There has been a lot of speculation on whether Charlamagne would quit his radio show “The Breakfast Club” after securing a TV talk show deal in the midst of his rising stardom as a political pundit.
But according to Page Six, he has signed a new and very lucrative five-year deal with iHeartRadio.
This means that Charlamagne will remain on as the 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.
In addition to a new quarterly and exclusive one-on-one interview show, 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.
He’s just coming off the heels of the successful launch of his “Black Effect Podcast” network, a 50/50 iHeart joint venture that has already earned 10 million downloads, making it one of the largest deals in the history of syndicated radio.
Amid numerous other offers from TV networks and media outlets, he exclusively told Page Six about his decision to remain at iHeart, “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 that he was surprised that the public cared so much about the speculation that he might quit The Breakfast Club, which broadcasts nationally on over 100 stations and reportedly has 8 million listeners a month, according to Nielsen.
“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 unnamed talk show will debut on Comedy Central 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.”
Charlamagne says there is even more to come with his groundbreaking Audible content partnership with Kevin Hart,
“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.”
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