Kevin Ryder has returned to KROQ-FM five years after the station fired the longtime cohost of “The Kevin & Bean Show,” he and the station’s owner announced on Wednesday.
Ryder takes over the afternoon show on weekdays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. as its current host Megan Holiday moves to weekday nights.
“I spent half of my life with my fellow favorite weirdos, helping to make KROQ an iconic radio station and a global destination to foster and nurture musical groups,” Ryder said in a written statement.
“It was also a home for many LA listeners, and with my old boss back programming KROQ, I’m excited to be speaking my own version of the English language again at the station I love,” he said.
Kevin Weatherly, Ryder’s boss past and present, returned to KROQ in 2022 as senior vice president of programming after leaving it in 2019 for a job at Spotify, and praised Ryder as one of the greats of Southern California radio.
“Kevin Ryder is a Radio Hall of Fame Broadcaster who spent most of his adult life waking up SoCal with his former partner Bean,” Weatherly said in a statement released by Audacy, Inc. which owns the station. “Their authentic and irreverent morning show is legendary, and I’ve had the privilege of having a front-row seat for the majority of it.
“Kevin’s return to KROQ in afternoons is a full circle moment in the best way possible,” he said.
In March 2020, when Ryder announced he’d been “fired” by the station along with the entire morning show team of “The Kevin in the Morning Show with Allie and Jensen,” few would have bet on a future reunion.
One day after delivering that news, KROQ allowed Ryder, who’d been at the station since 1989, to say farewell on a final show, and he did not hold back.
Ryder criticized the management of the station, noting the abrupt dismissal of on-air personalities such as Lisa May and Ralph Garman as examples. Ryder finished his final shift, tweeting that three security guards had arrived to escort him out of his longtime radio home.
In 2021, Ryder moved to classic rock station KLOS (95.5 FM) as its afternoon host, where he worked with former KROQ DJ Doug “Sluggo” Roberts until September 2024.