Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp, hosts of The Hang Zone, have made their exit from The Ticket official.
Kemp and McDowell confirmed their exit from the radio station in a YouTube video on Thursday.
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“Dan and Jake no longer work at The Ticket, and that is correct,” McDowell said. “We didn’t resign. They didn’t fire us, we just both said we’re not at a resolution.”
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A spokesperson for The Ticket told The Dallas Morning News that McDowell and Kemp resigned on Monday.
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However, an on-air discussion on Wednesday amongst some radio hosts at The Ticket suggested there was still a chance of McDowell and Kemp returning to the radio station. McDowell and Kemp made it clear in their video that they and The Ticket have agreed to go their separate ways.
“A lot of headlines are like ‘Dan and Jake resigned from The Ticket,’ which is technically true-not true — the only thing is our contracts were expired,” McDowell said. “We were trying to come to an agreement. We believed, in our opinion, the offer from Cumulus was not something we wanted to take. Cumulus believed that they were not willing to offer more…
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“They said ‘well, then please resign,’ and so then we did. But it also felt weird that we were writing the email because the contract was already up previously.”
McDowell said he and Kemp worked a week past their contract’s expiration date of July 1.
“Personally, I am not pissed. I’m not mad at Cumulus,” McDowell said. “It’s fine. That’s their thing, their evaluation of the situation and our evaluation of the situation is that we felt like it was fine to move on, they felt like it was fine to move on from us and here we are.”
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McDowell started his career at The Ticket in 1999, according to The Ticket’s website. McDowell co-hosted BaD Radio with Bob Sturm until 2020, when Sturm moved to late afternoons.
Kemp joined the station in 2006, according to The Ticket’s website. He served as the producer of BaD Radio, Barrett Sports Media reported. Kemp began hosting a show with McDowell in the noon to 3 p.m. slot after Sturm’s move to late afternoons.
McDowell and Kemp are the latest radio hosts to leave the station since last year.
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Danny Balis left The Ticket after 22 years at the station. In his on-air announcement, Balis hinted at limited advancement and said he plans to focus on other parts of his life. In November, he was introduced as the newest member of Mike Rhyner’s show, The Downbeat, on The Freak 97.1 FM.
Rhyner, who was one of the founding fathers of The Ticket, was The Freak’s showpiece personality on Oct. 3 when the station flipped its format from rock to free-form talk.
In June 2022, longtime producer Mike Sirois also left the station. Last month, longtime host Norm Hitzges announced his retirement after more than 20 years at the station. Hitzges also announced he is starting a podcast in the fall.
McDowell and Kemp have not yet revealed their plans for the future.
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“What if we just want to try to do something different?” Kemp said. “We’re very close, [McDowell] and I, at this point…
“If we want to try to do something a little bit different, I’d rather do it with him than anyone else.”
Staff writers Tommy Cummings and José Sánchez Córdova contributed to this post.
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Sports radio hosts Jake Kemp, Dan McDowell say goodbye to The Ticket
