Kirk Minihane Will Leave WEEI, But Get His Own Show

Radio host Kirk Minihane, who stepped away from his morning show Kirk & Callahan because of mental health issues, is moving on from WEEI, although he will be staying within the station’s parent company Entercom. He’s getting his own show on a radio app next year.

In an episode of self-appointed sports media knower Richard Deitsch’s podcast released last night, Minihane, who said he believes he’s under contract until 2021, wasn’t sure what his new show on Radio.com will look like, or what time of day it’ll air. It’s still a vague blob of an idea at this point. There will be fewer restrictions on what he can or can’t say, though.

Here’s part of Minihane’s explanation on why he’s leaving terrestrial radio:

Obviously Entercom owns the radio world, as you know, and they have Radio.com, which is an app. And they’re trying to get that going and make that more popular. They presented to me a few weeks ago, where essentially “We’re going to pay you the same money, maybe even a little more, and you can go do your show on Radio.com.” There’s no FCC. It’s you by yourself. You can do whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be sports. It can be whatever you want to talk about. You have total freedom, or as much freedom as you’re gonna have when you’re owned by a company.

My reaction was, “I wanna do the morning show with these guys.” As I became more and more aware that probably wasn’t going to be the endgame—or if it was, I was going to come back to a totally different show and rules that I wasn’t going to be able to follow—the Radio.com option became more and more appealing to me.

Minihane revealed in August that he had missed a few days of Kirk & Callahan because he was dealing with suicidal thoughts. After returning for a few weeks, the radio host said he was “still battling mental health issues” and took an indefinite leave of absence. Last month, Minihane began to occasionally tweet about his meetings with management and his bosses’ refusal to let him back on the air. He said he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t allowed back, and didn’t offer any specific reasons to Deitsch, but he did suggest that WEEI sounds like they’ll be moving in a less antagonistic direction.