Tony Kornheiser To Be Off-Air On ESPN 980 For Most Of Summer
ESPN 980 radio personality Tony Kornheiser will be off the air for most of the summer, in part due to what an ESPN 980 source dubbed a "scheduling/vacation issue." He was scheduled to take off several weeks anyway.
StoryStream
Live
2Total Updates since June 10, 2011
Updates2
All Updates2
Do you want major updates to this story in your Facebook News Feed?
Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post provides some more clarity on Tony Kornheiser's situation with ESPN 980. Previous reports indicated Kornheiser would be off the rest of the summer, but that isn't exactly true. Instead, Kornheiser will be off next week, return the week following the U.S. Open, then take the majority of the next six weeks off as summer vacation.
ESPN 980 programming director Chuck Sapienza told me that Kornheiser had requested to be off the Thursday and Friday of the Open months ago. In balancing his vacation time, Sapienza decided it would be more interesting and valuable to have Tony on the Monday after the Open than the Wednesday before, and that having one full week of Tony would be better than two split weeks.
So Al Galdi will host next week's shows on location from Congressional, and Kornheiser will return the following week.
Kornheiser is scheduled to be on air for nearly 20 days between June 1 and Labor Day, so he won't have the whole summer off. Andrew Siciliano will take his place during the time Kornheiser is off air.
Tony Kornheiser, the former Washington Post columnist and current ESPN voice, will not be on the air for his daily "Tony Kornheiser Show" on ESPN 980 for the rest of the summer after Friday's show. Kornheiser noted this on the air on Thursday, according to the Twitter account @MrTonySays, which chronicles his quotes on radio and television.
"The show is not going to be on the air next week. The decision was made by management. It's a very complicated thing, and understand that it's business. Look, I'm not going to agree with it, but I'm not going to go nuts," Kornheiser said to begin the show Thursday. "I have a contractual arrangement that allows me to do a certain number of shows. I reached that number of shows, so economically, the station decided they'd rather have someone else and not pay me for any more shows. That's fine."
Kornheiser did say he would have liked to have been on the air next week because of the 2011 U.S. Open being in town at Congressional Country Club. He was already planning on taking off for July and August. An ESPN Radio source told John Ourand of Sports Business Journal said that Kornheiser's words were due to a "scheduling/vacation issue."
