The local media landscape is undergoing a number of changes, with Hamiltonian Steven Paikin recently announcing that he is leaving TVO’s The Agenda after 19 years, former CHML host Rick Zamperin finding two new roles with CHCH News and The Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and Scott Radley starting a podcast with The Hamilton Spectator.
The news that Paikin would be ending The Agenda at the end of June came in a personal letter published on the TVO website.
Paikin announced that although he will be leaving full-time work with TVO, he will still be contributing on a part-time basis.
The last episode of The Agenda will air on Friday, June 27.
“As much as I have loved hosting The Agenda for the past 19 years (and hosting four other programs for TVO over the past 32 years in total), anchoring a daily program is a seven-day-a-week job. When the show is on the air, you’re studying research, vetting questions, booking guests, and writing a weekly column until 11 p.m. (or later) pretty much every night of the week,” Paikin writes.
Paikin will continue to co-host TVO’s #onpoli podcast with John Michael McGrath, contribute a weekly column, and host the town hall series TVO Today Live (which airs every month or two) and the YouTube show Ontario Chronicle.
“TVO has just been too important a part of my life to walk away entirely, so I’m delighted our relationship will continue in a part-time way,” says Paikin.
A new TVO show will reportedly be launching in the fall to replace The Agenda.
Meanwhile, former CHML morning host Rick Zamperin was named the new co-host of CHCH Morning Live.
Zamperin had been out of a job after local radio station AM 900 CHML unexpectedly ended their broadcasts in August 2024.
The station, which broadcast Hamilton news, traffic, weather, and talk radio, had been a staple of the local media landscape for 97 years, serving residents since 1927.
The position on Morning Live opened up after former host Tim Bolen announced that he was leaving the job back in January. Bolen has since joined CityTV’s Breakfast Television.
Zamperin was also announced as the new Hamilton Tiger-Cats play-by-play announcer for the Ticats Audio Network, which will also run on local radio station Y108.
Former Hamilton Tiger-Cats linebacker Simoni Lawrence will work alongside Zamperin as the colour analyst.
Zamperin told Clint “Bubba” O’Neil on CHCH’s Sportsline Podcast, “When CHML closed last summer, I thought to myself, you know, looking at the broadcast landscape, I thought I don’t know if there’s going to be another opportunity that’s going to be a good fit for me, that’s going to be in Hamilton.”
“I don’t want to go down the highway or to any other community because this is where I met so many amazing people, have great community connections, volunteering on several boards, helping people raise money for initiatives whatever the case is and so I wanted to do something in this city,” he continued.
The Hamilton Spectator’s Scott Radley, another former CHML host who wrote articles at the same time, started a new podcast called Placeline Hamilton.
The weekly podcast, which is hosted through The Hamilton Spectator, “explores issues about the city and stories of interest to those who call it home.”
Radley is generally considered one of the more balanced local reporters, regularly writing opinion columns about high taxes and waste at Hamilton City Hall.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
