Joe Finan

{{short description|American radio show host (1927–2006)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2025}}

Joseph Albert Finan (July 6, 1927 – December 19, 2006) was an American radio show host.

Finan was born in 1927 in Butler, Pennsylvania. He served in the United States Navy 1944–45 and attended Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began his broadcasting career as a weatherman in early 1950s at KYW-TV (now WKYC-TV) and radio personality on KYW radio in Cleveland, Ohio.{{Citation|last=Russ|first=Dick|title=Local radio legend dies|publisher=wkyc.com|date=2006-12-20|url=http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=60843}} While at KYW-TV, Finan worked alongside sports anchors Bob Neal and Jim Graner, and preceded weatherman Dick Goddard.{{Citation|author1=Feran, Tom |author2=Heldenfels, R.D. |title=Cleveland TV Memories|year=1999|publisher=Gray & Co|location=Cleveland, Ohio|page=89|isbn=978-1-886228-32-0|quote=198. News Flash: In 1958 on TV-3, Jim Graner substituted for Bob Neal as sportscaster, joining anchor Pete French and weatherman Joe Finan.}}

While a top rated disc jockey at KYW, Finan was implicated in the 1960 payola scandal that also named Alan Freed and others. It led to Finan's departure from KYW{{Citation|last=Saunders |first=Dusty |title=Finan was first radio color man for Broncos |newspaper=Rocky Mountain News |date=2007-02-05 |url=http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/spotlight_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23962_5328586,00.html |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070519015551/http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/spotlight_columnists/article/0%2C2777%2CDRMN_23962_5328586%2C00.html |archivedate=May 19, 2007 }} and ended the career of Freed, who first coined the name Rock and Roll.

Finan was hired by KTLN-Denver owner Richard K. Wheeler and named program director of the top forty station. By 1963 Joe Finan pioneered a talk radio format and renamed the station K-Talk with the call letters KTLK. Finan, as a colorful and controversial talk show host was credited with the expose' of the Denver police department that became a major scandal and led to many changes inside that department.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}}

Finan also served a radio commentator for Denver Broncos football broadcasts during their first season in 1960, while at KTLN.

Joe Finan returned to work in Cleveland radio before becoming a top rated talk show host on WNIR radio in Akron, Ohio, in 1984, until his retirement on December 22, 2004. In February 2006, he came out of his retirement to work as a midday talk host for WARF until October of that year.

Finan died at 79 years of age on December 19, 2006, in Cleveland of complications from surgery.{{Citation

| last=Bloom

| first=Connie

| title=Talk Radio Listeners Lose Longtime Pal: Akron Broadcast Legend Dies of Complications From Surgery

| newspaper=The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

| date=2006-12-21

| url=http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/776165/talk_radio_listeners_lose_longtime_pal_akron_broadcast_legend_dies/index.html}}