Joseph Albert Finan (July 6, 1927 – December 19, 2006) was an American radio show host. Finan was born in 1927 in

Butler, Pennsylvania Butler is a city and the county seat of Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Pittsburgh and is part of the Greater Pittsburgh region. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 13,502. History Butler was na ...

. He served in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

1944–45 and attended Carnegie Tech, now

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

. He began his broadcasting career as a weatherman in early 1950s at

KYW-TV KYW-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside CW affiliate WPSG (channel 57 ...

(now WKYC-TV) and radio personality on KYW radio in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

. While at KYW-TV, Finan worked alongside sports anchors Bob Neal and

Jim Graner James R. Graner (February 21, 1919 – January 15, 1976) was the weeknight sports anchor for Cleveland NBC affiliate KYW-TV (later WKYC) beginning in 1957. He also served as color commentator for the Cleveland Browns Radio Network, most notab ...

, and preceded weatherman

Dick Goddard Richard Duane Goddard (February 24, 1931 – August 4, 2020) was an American television meteorologist, author, cartoonist, and animal activist. From 1966 until his retirement in 2016, he was the evening meteorologist at WJW-TV in Cleveland, O ...

. While a top rated disc jockey at KYW, Finan was implicated in the 1960

payola Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing the payment. Under US law, a radio station must disclose songs they were paid to play on the air as spons ...

scandal that also named

Alan Freed Albert James "Alan" Freed (December 15, 1921 – January 20, 1965) was an American disc jockey. He also produced and promoted large traveling concerts with various acts, helping to spread the importance of rock and roll music throughout Nor ...

and others. It led to Finan's departure from KYW and ended the career of Freed, who first coined the name Rock and Roll. Finan was hired by KTLN-Denver owner Richard K. Wheeler and named program director of the top forty station. By 1963 Joe Finan pioneered a talk radio format and renamed the station K-Talk with the call letters KTLK. Finan, as a colorful and controversial talk show host was credited with the expose' of the Denver police department that became a major scandal and led to many changes inside that department. Finan also served a radio commentator for

Denver Broncos The Denver Broncos are a professional American football franchise based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The team is headquart ...

football broadcasts during their first season in 1960, while at KTLN. Joe Finan returned to work in Cleveland radio before becoming a top rated

talk show A talk show (or chat show in British English) is a television programming or radio programming genre structured around the act of spontaneous conversation.Bernard M. Timberg, Robert J. Erler'' (2010Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show ...

host on WNIR radio in

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County, Ohio, Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 C ...

, in 1984, until his retirement on December 22, 2004. In February 2006, he came out of his retirement to work as a midday talk host for

WARF WARF (1350 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Akron, Ohio, known as "Fox Sports 1350 The Gambler" and carrying a sports format. Owned by iHeartMedia, WARF serves the Greater Cleveland and Akron metro areas as an affiliate of Fox Spo ...

until October of that year. Finan died at 79 years of age on December 19, 2006, in Cleveland of complications from surgery.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finan, Joe American radio DJs American Football League announcers American talk radio hosts Denver Broncos announcers People from Butler, Pennsylvania 1927 births 2006 deaths 20th-century American musicians United States Navy personnel of World War II