Ottawa Radio: Lowell Green Exit Budget-Strapped CFRA

Lowell Green

Popular Ottawa talk host Lowell Green is retiring from active on-air duties, but will still make a daily appearance on area radio waves.

Green, 79, has been host of the Lowell Green Show on CFRA 580 AM since 1993. The morning show had become a home for banter, arguments and complaints about various governments, according to The Ottawa Citizen.

Green’s last show on CFRA was Monday, and Rob Snow – another recognizable CFRA on-air host – will take over Green’s morning broadcast. However, CFRA has asked Green to call into the show daily to join in on the on-air discussion. Terms of the call-in agreement haven’t been disclosed.

The move comes two months after another well-known CFRA radio personality, Steve Madely, announced his retirement from radio. Madely is 68. Click Here for earlier posting.

Green is a hugely controversial figure in the nation’s capital. Despite his openly adversarial stance towards progressive politics – his book is called “How the granola-crunching, tree-hugging, thug huggers are wrecking our country” – he has held a membership with the Liberal Party and ran to obtain the federal Liberal nomination in the Pontiac region in 1968. He lost the nomination to Thomas Lefebvre, who served the riding for six consecutive terms and was later named a Senator in 1984.

Green was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Canadian parents. He immigrated to Canada as a youth. He started his radio career in Brantford, ON, before finding his way to CFRA in Ottawa in 1960 as a farm reporter. Monday’s announcement marks the second time that Green has retired from radio. He first retired in the 1980s, but that only proved to be a brief break as he returned to area airwaves in 1990.