Radio giant Tom Joyner is signing off the airwaves Friday after one of the longest-running careers in Radio. The 70-year-old is the host of America's No. 1 syndicated urban morning show, "The Tom Joyner Morning Show," which airs in more than 105 markets nationwide and reaches nearly eight million listeners.
Tom is also the creator of Tom Joyner's Family Reunion, Tom Joyners Fantastic Voyage Cruise, Tom Joyner's Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day and more. While keeping his listeners laughing and entertained, Tom has created programs that affect nearly every aspect of people's lives.
"Our thing has always been to empower people. But to empower, we have to first entertain," Joyner told CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan. "If I've got you laughing, I've got you listening."
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That laughing paid off. At one point, Joyner said he was pulling in $14 million a year.
By the mid 1980s, Joyner earned the nickname "fly jock" because he was offered two jobs and took both: flying between Dallas where he did a morning show and Chicago where he was on air in the afternoons. Asked how he did that for eight years, Joyner responded with a laugh, "Greed."
"We do a show for African Americans. That's what we do," he told "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl in 2000.
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"Don't worry about crossover. Just super serve, super serve, super serve. Anything that affects African Americans, that's what you do," he told CBSNews.com. "Just worry about connecting to people and their needs."
Joyner was born and raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, one of many cities that helped shape the civil rights movement.
"I was a fat kid and they served great food at civil rights marches," Joyner said. "Oh my god, the chicken was good. So I'm out there protesting the fact our radio station in this all-black town didn't play any black music. And this guy who owned the radio station, which was inside a Ford dealership, came out and said,...
...'I don't need this. I'm trying to really sell some cars.' Tell you what, it's a sun up, sun down station, every Saturday, I'll let one of you play all the Aretha and The Temptations that you want."
And the rest is history.
He told CBS that during retirement, he plans to spend his time raising money for college students. Since 1999, Joyner has raised more than $60 million through the Tom Joyner Foundation to help students in historically black colleges and universities, according to Reach Media.
