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Philadelphia hip-hop and R&B station Power 99 is transitioning away from its long-running morning show to start broadcasting the syndicated New York radio show “The Breakfast Club.”
The Bala Cynwyd-based FM station, owned by iHeartMedia, announced the move Friday and said “The Breakfast Club” will start airing in Philly, South Jersey and Delaware on Monday morning. The weekday show runs from 6-10 a.m.
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The programming change comes days after iHeartMedia laid off talent at stations across the country. The cuts included Power 99 hosts Mikey Dredd and MuthaKnows, who started their “Rise & Grind Morning Show” at the station in 2011 after years together hosting “The Hot Boyz” show on weeknights.
“The Breakfast Club,” which debuted in 2010 on Manhattan’s Power 105.1, is hosted by the trio of Charlamagne Tha God, DJ Envy and Jess Hilarious. The show is known for boundary-pushing gossip, entertainment news and high-profile guests that have included former president Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential nominees Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.
Philly natives Kevin Hart, Will Smith and Patti LaBelle are among a long list of artists and comedians who have made appearances on the show in years past.
“The Breakfast Club” reaches an audience of 6.6 million monthly listeners and has been streamed more than 1 billion times on its podcast, according to iHeartRadio data. The show now airs in more than 90 markets. Charlamagne and DJ Envy both entered the Radio Hall of Fame in 2020.
In a statement Friday announcing the move to Power 99, iHeartMedia executive vice president of programming Thea Mitchem called “The Breakfast Club” a “cultural touchstone.”
“Its unique blend of candid conversation, humor and insight keeps it as relevant today as ever, shaping culture while giving a platform to voices that matter,” Mitchem said.
The hosts of “The Breakfast Club” have sometimes been embroiled in public feuds with their guests, including Charlamagne’s intervention in a past beef between Philly rappers Meek Mill and Beanie Sigel. In a tense 2016 interview with Sigel, Charlamagne called the rapper a “hater” for taking shots at Meek Mill, who also has appeared on the show several times over the years.
More recently, Meek Mill criticized the show’s hosts after they discussed his commentary on the federal sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs. During Combs’ trial in May, the hosts of “The Breakfast Club” brought up past speculation about Meek Mill’s relationship with the convicted hip-hop mogul. Combs was sentenced last week to spend 50 months in federal prison.
In a 2023 lawsuit filed against Combs, public court documents contained alleged details about the rapper’s infamous parties at his home in the Hamptons. In the court filings, the redacted name of “a Philadelphia rapper who dated Nicki Minaj” prompted rumors about Meek Mill’s sexual orientation after the lawsuit alleged Combs had sex with the unnamed rapper. Meek Mill dated Minaj about a decade ago.
Meek Mill posted about the trial on social media in May, saying hip-hop blogs had “amplified an agenda” against him two years ago. The hosts of “The Breakfast Club” later spoke on their show about how Meek Mill’s ties to Diddy had largely faded from public discussion by the time of Combs’ trial. They wondered why Meek Mill, who has become a well-known advocate for criminal justice reform since serving time in prison, would have bothered to enter the fray again.
Meek Mill responded to becoming a topic on the show in a comment posted on Instagram and later shared on Facebook by DJ Envy.
“… I been saving communities and helping families 10 plus years,” Meek Mill wrote. “We don’t follow the world of talkers.”
The layoffs at iHeartMedia come in advance of the company’s third-quarter earnings report, which is around the same time the nation’s largest radio station owner made cuts last year. The company underwent restructuring when it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019 and has made several rounds of layoffs in recent years.
Mikey Dredd and MuthaKnows both posted on social media after learning they had been let go from Power 99.
“After 30 unforgettable years at Power 99, today I say goodbye to a place that became much more than just a job,” Dredd wrote. “From nights and mornings on air for 25 years, I’ve had the privilege of connecting not only with an incredible audience but also with friends and colleagues who became family. The deep relationships I’ve built, both inside and outside the station, have filled my life with true joy and love.”
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Michael Tanenbaum
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