Monday, September 15, 2008

Smiley's successor found

No, this isn't a replay of Saturday's post regarding Roland Martin, but the Tom Joyner Morning Show has found its successor to departed commentator Tavis Smiley. Make that two successors.

Because of fan voting that left the contest between Jeff Johnson and Stephanie Robinson practically tied, TJMS has decided to bring both on as commentators.

This comes after Friday's announcement of Roland Martin of WVON-AM being tapped to provide commentaries for the show.

Even though TJMS held a contest to replace Tavis Smiley (who left the program last spring after listeners complained about his harsh criticism of Barack Obama), Martin essentially replaces Smiley in this role because his name recognition is on the same level as Smiley's, since he appears reguarly on CNN and has contributed to Essence magazine and is also an commentator at TV One.

As for the contest winners, Stephanie Robinson is a Harvard lecturer on law and founded is the founder of The Jamestown Project, a Washington, D.C. think tank, while Jeff Johnson hosts a talk show on BET titled The Truth with Jeff Johnson and is an award-winning journalist and social activst, also from Washington.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

FYI, what you might not know is Jeff Johnson is s regular on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNN, FOX News and MSNBC Dayside. He is a Huffington Post blogger and has written commentaries for TheRoot.com, CNN.com and EbonyJet.com. Stephanie also is a well respected commentator seen on national media. So the name recognition of Martin is a little irrelevant if TJMS wants to bring in new listeners(varying demographics) who don't want the same 'ole same 'ole.

T Dog said...

Hey, I didn't know that. Well, so much for Martin's name recognition... ;-) LOL... I'm certain all three will make great contributions to the show (I used to listen to TJMS, but since I've starting working again, I haven't had much time to listen to the show...) Thanks for the info!