With a new month comes a new era for Raccoon Valley Radio.

John and Jen McGee, of McGee Management Services, are the new owners of Raccoon Valley Radio. After graduating from Central College, John started with the Pella/Knoxville stations of KNIA/KRLS in 1997, when Mel and Holly Suhr, of M & H Broadcasting, owned the stations. Soon after the Suhrs purchased what is now RVR in 2012, John became the general manager and Jen was named the traffic director. 

Working in the radio industry for over 26 years, John explains that he had an on again, off again view of whether or not he wanted to be the owner of RVR. He describes that the moment was clear after the Suhrs were ready to step away from owning all of their radio stations.

“It became a reality when Mel sat me down and basically said, ‘Do you have any interest in buying all of Raccoon Valley Radio? Would you and Jen have any interest in that? Holly and I are looking at kind of determining an exit strategy, and we wanted to see if this would be a part of it?’ After a good conversation with Jen and talking through some pricing and stuff with Mel, it made sense.”  

The McGees officially took ownership on August 1st and even one of their four adult children has been serving as the Broadcast Engineer for the radio stations since 2020. Jen says they will lean on their family to help guide them into the future of what local news and information will look like as they continue RVR’s objective of delivering high quality local information.

“They usually indicate to us a few things that you’re not going to see on maybe a social media stream or on what you would call your national television broadcast. So I want it to stay local, I want us to stay relevant to what our constituents and our listeners want to hear.   

John thanks the Suhr family for the opportunity, as well as the entire RVR staff, the clients of the radio stations and the listeners as they take the next steps into the future of local radio. You can hear more from the McGees on today’s Let’s Talk programs across all three stations, including KDLS in Perry, KGRA in Jefferson and KKRF in Stuart.