Joyner, who was perhaps best known for commuting daily by plane between Dallas and
Chicago while simultaneously hosting local radio programs in both cities (conferring upon him the nickname "Fly Jock"), and as the first host of the syndicated television series
Ebony/Jet Showcase, was signed by
ABC Radio Networks in 1993 for a new national show to be distributed to Urban contemporary stations. The
Tom Joyner Morning Show premiered on January 3, 1994. Joyner gained ownership of the program in 2003 when he co-founded his own company, Reach Media. The Black-owned media company Radio One (now
Urban One) acquired majority ownership in Reach Media in November 2004, and took over syndication rights to the program in a
joint venture. In 2017, Joyner announced that he would retire and that the show would end in 2019, its 25th anniversary in syndication. In the summer of 2019, Joyner announced that
Rickey Smiley, who was hosting a competing syndicated morning program on Urban contemporary and
Rhythmic adult contemporary-formatted stations, would succeed him on Joyner's Urban AC affiliates. The final live episode of the
Tom Joyner Morning Show aired on December 13, 2019. Joyner stated on his last program that his decision was made because of repeated salary cuts (claiming that successive cuts had reduced his salary nearly 90 percent); acknowledged that cultural changes and radicalization among black audiences ("I think we were more woke then than now") had reduced his influence and thus his listenership and affiliate count; and further stated that his own financial greed—about which he was unrepentant—drove much of his radio career. Following Joyner's sign-off, Reach Media and Urban One offered "best of" compilation programs until December 31, 2019. On January 2, 2020, many of Joyner's former affiliates began airing the reformatted
Rickey Smiley Morning Show. ==Featured personalities==