WSRB Move Ends Tom Joyner’s 40-Year Windy City Run.

Story by Inside Radio

After more than four decades, Tom Joyner is ending his run on the Chicago airwaves—and not by choice. Crawford Broadcasting urban AC “106.3 Chicago’s R&B” WSRB has opted to not renew his syndicated morning show contract there after eight years. The NAB Marconi winner’s “The Tom Joyner Morning Show” is distributed by Reach Media.

As veteran Chicago radio columnist Robert Feder reported Tuesday, WSRB is seguing to local programming in AM drive. Starting June 5, Mike Love moves from afternoons to mornings, replacing Joyner from 6am-9am weekdays. The new “Mix Mornings with Mike Love” will feature “rush-hour mini mixes by some of Chicago’s most popular DJ’s delivering the hottest R&B hits and throwback hip-hop from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and today,” according to the station.

Joyner “catapulted to fame and fortune as the legendary ‘Fly Jock’ in the market in the 1980s,” Feder writes. He earned national recognition and seven million frequent flier miles, along with the moniker “The Hardest Working Man In Show Business” during the eight years he commuted between mornings at urban contemporary “K104” KKDA in Dallas and afternoons at urban contemporary “WGCI FM (107.5) in Chicago.

Perhaps it is no mystery why Joyner is being replaced. Feder notes that in the Nielsen Audio survey for April released Monday, WSRB ranked 28th in mornings among all listeners with a 1.5 share.