Imus in the Morning is a long-running radio show that was hosted by Don Imus, which ran in total from 1968 to 2018. The show originated on June 2, 1968, on various stations in the Western United States and Cleveland, Ohio, before settling on WNBC radio in New York City in 1971.Imus in the Morning Official Website (Retrieved 29 March 2018) In October 1988, the show moved to WFAN when that station took over WNBC's dial position following an ownership change. It was later syndicated to 60 other stations across the country by Westwood One, a division of CBS Radio, airing weekdays from 5:30 to 10 am Eastern time. Beginning September 3, 1996, the 6 to 9 am portion was simulcast on the cable television network MSNBC.
The show had been broadcast almost every weekday morning for 36 years on radio and 11 years on MSNBC until it was canceled on April 12, 2007, due to controversial comments made on the April 4, 2007, broadcast. Imus in the Morning program returned to the morning drive on New York radio station WABC on December 3, 2007. WABC is the flagship station of ABC Radio Networks (which itself was eventually subsumed into Westwood One in 2012), which syndicated the show nationally. From 2007 to August 2009, the show was simulcast on television nationwide on RFD-TV and rebroadcast each evening on RFD HD in high-definition. After Imus and RFD reached a mutual agreement to prematurely terminate the five-year deal, Fox Business Network began simulcasting the program on October 5, 2009, an arrangement which ended on May 29, 2015.
In March 2018, Cumulus Media, in the middle of a bankruptcy process, told Imus they were going to stop paying him, and as a result, Imus ended the show. The final broadcast of Imus in the Morning was March 29, 2018.
History Following a successful run as an on-air personality in Cleveland, Don Imus was hired by WNBC to host Imus in the Morning in late 1971. Imus is credited with introducing New York, and the larger Top 40 radio community, to the shock jock style of hosting. His initial run in New York ended in August 1977, when NBC management ordered a purge of WNBC's on-air staff in order to revive sagging ratings. Imus returned to Cleveland, but NBC brought him back to New York only two years later. On September 3, 1979, Imus started off his first program back on WNBC with his old character/voice/bit, "The Reverend Billy Sol Hargis". The show regularly parodied songs and voices, satirizing national and local events and persons.
After WNBC was sold to Emmis Communications in 1988, a frequency shift on New York's AM radio dial saw WFAN, Emmis's sports-talk station, move to WNBC's 660 AM dial position. WNBC signed off in October 1988, and WFAN decided to retain Imus, replacing its original morning drive-time show hosted by Greg Gumbel. Initially limited to the broadcast range of WFAN in the New York metropolitan area, the show's radio audience and influence expanded considerably once Westwood One began syndicating it in 1993.
During the WNBC years, Imus in the Morning was conducted out of NBC's radio studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The program then moved to the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, WFAN's longtime studio home. In 2005, the program moved to a dedicated Imus in the Morning set at MSNBC's studios in Secaucus, New Jersey, although certain cast members remained at the WFAN studios using a split-screen format. When at the Imus Ranch, Don Imus would broadcast the show from Ribera, New Mexico, while the rest of the cast remained in New York and New Jersey.
For the first 15 months of Imus' simulcast on RFD, the show originated from a custom set created for RFD located in the Cablevision Rainbow studios in midtown Manhattan's Penn Plaza. In April 2009, the show moved to the multipurpose WABC radio studios; Imus cited the high cost of the Cablevision studios as being the reason for the move. In September 2009, the show moved to Fox Business Network's television studios in Rockefeller Center, where Fox Business began simulcasting the program on October 5, 2009. The Fox Business simulcast ended May 29, 2015. On June 15, 2015, the show started broadcasting solely on the radio from the WABC radio studios.
Influence and demographics Originally considered a shock jock, Imus turned his show more towards politics and news and gained public influence as a result. During the 1990s, Imus in the Morning became increasingly important as a useful, non-traditional platform for politicians to express their views and gain exposure. Former U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato (R-N.Y.) was one of the first officeholders to ingratiate himself with "The I-man", as Imus was frequently called by cast and guests. The show's many guests included prominent politicians such as Bill Clinton (during his 1992 presidential campaign), Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry, Vice President Dick Cheney, J. D. Hayworth and Harold Ford Jr., as well as reporters and columnists from Newsweek, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News and other media outlets. Among the cream of the press who regularly appeared on the show were Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, Howard Fineman, Mike Barnicle, Frank Rich, Jonathan Alter and Jeff Greenfield.
In 1996 as MSNBC was being launched, the original plan for weekday morning programming was to rerun the previous night's prime-time shows. However, NBC Executive Producer of Special Events and Breaking News David Bohrman suggested to NBC president Andy Lack that putting the newsmaking Imus program on the new cable channel was the right thing to do. Bohrman contacted Imus, and over the course of several visits and business conversations a deal was struck so that the radio program would be simulcast on MSNBC. Cameras were installed in the WFAN radio studio, and remotely controlled from MSNBC headquarters in New Jersey. One of the unique features of the first few years of the program was that the television version's commercials and the radio commercials happened at different times, which allowed TV viewers a voyeuristic view of Imus and his team getting ready for the next segments. The program was a huge success on cable news for quite a while. Bohrman (who Imus referred to as "Moosebutt") produced the first few dozen programs, then hired Terry Irving to become the day-to-day Executive Producer of the television version of the program. In 1997, Imus was named as one of Time magazine's "25 most influential people in America"; he was also on the cover of Newsweek in 1999.
In 2005, Imus in the Morning was carried by about 90 radio stations across the United States, although at the time of its 2007 CBS Radio/MSNBC cancellation it was carried by 61 stations. Arbitron analysis put the program among the most listened to radio talk shows in the United States, with about 1.6 million radio listeners per week.
In an April 26, 2005, article, David Kiley wrote in Business Week magazine that Imus in the Morning commanded higher advertising rates compared to competing talk shows with larger audiences, because the Imus show was less politically partisan and its demographics were "affluent, educated and influential men". Kiley also quoted former CBS News anchor and Face the Nation moderator Bob Schieffer as saying, "I don't know anyone in Washington who doesn't listen to Imus or watch him on TV. I get more feedback off my spots on Imus than from my own shows." This included the former Howard Stern terrestrial radio broadcast. In comparison, Stern attracted more than 8.25 million listeners on half as many stations and Rush Limbaugh attracts 13.5 million listeners.
At the time of its 2007 MSNBC cancellation, Imus in the Morning averaged 361,000 viewers in the first quarter of 2007 and was up 39% over the previous year, ranking third among cable morning news programs in the Nielsen ratings, compared to 769,000 viewers of Fox & Friends on Fox News Channel and 372,000 viewers of CNN's American Morning.Tim Cuprisin, "Plagued by soft ratings, O'Briens ousted as CNN morning anchors", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 11, 2007. The program was reported to generate $20 million in annual revenue for WFAN, representing approximately 25 percent of the New York anchor station's revenue. Total revenue, including affiliate advertising and MSNBC, was said to be $50 million.Johnnie L. Roberts, Newsweek magazine, April 11, 2007. MSNBC is said to have paid CBS $4 million annually in simulcast fees and to have averaged $500,000 per year in production expenses.
Imus generally selected country and western songs as bumper music, promoting artists such as Delbert McClinton, Lucinda Williams, Levon Helm, Little Sammy Davis, The Flatlanders as well as his de facto theme song from Kinky Friedman, "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore". Rock music, blues, oldies, and the occasional jazz piece is also used as bumper music. Imus is known for playing bumper music at a length that is unusual for talk radio.
Cast members
Imus in the Morning had a regular cast of members who supplied news and comedy, and acted as foils to Imus. Part of the appeal of his show was the overt display of office politics: cast members were frequently the object of Imus' sarcasm, largely because of their outspoken points of view. The idea of including production staff as an on-air cast of characters was the idea of Fred Imus, Don's younger brother, who briefly served as the show's producer and was a regular guest on the show until his death in August 2011.Hinckley, David (2011-08-06). Fred Imus, songwriter and brother of Don Imus, dies at 69. New York Daily News. Retrieved 2011-08-07.
From the 1970s until his retirement on May 6, 2011, Charles McCord served as the program's newsman and head writer. In character, he usually acted as either the straight man or, occasionally, as an Imus sycophant or antagonist. McCord affected a neutral, reasoned tone and thus usually stayed out of Imus' line of fire, compared to the antics of the other cast members. He was responsible for developing the lines of questioning Imus would ask his guests, in addition to his anchor duties. Connell McShane took over the newsman position on May 9 and continued in the role until December 14, 2017.
Bernard McGuirk, his producer, was the show's antagonist, whom Imus had sometimes referred to as a "bald-headed stooge"; he also performed character voices (such as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, former New York Catholic Archbishops Cardinals Edward Egan and John Joseph O'Connor, and poet Maya Angelou). McGuirk was the only other member of the cast to lose his job in the Rutgers controversy and was initially uncharacteristically quiet for the first few weeks of the revival before returning, saying only "Hi" during the first show back on December 3, 2007, on WABC-AM.