You Can't Work For A Radio Station While In Prison

There's closure to the case of a Louisville KY radio personality, who accepted a job offer to become promotions director of Canton top 40 WZKL/92.5 "Q92" - while he was well aware that he was getting into major legal hot water in his home market.

Todd Edward Smith, known on-air at Louisville's WDJX as "Todd Kelly", was sentenced Monday to seven years in prison for an elaborate charity scam.

Smith was convicted of setting up a bogus charity for ALS - "Lou Gehrig's Disease" - after falsely telling listeners that he had the disease. He pleaded guilty to taking some $120,000 dollars he raised for research, and spending the money on himself.

Northeast Ohio has a brief role in this story.

After Kelly/Smith was already under major scrutiny in the Louisville media for all this, WZKL "Q92" announced his hiring as their new promotions director - apparently not hearing of such things as "background checks", or not being aware that Google can be your friend. Oh, they hired him apparently not noticing the AllAccess item on the scandal, months earlier.

After learning of their new hire's legal situation, WZKL quickly withdrew the job offer, and hired someone who was not facing a potential seven years behind bars. We're pretty sure Kelly/Smith never worked a day for "Q92", assuming he was even able to leave Louisville.

As our title indicates, it's difficult to promote a Canton, Ohio radio station while you're locked up in a Kentucky jail cell....