2007 in Radio - Events

Events

• January 8: Nanci "The Fabulous Sports Babe" Donnellan returns to radio after a six-year absence, filling in for local hosts in Florida.
• March 6: Air America Radio restructures, with politician Mark J. Green and his brother Stephen Green at the helm. Among the changes (see also "Closures"):
  • Sam Seder discontinues his weekday show and moves to Sunday afternoons on Air America Radio.
  • Lionel moves from WOR Radio Network to Air America Radio, joining the latter May 14.
• March 22: CHUM Radio-O&O CKCE-FM/Calgary signs on with "What Goes Around...Comes Around" by Justin Timberlake after a 10-day test loop of "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls.
• April 4: On Imus in the Morning: talk show host Don Imus refers on-air to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" and starts a national controversy about racism and free speech during comedy.
• April 12: The Imus in the Morning talk show is canceled by MSNBC, and host Don Imus is fired for remarks made about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. The controversy evolved into firing as a violation of the civil rights of free speech.
• June 12: Citadel Broadcasting's purchase of most ABC Radio assets closes, and restructuring takes place.
• June 29: Tom Kent resigns as host of his programs on the TKO Radio Network, the network he launched as a 24-hour network in the same year; he maintains ownership of the network and is replaced behind the microphone by John Landecker and Marty Thompson.
• July 1: Art Bell retires (again) from his weekend hosting gig at Coast to Coast AM.
• July 12: WCBS-FM 101.1 New York drops its Jack format after two years and returns to Oldies.
• July 16: Mike and the Mad Dog become "nationally syndicated" with its first affiliate outside New York State, WQYK in Tampa, Florida. According to host Mike Francesa, more affiliates are in the works.
• July 30: Pardon the Interruption returns to ESPN Radio.
• August 10: ABC Radio discontinues syndication of Larry Elder; his show continues on KABC in Los Angeles and reverts to a local show. All other affiliates are switched over to Mark Levin's show, also syndicated by ABC in the same time slot.
• August 17: Dan Patrick leaves his position at ESPN Radio.
• October 1: Patrick returns on KLAC in Los Angeles and syndicated through the Content Factory.
• October 5: Long-time Pittsburgh CHR station "B94", returns to the air after flipping to rock (and later "male" talk) in 2004.
• October 8: WEXM (formerly WNOU) in Indianapolis, Indiana changes to Christmas music, the first station in the country to do so, as a "stunt format" for the next three months. The first non-stunting stations to change over were KCKC in Kansas City and KOSY-FM in Salt Lake City, for the second year in a row, on the evening of October 31, among several other stations.
• October 8: WZOO has flipped from CHR to Classic Hits with a new branding, "Magic 102.5."
• October 26: It was announced that on November 3, WFUN would flip to ESPN Sports.
• October 29: Astral Media takes over almost all of the former broadcasting assets of Standard Broadcasting in Canada.
• October 29: San Diego's KLSD flips from Talk to Sports talk.
• October 31: The Greaseman resigns as host of WMET's morning show to focus on Internet ventures.
• October 31: WWFT flips from talk to Christmas music stunting until the end of the year.
• November 3: WFUN flipped from talk to ESPN Sports.
• November 3: Roger Hedgecock assumes a position as the host of a national weekly talk show.
• November 7: Atlanta's WQXI opened their own 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) sports bar in downtown Atlanta.
• November 19:WIAU transforms from Classic Hits to Talk introducing syndicated hosts such as Dr. Laura.
• November 27: Colorado West Broadcasting, Inc. sold KGLN to MBC Broadcasting for $250,000.
• November 30: WMRN changed dial position from 106.9 to 106.7 at 12PM.
• November 30: Entravision Communications bought WNUE from Mega Communications for $24 million.
• December 3: Imus in the Morning is revived on WABC and the ABC Radio network.
• December 5: J. R. Gach is knocked off the Internet airwaves after a lawsuit involving comments he made in February 2006 is settled for nearly a million dollars.
• December 21: Gary Burbank, WLW radio personality and voice of Earl Pitts, retires.
• December 13: WFTK drops the talk format, stunting the entire day with construction sounds. The next day, they debuted an alternative rock format branded as 96 Rock.
• December 13: WMRN changed formats from theme song stunting (before stunting, WMRN's format was country music) to alternative rock as "Radio 106.7" at 12PM.
• December 26: WIBC in Indianapolis, Indiana moves its news/talk format to 93.1 FM. The station's AM frequency flipped to sports as WFNI.