Kojo Nnamdi, DC radio host, retires after 23 years
WASHINGTON: Kojo Nnamdi, a fixture on Washington’s radio airwaves and an influential factor in the region’s politics, will retire from his daily program on WAMUFM, the public station announced Wednesday.
Nnamdi, 76, will continue to host his Friday program about local politics, “The Politics Hour” and irregular “Kojo in the Community” special live panel programs, but will step down from daily broadcasts in April.
The announcement ends Nnamdi’s 23-year run as the host of a noontime program that explored innumerable topics – transportation, education, gentrification, racial relations, architecture, food and culture – and almost all from a local perspective.
In a medium that tends to prize conflict and confrontation, Nnamdi conducted interviews with newsmakers and ordinary people with a calm and assured manner, his voice inflected with the rhythms of his native country, Guyana.
The station said Nnamdi’s Monday-Thursday slot would be temporarily filled by “The Takeaway,” a syndicated newsmagazine program produced in New York. His weekly politics program, co-hosted with Tom Sherwood, a former WRC and Washington Post journalist, will continue to air on Fridays.
A daily local program that would permanently replace Nnamdi’s program is under development, WAMU said.
Nnamdi’s semi-retirement is another major change for WAMU, one of the largest and most popular public radio stations in the country.
Veteran host Diane Rehm ended her WAMU-produced and nationally syndicated interview program in 2016.
Her replacement, Joshua Johnson, left for an anchor job at MSNBC in late 2019 after just under three years on the air. The station’s general manager, J.J. Yore, who had overseen a dramatic increase in WAMU’s revenue and membership roles, left in July amid staff complaints over his handling of sexual harassment and racial equity complaints.