DALLAS — 3News' own Russ Mitchell spoke with Tom Joyner in 2015 as part of his "7 minutes" series. You can watch that interview in the player above.
After roughly five decades on the air, one of America's most influential radio hosts is hanging it up.
Tom Joyner signed off from his syndicated morning show for the final time on Friday. The program was celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and Joyner had previously made it known back in 2017 that this would be the end of the line.
The Tom Joyner Morning Show reached more than eight million listeners in 105 markets (including 93.1 WZAK in Cleveland), and mostly revolved around popular R&B hits dating back to the 1970s. Joyner and his on-air crew would also discuss the latest topics of the day, and the program became immensely influential particularly with African Americans across the country.
Born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1949, Joyner worked at various radio stations around the south and Midwest before he got an abnormal break in 1985: He took both the morning host job at KKDA in Dallas and the the afternoon job on WGCI in Chicago. For eight years, he commuted daily between the two gigs by plane, and earned the nicknames "The Fly Jock" and "The Hardest Working Man in Radio."
Joyner's morning show became syndicated in 1994, and four years later he was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. He also hosted a one-hour television variety show for a year, and has also been known for his philanthropic efforts in education and other areas.
"I never say goodbye at the end of this show, because it's one continuous party," Joyner said Friday as the program concluded. "But this will be the first time I say, The Fly Jock has landed!"
The Rickey Smiley Morning Show will replace Joyner across most syndicated markets.