Steve Somers, WFAN’s longest-serving daily host, will be leaving the station "more sooner rather than later," he said on the air early Thursday morning, reports Neil Best at Newsday.
After making several allusions to his imminent departure early in the three-hour show, callers asked him for more details in the final half hour or so, and Somers described the decision as a "mutual thing."
"I’m at peace with it," he said. "I’m not being fired."
Somers, 74, said he was offered a return to his old overnight shift but declined it.
Shortly before 2 a.m., he told a caller, "What I’ve done before, I don’t want to do again, working five hours overnight. They made it clear that they wanted to keep me around, but the bottom line is the time period. I would need to recharge the batteries and so forth and so on.
"One thing I don’t want to do is have a farewell tour. (Mike) Francesa had that, and Joe Benigno had that, and I don’t want to go through all of the gladhanding, the hugging and the kisses and all that stuff. That would embarrass me, number one, and number two, I would rather share the information with those people who gave me the support and gave me, really, a life and gave me a career as far as that goes and that’s the audience late at night."
Somers said he might return for occasional appearances as a fill-in and reiterated he will leave on good terms after speaking to WFAN executives Chris Oliviero and Spike Eskin.
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