Cumulus News/Talk 760 WJR Detroit morning host Guy Gordon has departed the station after being asked to take a 60% pay cut and move to afternoons.
Gordon joined WJR in January 2017 as afternoon host before moving to mornings in June 2023. Prior to WJR, Gordon spent 33 years in Detroit television spending two decades at WXYZ-TV from 1984 to 2004 and then WDIV from 2004 to 2016.
Gordon told the Detroit Free-Press that after rejecting the pay cut and move to the 2-4pm timeslot currently held by Chris Renwick, his position was eliminated in a workforce reduction. He told the newspaper, “I was told it was a purely financial decision.” He was given the chance to say goodbye to listeners this morning stating, “If this is the end of the career. I have no grievances. I’m Lou Gehrig without the horrible disease. I’m the luckiest man on Earth.”
Gordon told Deadline Detroit that he was first asked to take a pay cut last fall stating, “I said, you know, I think our financial fortunes are really going to turn a corner here in the new year, so let me politely decline. But you know, let’s see where this goes, and maybe we can talk about it later if things don’t pan out. Clearly the business community is in turmoil. There’s tons of uncertainty. The automotive industry doesn’t know what’s coming next. So they came to me a week ago and said, ‘Look, we’re going to have to cut your salary dramatically, or we’ll just terminate. And if you stay, it won’t be on the morning show—it’ll be something different.’ I just felt that the work I was doing in the mornings was good; they had no complaints, they hadn’t expressed any dissatisfaction. I don’t think this was a programming decision, but for whatever reason, they couldn’t explain why a pay cut and staying in the mornings wasn’t on the table. Because I probably would have taken that.”
Lloyd Jackson and Jamie Edmonds, who had been part of “‘JR Morning” with Gordon will continue in the daypart.
