R.I.P.: Former Youngstown Radio Personality Dick Thompson

Long-time Youngstown OH radio personality Dick "Big Al" Thompson has died.

Executives with Cumulus Radio said the WHOT and WNIO disc jockey died on Thursday. He was 89.

For more than half a century, the name Dick Thompson was synonymous with radio in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys.

He came to the area in the late 1950s, working on the old WHOT as one of the “Good Guys,” as they were known back then. After retiring the first time when he was 65, he went back on the air with friend and colleague Johnny Kaye for both WNIO and WSOM.



He signed off the air for the last time 10 years ago.

Thompson was part of a DJ duo with the late Johnny Kay on WHOT 1330 AM. The two became household names and they pulled down some of the highest ratings in the country, He was inducted in the Radio and Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2003.

He began at WHOT in Youngstown in 1958.

Thomas John, digital content director at iHeartMedia Youngstown, worked with Thompson, who doubled as program director at WHOT, in the 1970s.

“My favorite Dick Thompson story is that he was also DJ Big Al Knight,” John recalled. “He was on the air [in a prerecorded program] from midnight to 6 a.m., and then he would come in and do his morning show at 6. He didn’t change his voice, but no one caught on.”