Listeners to the popular “MJ Morning Show” were stunned Friday when the host MJ, who’s real name is Todd Schnitt, announced that he was retiring effective immediately in the middle of the show. The MJ Morning Show is the No. 1 rated morning radio show in its flagship Tampa market but also is heard in Jacksonville, St. Louis and was scheduled to begin on XM Radio in a few months.
MJ has been open with his annoyance with Clear Channel management in recent weeks for what he views as their heavy handed management style. Listeners can look back to the FCC’s crackdown on radio stations as the beginning of the problems. Clear Channel Tampa was especially hard hit by the FCC who levied heavy fines against their “Bubba the Love Sponge” shock jock.
Even though MJ has never used envelope pushing tactics, instead focusing more on a news/talk style for his show, he was still forced to place the show on a delay to drop out when anyone said something that could be considered offensive, even if it was clearly not actionable. Things got even more heated when a July 4th stunt, involving fireworks in an oven which the show had done years earlier, was shutdown. MJ complained at the time about a lack of support from the higher ups. He also was upset after the management elected to remove billboards featuring MJ with a picture of Britney Spears taken when she was bald after the Spears’ camp threatened a lawsuit.
The final straw came on Thursday afternoon when a planned giveaway of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, a day before the official release date, was shut down by clear channel management when the publisher contacted them about a possible copyright violation. MJ complained that the management gave in too quickly on the issue and was especially upset because they had done similar giveaways with previous Potter novels. MJ was so angry over the lack of support that he skipped his afternoon talk radio show, The Schnitt Show, which is also heard on Clear Channel stations.
At 7:45 AM MJ announced that the job wasn’t fun anymore and then said he was quitting. He then walked out of the studio leaving the rest of his crew to try and continue the show while they were unsure of what was going on. He returned about 45 minutes later and sounded as if he had been crying. He said that after talking to his wife he came back feeling that he owed it to the listeners to finish out the day. Phone calls and emails poured in asking him to stay. At the time of this story he had still not made a final decision on if he will return to the morning show or the afternoon talk show. He talked about possibly traveling until his contract was up before returning to radio.
