It’s a new, and very different, day at 100.7 WZLX.
After leaving 98.5 The Sports Hub in the fall, radio host Rich Shertenlieb on Monday launched his new sports talk show on “Boston’s Classic Rock” station — without regular music.
“Hey guys hey,” Shertenlieb said in his intro to “The Rich Shertenlieb Show” on WZLX.
“Finally!” he added. “Boy I have missed the hell out of you, and man, do we have a lot to talk about… I’m happy to be back.”
Shertenlieb and 98.5’s Fred Toucher split up in November after a long run together, as their morning show topped the region’s ratings.
“I loved my time where I worked,” Shertenlieb said. “There’s this perception that you have to hate the place that you used to work, and that’s really not true… I truly, truly like the people that I worked with, but there’s just some cases where you just find a better opportunity.”
“Sometimes you do find a better opportunity, and it just presents itself, and you’d really be dumb not to take it,” he later added.
As Shertenlieb was leaving 98.5, he was forced to give up the Toucher and Rich Twitter account with 150,000 followers.
“There was one thing that I have to be honest did rub me the wrong way, because I did feel that it not only was something that I thought was a little unnecessary, but it affected my relationship with you, the listener,” Shertenlieb said about the social media account upheaval.
Shertenlieb was joined on Monday by Michael Hurley, formerly of WBZ Boston, and Super Bowl champion Ted Johnson. Hurley will be a daily co-host, and Johnson will be among a rotating cast of co-hosts.
“Sitting across from me, two of my favorite people on the planet this morning,” Shertenlieb said of Hurley and Johnson.
“This gig, they were very, very cool. iHeart has been awesome getting this all set up,” Shertenlieb later added. “One of the things that they did is they essentially said, ‘Who do you want? Who do you want sitting around you? What hosts do you want?’ I can’t thank them enough for essentially giving me carte blanche to bring in the people that I wanted to bring in.”
The rotating cast of co-hosts includes: Charlotte Wilder, formerly with Fox Sports, ESPN and Sports Illustrated who’s now on the Dan Le Batard Show; and Mike Giardi, an NFL Network alum who’s now a writer at Boston Sports Journal and appears on NBC Sports Boston.
Kenny Young, who joined the WZLX family in 1997 and became producer of the morning show in 2020, is the producer of Shertenlieb’s show.
“Producer extraordinaire Kenny Young, who has been a lifesaver setting things up,” Shertenlieb said.
Shertenlieb’s morning show from 6 to 10 a.m. is now competing against his former co-host, Toucher.
Back when Toucher and Rich were together, they would run audio clips of fans outside TD Garden and had a segment called “911 Calls.”
“We’ve got live from the streets of the Celtics big win on Wednesday,” Shertenlieb said. “Also, the calls I know you like. I have spent a lot of time while I was out, all I was doing was fostering all of the calls from all over. The 911 Calls return.”
Shertenlieb was outside TD Garden on Wednesday after the Celts clinched the series against the Cavs, getting audio from fans. The segment was called, “The Masshole Report.”
The previous morning show at WZLX included hosts Pete McKenzie and Heather Ford. The morning show change also comes several months after morning show co-host Kevin Karlson died unexpectedly.