Opie Announces His Return to Broadcasting

It’s been eight months since Gregg “Opie” Hughes announced to his fans that he had been fired from SiriusXM satellite radio, with no sign of whether he would continue working in broadcast.  Throughout the year he’s released several “pop up” live stream videos teasing various job possibilities but none of them were legit.

On Saturday on his YouTube Channel, Opie announced that he would be starting up a new job with radio syndication conglomerate Westwood One.  Hughes said beginning April 17, his Opie Radio show will hit the airwaves twice weekly as part of Westwood One’s podcast network.  The network hosts about 30 shows and boasts 245 million listeners weekly with shows helmed by the likes of Kurt Warner, Jim Rome, D.L. Hughley and Jerry Springer.

Hughes credits Former SiriusXM exec and friend Tim Sabean with brokering the deal.  According to Hughes, Sabean, who works for Westwood One running their digital department called him up and said he wanted to bring Opie Radio to Westwood.  “They have a huge huge platform, Hughes said. Honestly I think their digital footprint is even bigger than SiriusXM.”  The contracts were signed late last week, he said.  Opie’s new podcast will likely run on Mondays and Wednesdays, and he says he’s been asked to build a podcast network under the banner of Opie Radio. “So I’m going to be looking for shows I really really dig,” he said, “and there’s also a radio element that hasn’t been decided yet.” The radio element might be a full time show or doing some things for existing shows. “He is so pumped to have us” Opie told his fans, referring to Sabean.

Former Opie Radio show co-hosts Sherrod Small, Vic Henley and The Mad Cuban Carl Ruiz will be joining Hughes, “if they’ll join us,” he said, hinting that no details have been hammered out with the other show hosts.

He broadcast the announcement while walking through New York City, and stopped to give money to William, a panhandler who has appeared on his live streams before and tell him, “I’m back being a big radio star.”

The Opie Radio podcast will start on April 17th, and will be free.

Also over the weekend, former Opie and Anthony Show co-host Anthony Cumia was banned from Twitter, although nobody seems to know why. This is Cumia’s third time being banned from the social media platform. Cumia runs his own podcast network, Compound Media, and co-hosts the Artie and Anthony Show. Anthony created Compound Media after being fired from SiriusXM two years before Opie was fired.

 

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