Jim Richards

Who is Jim Richards?

Jim Richards is a Canadian radio personality.

Richards studied radio broadcasting at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario. In 1988 he launched his radio career at CJTN in Trenton, Ontario, close to Belleville; he also worked at CIHI in Fredericton, New Brunswick, CJCH in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He hosted a popular morning show at CFJB Rock 95 in Barrie, Ontario, north of Toronto, and was nominated for medium-market morning show of the year in 1990.

From the early 1990s to 1996, he worked periodic shifts including a Saturday morning show on Toronto sports talk station The Fan.

At the Fan, he gave George Stroumboulopoulos his first exposure as an on-air personality; the young board operator contributed regularly to Richards' shows. In 1994, a difficult year for sports media with both a Major League Baseball strike and National Hockey League lockout, the station gave Richards a midday shift with sports broadcaster Barb DiGiulio.

In the summer of 1996, he left the Fan to work at Toronto rock station Q107 and the Rock Radio Network, hosting overnight rock music programming syndicated across Canada for the latter.

He joined news-talk station CFRB in 1997. At CFRB, he hosted late evening talk show The Nightside. In 2004, Mark Elliot took over The Nightside and Richards moved to an earlier shift, weekday evenings from 8 to 11. Known officially as The Jim Richards Show, Richards also bills it as the "Showgram", "The Nighttime Friendly", "The Feel-Good Edition" and "The Three Hours of Love." In late 2005, with the departure of Michael Coren, Richards' shift briefly moved from 7 to 10 for several weeks until Kelly Cutrara was appointed Coren's replacement and Richards returned to the 8 to 11 slot. Richards was on the 10am-noon and 1pm-3pm time slot, to replace Leslie Roberts and Paul and Carol Motts respectively but now he hosts the 1pm to 4pm time slot weekdays.