Tom Joyner off the air in Chicago after four decades

Tom Joyner has long been a fixture of Chicago radio. Because of his daily commute between Dallas and Chicago during the 1980s, he earned the nickname “The Fly Jock, the hardest working man in radio.”

This week, Robert Feder reported that his morning show on WSRB has been dropped in Chicago, but it still airs every morning on dozens of other stations and live online.

In this clip from 1989, we join Joyner in the studio at WGCI and in his limo on the way to O’Hare Airport. Joyner outlines his grueling schedule, as well as his view that the decline of talk in radio is ending the era of the radio personality.

“I see us–Black radio–killing ourselves. Because Black radio was built on personality. Without personality, we’re just another station on the dial. And if we’re just another station on the dial, we don’t stand a chance.”

This segment was shown on the program Radio Faces, produced by Tom Weinberg and Joel Cohen and aired on WTTW Journal. The voice you hear at the beginning of the clip is that of the host, John Callaway.

Watch the full Radio Faces program, also featuring Bob Collins, Terry Hemmert, Steve Dahl, Dick Buckley, Robert Feder, and others at Media Burn.