticism is warranted. Talent alone cannot reverse a decadal decline in terrestrial listening, just as a single artist rarely rescues a stagnant genre. But if the bounce in callers on Mero’s first day—anecdotes, freestyles, hard-luck stories from all five boroughs—bodes anything, it is that the appetite for an unvarnished, local voice endures, even as New York itself is whipsawed by tech and demographic change.

Whether this new chapter marks a renaissance or a requiem for morning radio is, as always, up to the city’s 8 million critics—a hard crowd, but, as Mero might quip, one well worth waking up for. If nothing else, his journey from podcast outsider to studio insider offers a rare bit of hope: in the churn of New York media, provenance, not just virality, still counts.

For now, Hot 97 bets that its future, like its past, will be forged not by gadgets or executives, but by a voice that sounds indisputably, and inimitably, like this city. ■