BY: Walker
Published 4 years ago
It looks like ‘The Breakfast Club’ is staying together for a little bit longer as Charlamagne tha God signed a new contract to keep him at iHeartRadio for another five years.
via: Page Six
After inking a TV talk show deal, and amid his soaring stardom as a political pundit, there was much speculation Charlamagne tha God would leave his radio show “The Breakfast Club”.
But Page Six can exclusively reveal he has signed a new, very lucrative five-year deal to remain with iHeartRadio.
This means that Charlamagne will stay on as host of the nationally syndicated “The Breakfast Club,” which he has fronted for 10 years — plus the media and entertainment firm is giving him an expanded role as an executive.
Charlamagne will continue to host “Weekends with The Breakfast Club,” a three-hour weekly program featuring a countdown of the top 20 songs on the charts and signature interviews, in addition to a new quarterly and exclusive one-on-one interview show.
He’s also coming off the heels of a successful launch of his “Black Effect Podcast” network, a 50/50 joint venture with iHeart — which has already garnered 10 million downloads — making his one of the biggest deals in syndicated radio history.
He exclusively told Page Six about his decision to stay at iHeart — amid numerous other offers from TV networks and media outlets, “iHeart has shown me that they have my back. It’s a great partnership and great partnerships are very hard to find, especially in this era that we are in right now.
“It says something when you’ve been with a company for 10 years and they’ve gone above and beyond and empowered me, not just as talent, but as an owner and an executive.”
He added he was shocked that the public cared so much about the speculation he would leave “The Breakfast Club,” which airs on over 100 stations nationwide and according to Nielsen currently has 8 million listeners a month.
“I was surprised, I did not think people cared that much — especially the general public. But industry-wise that would not have been a surprise — just because everybody would love to have certain individuals with their companies and I feel like I’ve done well for myself over the past few years. … But people reaching out from the general public —yeah, that was kind of shocking.”
His as-yet-unnamed talk show on Comedy Central debuts in 2021. And he is launching his new “Mental Wealth Alliance” to provide free mental health treatment to 10 million people in five years.
On mental health, Charlamagne said, “A lot of people I have known have passed away this year. I have family who are going through it financially. So you can be the person who can make somebody else’s life a little bit brighter. Take the weight off of somebody else’s shoulders, regardless of what it is. It could be financially, it could be conversation; you don’t know.
“So am I happy, yes. I’m happy to be me. But I do get sad with what I see is going on in the world right now.”
And with his groundbreaking Audible content partnership with Kevin Hart, Charlamagne says there is even more to come.
“We will be announcing some of the first projects real soon, maybe the top of the year. We actually have a project dropping in March with Audible. I can’t say anything right now. I don’t wanna step on any of the promo just yet. So I have to hold on … I have always said I have the perfect combination of righteousness and rachetness.”
He adds, “But for the first time, we are giving people the space to tell their stories and helping to eradicate the stigma of mental health in a real way. I got brothers talking to me about therapy like we talk about going to the gym.”
Not only did Charlmagne resign, Page Six is also reporting that “Every major media… outlet was interested in speaking and meeting with Charlamagne in the hopes of luring him away from iHeart.” Are y’all happy he’s sticking around?