Update 4/18: Cumulus has confirmed what we assumed. Michael Graham will join “All News 106.7” WYAY for a 9am to 12pm daily talk show. No start date has been announced.
Cumulus Media announces that talk radio personality Michael Graham will host a new radio talk show on WYAY, Atlanta “All News 106.7”. The show will air weekdays from 9:00 a.m. until noon. Graham moves to Atlanta from Boston, where he hosted shows on the New England Talk Network and on the BostonHeraldRadio.com, and was a columnist for the Boston Herald.
Graham has spent most of his life in front of a microphone, starting his career in college as a stand-up comic and spending six years on the national circuit performing with stars including Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Foxworthy and Robin Williams. He then worked as a GOP political consultant on campaigns from Chicago to the Carolinas. As a result, he was a frequent guest on FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC, and made several guest appearances on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” and “Real Time” television shows. Graham began his talk radio career at WBT-AM in Charlotte, followed by stints in Richmond and Washington, D.C. He then moved to Boston, where he became a fixture in talk radio and started his own network, New England Talk Radio Network, and formed a partnership with BostonHeraldRadio.com.
Graham is a popular public speaker and the author of four books, including the first major publisher book on the Tea Party movement in America, “That’s No Angry Mob, That’s My Mom!” (Regnery, 2010).
Randall Bloomquist, Corporate Programmer-News/Talk for Cumulus Media said: “Michael Graham is a next-generation talk radio talent—smart, opinionated and very funny. His show will be an entertaining and inclusive conversation about the things that are truly important and interesting to his Atlanta area audience.”
Graham said: “I’m not a radio host—I’m a radio FAN. I love being part of exciting, entertaining conversations and Cumulus is going to bring those conversations to fans like me. The fact that I get to be on the other side of the mic just lets me enjoy it even more.”
Graham added: “Growing up in rural South Carolina, I was taught ‘If you can’t say something nice… drink!’ Having never learned to hold my tongue or my liquor, radio in Atlanta is likely to get interesting very quickly.”
Original Report 4/16: Former WTKK Boston afternoon host Michael Graham has announced he will be leaving his regionally syndicated program on April 25 to join an unnamed Cumulus station in Atlanta.
Since the demise of WTKK in January 2013, Graham has self-syndicated his program to a network of stations including 830 WCRN Worcester, 1120 WBNW Concord NH, 970 WESO Southbridge, 1390 WPLM Plymouth, and BostonHeraldRadio.com under the “New England Talk Network” banner.
Stating that he intends to “help (in my small way) save the talk radio format from itself,” Graham comments that he will be joining Cumulus’ FM Talker in the market. That likely means “All News 106.7” WYAY, which added a 12-3pm talk show hosted by Kim ‘Kimmer’ Peterson and Atlanta Braves baseball broadcasts to its previous All-News presentation last fall. If WYAY is making further in-roads into Talk programming it will likely be in the 9am-12pm daypart.
WBNW Concord, MA broadcasts on 1120.