Monthly Archives: February 2022

CHOM announces new morning show with Jay Michaels, Chantal Desjardins and Sharon Hyland

After four years of Terry DiMonte holding the fort on the CHOM morning show alone (with help from producer Esteban Vargas), CHOM has decided to go back to having a team host the morning show, announcing Friday three permanent hosts for Mornings Rock starting Feb. 28.

Jay Michaels was until last week the host of the afternoon drive show on Toronto’s Newstalk 1010. He announced he was leaving for the opportunity of a lifetime.

Chantal Desjardins comes back to the CHOM morning show, where she was part of the team in 2010 and 2011 with Ted Bird, Pete Marier and later Rob Kemp during that non-Terry period. When DiMonte came back, she was replaced with Heather Backman. Since leaving CHOM, she’s worked as a presenter at Sportsnet, done some standup comedy and based on her social media has been a nearly full-time vacationer.

Sharon Hyland is a very familiar name to CHOM listeners, having recently celebrated 25 years as an on-air host at the station, most of which were spent on daytime or weekend shifts.

Three hosts is something CHOM hasn’t done for more than a decade, and it’s a bit surprising that they would try this again. The station has been bleeding audience over the past few years and its fall book wasn’t great, but it still remains ahead of sister station Virgin 95.9, which is in much more need of some sort of change.

Marier noted during the announcement that he will be trading shows with Hyland, hosting weekend mornings.

Vargas will remain with the station, starting a new role as digital content producer for not just CHOM but Bell’s other English-language radio stations in Montreal as well. That means he won’t be producing the morning show any more, I’m told.

TSN 690 fires Chris Nilan for refusing to get vaccinated

Chris Nilan revealed on Thursday he has been fired by TSN 690 owner Bell Media after he refused to follow through with a company-wide requirement to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

In a post on Twitter, Nilan said he was asked to get the vaccine “late last year” and on Tuesday was informed that his contract was being terminated. His name and face have been removed from TSN 690’s website.

Nilan says “after consultation with my doctor and based upon my medical conditions,” he decided against the vaccine and asked for a medical exemption, which was denied. Nilan did not specify what medical conditions he has that would prevent him from safely taking a vaccine.