By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Wednesday, June 3, 2015 on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Tom Joyner, the legendary syndicated morning host on R&B station Kiss 104.1 for the past two decades, is now heard live from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. starting this past Monday.
This means listeners who want to hear the fourth hour of his show from 9 to 10 a.m. will have to go to his live stream.
Kiss' mid-day host Sasha the Diva is now starting an hour earlier.
UPDATE: Joyner is off air as of November 27, 2017. More details here
Joyner, 65, runs his show in Dallas from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., the traditional time frame for personality-based morning shows for decades. But there has been a shift in radio to earlier starts and stops.
"The reason for the change is for audience members who listen while in the office at 9 a.m.," said Tony Kidd, who runs Cox Radio Atlanta. "They have told us they want more a more music environment. Like anything, we will evaluate this over time."
Joyner is heard on about 110 stations nationwide to about 8 million listeners. On Kiss, his show drew a 6.2 share last month in Nielsen Audio ratings, good for fifth place.
Sister station B98.5 - which touts itself as an "at work" pop station and has its strongest ratings during traditional office hours - has for many years started playing more music starting at around 8:45 a.m.
Melissa Carter and Jeff Elliott, B98.5's morning hosts, also begin at 5 a.m., an hour earlier than many morning shows since studies show more people are now waking up earlier to get to work earlier to avoid some of the worst of the morning commute traffic.
Rock 100.5 in early 2014 moved its local morning show from 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Star 94 - which now airs Drex, Cassiday and Tingle - has had the same schedule for awhile as well.
Don Anthony, an Atlanta-based morning show consultant, said Nielsen Audio should change the morning measurement period to 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. "Kicking off 30 min. to an hour earlier and wrapping up a bit sooner just matches up better to today's lifestyles," he wrote an in email.
Kiss 104.1, B98.5 and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution are all part of Cox Media Group.
