WEEI’s John Dennis Steps Down as Host of ‘Dennis & Callahan’

Image via Entercom

WEEI’s John Dennis has stepped down as host of the Dennis & Callahan morning show, the station announced Thursday. He was last on the air August 4.

The press release says Dennis, 64, chose to decrease his workload based on advice from his doctors. He’ll remain with WEEI in a limited capacity, working with station advertisers, sponsors, and community organizations. The next time Dennis will be on the air is during the annual Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon later this month.

“John is a Boston radio icon and will remain an important part of the WEEI family going forward. To that end, we have been working with John to define a new role for his considerable talents,” Entercom Boston vice president Phil Zachary said. For his part, Dennis said he’s “really looking forward to finally sleeping in.”

Dennis started his career in Boston as a sportscaster for WHDH in the late 1970s and was a mainstay on television for two decades. In 1997, WEEI paired him with then-newspaper scribe Gerry Callahan to host middays, but the pair quickly moved to morning drive. Dennis & Callahan has been a ratings juggernaut for well over a decade, combining an acerbic blend of sports talk and right-wing political banter.

According to the Globe, Dennis threatened to quit the show two weeks ago after a Twitter spat concerning Kirk Minihane, who was added to the program as a third voice in 2013. Dennis’s relationships with Minihane and Callahan had reportedly been deteriorating for the last year.

Not happening. https://t.co/ANDcVsEs7P

— @JohnDennisWEEI (@JohnDennisWEEI) August 5, 2016

When the Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon concludes August 30, Minihane and Callahan will continue as the two permanent hosts on the show until Dennis’s replacement is named. Comcast SportsNet’s Gary Tanguay and Red Sox radio anchor Mike Mutnansky are the program’s two most frequent fill-ins.