Radio syndication has Ryan Cameron ready to win beyond his hometown.
Ryan Cameron’s 12th floor downtown Radio One office hints that the 57-year-old is more than a newly syndicated, afternoon radio host.
On his desk are two Southeast Emmy Awards from 1994 and 2006 for on-camera performances with WXIA-TV. A new addition received during the Ryan Cameron Foundation’s annual Father/Daughter Dance fundraiser in June is the Fatherless Foundation’s Dream Award for advocacy for men and their daughters. Out the window is a striking view of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where he hypes up the crowd at Atlanta Falcons games.
A loaded keychain dangling from the office door’s lock serves notice that Cameron is in, not making community appearances or visiting his Dough Boy Pizza restaurant.
“I’ve never had more fun than I’m having right now,” he says.
The Atlanta native and Brookhaven resident has spent all but one year of his career in town. For almost two decades until 2021, he was the in-arena announcer for the Atlanta Hawks, a role he has handled for the Falcons since 2018.
Some fans blame him if the Falcons flop, he says. “They think that it’s more about what’s going on in the crowd and on the speakers than what’s going on on the field.”
He has no such problems with his youth-focused foundation, where programs range from a year-round leadership academy to golf clinics. The key, he says, is to focus on “just the regular, everyday kid off the street with ambitions and goals.”
One foundation program helped him move into the pizza business. After he sampled Dough Boy Pizza in Birmingham, Alabama, and befriended the chef-owner, Erica Barrett, she agreed to let him open an Atlanta franchise if he found the right location. From holding an annual health fair at The Gallery at South DeKalb, he knew the mall had a long-vacant former Subway. Although Cameron sees Dough Boy’s authenticity as a big upgrade from typical food court pizza, he opened there in February.
“We are pretty secure in our pizza braggadocio,” Cameron says.
He tries to be at the restaurant every Saturday and is looking for a second location unrestrained by mall hours.
Dough Boy opened three months before he moved into syndication.
“The reason that shows get syndicated is because you’re dominating in your own market,” says Cameron, whose contract at Majic 107.5/97.5 expires in December. “We’ve been doing very well for a very long time.”
Four stations quickly picked up his afternoon show. Cameron expects to add more in his bid to go global through acting, voiceover work, podcasts, videos—whatever it takes to escape “kind of obsolete” traditional radio.
Cameron’s drive to be hailed as a “25-year overnight success” comes after he nearly died in 2020. He had heart-valve surgery that led to sepsis and developed into septic shock.
“If you ever feel like you’re about to die” after any hospital procedure, he says, ask your doctor about sepsis and the special blood test for the infection. The experience made him “look at things with more vigor, more excitement,” he says. “Everything I do now is very purposeful and very deliberate.”
He does not, however, intend to slow down, especially while his three children in college and graduate school “act like education is the next best thing to sliced bread. They’re just going and going and going. There’s no way I can retire.”
MAJIC
majicatl.com
@doitfortheryan
RYAN CAMERON FOUNDATION
ryancameronfoundation.org
@rcfatl
DOUGH BOY PIZZA
doughboypizza.co
@officialdoughboypizza
