Tyrone Johnson lands a new gig following abrupt departure from 97.5 The Fanatic

Tyrone Johnson isn’t staying off radio for long.

The former 97.5 The Fanatic sports talker who was abruptly let go by the station last month has a new part-time gig lined up, though you won’t here him chopping up the NFL schedule or complaining about Aaron Nola.

Johnson will appear as a guest host on NJ 101.5, where you can expect a heavy dose of news and talk. His first appearance will be Friday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., where he’ll fill in for regular midday host Judi Franco.

“It will be nice to be back on air,” Johnson wrote on social media.

Johnson had a standard noncompete clause in his contract preventing him from talking sports for one of The Fanatic’s competitors for the next few months. But it doesn’t prohibit him from chatting about the news.

Johnson was let go by the station last month, an abrupt move that prevented him from staying goodbye to his listeners on air. Instead, he filmed a brief farewell on YouTube where he thanked his listeners and explained how he was simply told the station was moving in a different direction.

“It wasn’t dramatic,” Johnson said. “There was nothing phony on their end, there was nothing phony on my end, and for that I really appreciate them for the way they did it.”

Since Johnson’s departure, The Fanatic’s afternoon show has been appropriately rebranded as The Afternoon Show, with Connor Thomas and NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Ricky Bottalico. The station has advertised it’s hiring a new on-air host despite recent cutbacks at parent-company Beasley Media Group, which last week included WMMR veteran and former Preston & Steve co-host Kathy Romano.

While it’s unclear if The Fanatic intends to replace Johnson, at least one former Philly sports talker with afternoon experience applied for the job — former 94.1 WIP host Josh Innes, who was fired by the station’s current afternoon host Spike Eskin back in 2016.

Since leaving Philly, Innes has bounced around stations in Houston, Nashville, and most recently St. Louis, where budget cuts last year cost him his job at Hubbard Rocker KSHE 95. Though he’s currently unemployed and said the idea of landing a job is appealing, even Innes didn’t sound psyched about the idea of working for The Fanatic.

“That job itself just doesn’t sound like a situation,” Innes said on his podcast recently. “That company doesn’t sound like a good situation. It feels like one of those ‘Get there and within a year your fired, no matter what you do.’”

It would tough to imagine Innes returning to Philly for many reasons, not least of which was a beef with current Fanatic midday host Mike Missanelli that led to a confrontation during Eagles training camp in 2015.