*Tom Joyner’s morning show is replacing comedian J. Anthony Brown with a rotating cast of five well-known entertainers: Bill Bellamy, Sherri Shepherd, Arsenio Hall, Kym Whitley and Lavell Crawford.
Each will fill in one day a week, per the Radio TV Talk Blog. The Tom Joyner Morning Show is based in Dallas, Texas, and it’s expected that the new co-hosts will host from the studio in Los Angeles that Brown once used.
Brown worked with Joyner for two decades, and he said he left the show earlier this month after his efforts to put together a weekend solo show with Joyner’s Reach Media fell through, notes AlwaysAList.com.
Joyner has tapped five veterans in the entertainment world. Bellamy has hosted NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” and “Bill Bellamy’s Who’s Got Jokes” on TV One.
Shepherd has acted in several sitcoms, including recurring roles on “Suddenly Susan,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and “The Jamie Foxx Show” before starring as Ramona Platt on the ABC sitcom “Less than Perfect” from 2002 to 2006, for which she was nominated for the BET Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2005. She was also a member of “The View.”
Hall hosted the first late night talk show host by an African American in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and recently tried a revival that aired in 2013-14.
READ RELATED STORY: Via Video J. Anthony Brown Explains Leaving Tom Joyner Morning Show (WATCH)
Crawford came in second in “Last Comic Standing” in 2007. He is best known for playing Huell Babineaux, the bodyguard, assistant, and pickpocket for Saul Goodman in the epic series “Breaking Bad.”
Whitley has acted in dozens of TV shows and movies, and is best known for her roles on “Animal Practice,” “The Boondocks,” “Young & Hungry,” and The Parkers. She was nominated for a 2004 BET Comedy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Box Office Movie for her role in the 2003 comedy film “Deliver Us From Eva.”
“It was not a salary dispute,” Brown said, addressing speculation about his relationship with Joyner. “It was based on me wanting to venture out and have my own weekend show. That’s it. We couldn’t come to terms. It was just time for me to leave… Sometimes people just disagree and part ways. That’s just what happened.”
Brown harbors no resentment toward Joyner’s Reach Media or Joyner himself, saying: “It was absolutely the best job I’ve ever had. The most fun I ever had.”
The comedian is currently in talks with syndicators to do his own weekend show.
“I could have stayed if we had worked things out at the end of it,” Brown said. “Sooner or later, you get too old to do something. I was able to stay there as long as I wanted. It was fresh until I left. That was a great accomplishment.”
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