Cox Media Group (CMG) announced today that Omesh Somaru was named the new VP and General Manager of CMG-TV in Jacksonville, effective January 1. Somaru will leave his role as Director of Sales to succeed Bob Longo, who is retiring at year end, and lead CMG’s WJAX-TV and Hoffman Communication’s WFOX-TV.
“Jacksonville is an important market for CMG, and we were looking for a strong leader with deep local experience to continue our momentum there,” said Dan York, CMG’s President & CEO. ”Omesh was the right choice, and under his leadership, I know our people, our clients and our business will continue to thrive.”
Somaru is a 25-year industry veteran and has been with CMG for 17 years, including stints at its station in Orlando and formerly CMG owned Memphis and San Francisco stations. Since joining the Jacksonville team, he’s helped CMG’s stations there achieve record revenue shares across both core and digital. He also played a key role in launching Telemundo Jacksonville and Action Sports Jax.
Somaru will lead a team that’s already making a significant difference across the communities it serves. The stations form a market-leading news and sales organization that is service oriented and has helped thousands of local businesses grow. They also demonstrated the value of innovation by launching the region’s only local all-sports streaming channel – Action Sports Jax 24/7 – which delivers 10 hours of original programming daily.
At the same time, the CMG TV – Jacksonville team has become a fixture in the community. In the last year alone, they collected 8,500 books for children, helped save more than 450 lives through its blood drive, provided thousands of school supplies to local students, and awarded $500 every month to a viewer as part of its Doing Good in the Neighborhood program.
Somaru, who completed the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Broadcast Leadership Training Program in 2019, is a University of Central Florida graduate with a TV and Broadcasting degree. He lives in the Jacksonville area with his wife, Ailee, and daughter, Sophia.