97.1 The Fan in Columbus, Ohio announced a slew of lineup changes to its programming on Tuesday. And you didn’t have to read too far between the lines to tell how Bobby Carpenter and Brandon Beam felt about the impending end of their longtime program, Morning Juice.
“This show as currently comprised is going away,” Beam announced on Tuesday’s show. “… I want everybody to know that this is not a Brandon decision. This is not a Bobby decision… for whatever reason, they don’t see us as maybe or maybe not a good fit together. That this mornings show, as you currently know, is going away.”
Carpenter added: “I don’t know if it’s even really performance-based because last year we had the No. 1 show among men, No. 2 among adults. We built this thing together… we’ve had a lot of success because thankfully everybody’s tuned in… we’ve kind of been able to build something collective as a community here and I guess that’s not necessarily valued in the same way… this was not a decision where either one of us wanted to split up.”
The former Ohio State star went on to reveal that he’d continue hosting Morning Juice as a digital entity on 97.1 The Fan‘s app and YouTube page alongside Jeff Thitoff, while it was later announced that Beam will be taking over the station’s evening program, The Buckeye Show. Carpenter also shared that he’ll be doing more TV work for 97.1’s sister station, 10TV, which he said he’s fine with, but also never wanted to do at the expense of Morning Juice.
In case it wasn’t already evident that the former Dallas Cowboys linebacker was dissatisfied with the shakeup to his professional life, that became abundantly clear on Wednesday. With the start of the show affected by technical difficulties, Carpenter took to X to take a not-so-subtle jab at his employer.
“Sorry for @MorningJuice971 being off air… only good things are happening at this station right now,” he wrote.
Morning Juice isn’t the only show breaking up as a part of The Fan’s lineup changes, as the longtime afternoon show Common Man & T-Bone is also splitting up with Mike Ricordati continuing to host in the timeslot alongside Tim Hall while Jonathan “T-Bone” Smith will host a morning program with former Ohio State safety Tyvis Powell. Still, it’s more than curious that the station would move Bobby Carpenter to a digital-only show considering the 41-year-old’s status as its most prominent name.
Clearly, it’s not a move that Carpenter agrees with and it will be interesting to see how this entire situation plays out once the programming changes take effect on May 12. To that end, it’s also worth noting that Carpenter and Beam each expressed dissatisfaction with the timing of the changes, stating that the station didn’t let them reach their goal of sticking together for their longtime producer’s impending retirement this summer.