Opie and Anthony (1994–2014) Cumia first met radio personality
Gregg "Opie" Hughes when the latter held an
O. J. Simpson song parody contest on his
Nighttime Attitude show on Long Island radio station
WBAB. He and his brother Joe decided to enter the contest, and recorded an entry as Rotgut titled "Gonna Electric Shock OJ" to the tune of "
(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" by
Otis Redding. The song was a hit with Hughes, who played it several times on his show and, in September 1994, invited the Cumias to the studio to perform the song live. Cumia began to contribute and produce comedy bits for Hughes and the station's morning show soon after. Hughes and Cumia accepted an offer to host afternoons at
WAAF in
Boston, Massachusetts, and launched
Opie and Anthony in March 1995. Cumia originally thought that by getting into radio he would make very good money, but later said his salary at WAAF was barely higher than doing manual labour. The pair were fired in April 1998 for an
April Fool's Day prank that had listeners believe Boston Mayor
Thomas Menino was killed in a car accident while transporting a young female Haitian prostitute. In June 1998,
Opie and Anthony began at
WNEW in New York City in afternoons, becoming a top 10 afternoon drive show in two years. Around 2000, Hughes considered leaving the show but Cumia convinced him to stay as
Infinity Broadcasting promised them a more lucrative contract and have the show nationally syndicated. The show developed further when comedian
Jim Norton joined the show as their co-host in 2001. By mid-2002,
Opie and Anthony was syndicated on 17 stations nationwide. On October 4, 2004, the show returned to the air on
XM Satellite Radio, a subscription-based
satellite radio service. From April 2006 to March 2009, part of the show was simulcast on nine terrestrial radio stations owned by
CBS Radio that were compliant with the broadcast regulations imposed by the
Federal Communications Commission. During this time, XM suspended the show for thirty days on May 15, 2007, after a homeless man, dubbed "Homeless Charlie", who appeared on the show, expressed his wish to rape
Condoleezza Rice and
Laura Bush. On July 3, 2014, Cumia was fired by SiriusXM for a series of purportedly racist tweets in which he condemned a black woman who he said assaulted him and described her as an "animal"; the tweets were described by the company as "racially-charged and hate-filled". Cumia said that he was repeatedly punched by her as he was taking pictures in
Times Square. In the following week, Cumia refused to apologize for the incident. He deleted the tweets after being fired.
Live from the Compound (2012–2014) During his time at SiriusXM, Cumia gradually built a studio in his basement to broadcast. In 2012, he launched
Live from the Compound via
Ustream which he started as a hobby and involved discussions on a variety of matters and "drunk karaoke".
Vice Media co-founder and commentator
Gavin McInnes was a regular on the show. Cumia retired the program in 2014.
Compound Media and The Anthony Cumia Show (2014–present) In the week after his firing from SiriusXM in July 2014, Cumia announced the launch of
The Anthony Cumia Show. The show launched on August 4, 2014, through his subscription-based network
Compound Media, which was initially known as The Anthony Cumia Network, from Monday through Thursday from 4–6 pm. In June 2015, Cumia expanded the network with new shows added to the weekly schedule. In August 2015, Cumia relocated his show to a studio in New York City and hired far-right commentator
Gavin McInnes. On August 21, 2017, Cumia announced comedian and actor
Artie Lange as the co-host of his new show,
The Artie and Anthony Show. The show launched on September 5 and continued on the same schedule as
The Anthony Cumia Show. The show lasted eight months and ended with Lange's departure on May 14, 2018. One week before Lange's departure, the show had added comedian Dave Landau as a permanent third mic. With Lange leaving the show, Landau took over as co-host and the show title switched to
The Anthony Cumia Show with Dave Landau. Cumia was suspended from
Twitter for abusive comments in 2017. He then made a series of accounts that were also suspended. He posted tweets saying that Black people were "incapable or unwilling to assimilate to a civil western society", calling them "things", "monsters", and "animals". By 2021, Cumia was permanently suspended by the site for ban evasion. On November 20, 2018, Post Hill Press released Cumia's memoir, titled ''Permanently Suspended: The Rise and Fall... and Rise Again of Radio's Most Notorious Shock Jock''. It features a foreword by Jim Norton. In February 2021, Dave Landau left
The Anthony Cumia Show with Dave Landau to join
Louder with Crowder on
Blaze Media, with the show's name reverting to
The Anthony Cumia Show. On March 31, 2021, Cumia launched a second show titled
Compound Censored, which he co-hosts with
Vice Media co-founder and comedic
commentator Gavin McInnes. The show's title is a
portmanteau which combines
Compound Media with McInnes'
subscription-based network Censored.TV, where the show also broadcasts. In June 2024, Cumia announced that the Compound Media studios were closing, and that he was merging his network and
The Anthony Cumia Show with Gavin McInnes' Censored.TV network. McInnes changed the name of his platform to
Compound Censored after the merger.
WABC In February 2025, it was announced that Cumia would be joining
WABC's
Talkradio 77 as host of a weekly
radio version of
The Anthony Cumia Show. The show debuted on March 9. On March 11, less than 48 hours after the show's debut, Red Apple Audio Networks announced the syndication of
The Anthony Cumia Show following significant interest from stations nationwide. ==Other ventures==