Radio’s power pair will part ways, as Larry Price will step away from co-hosting the long-running, top-rated “Perry and Price” morning radio show on KSSK-FM 92.3/AM 590 at the middle of this month.
An announcement from station parent company iHeartMedia Honolulu said he is making the move to “focus on other interests” within the company, and did not explain the reason.
Price, 81, instead will co-host a sports show with Rick Hamada on sister station KIKI-AM 990, known as FOX Sports 990. It will air Saturdays at 11 a.m. beginning later this month.
“I decided the time is right and appropriate to make this change,” Price said in a statement, further expressing gratitude for the “support of our loyal listeners and for all the great years on KSSK.”
He and Perry have co-hosted the show for 33 years, following the death of their predecessor, highly rated radio personality Hal Lewis, who went by J. Akuhead Pupule, or “Aku” for short.
“Being a market’s No. 1 radio show for 33 years is unheard of in American radio,” said Chuck Cotton, president and general manager of iHeartMedia Honolulu.
Their self-introduction, “Perry on the left” and “Price on the right,” never was intended to be a reflection of their political leanings. Rather, it was a spur-of-the-moment comment relative to where each was standing in the studio their first morning on the air. The phrase stuck even though Price is a staunch Democrat, while Perry’s conservative views are well-known to listeners.
Price “certainly deserves the opportunity to sleep a little more, and work a little less,” said Perry.
Price initially was hired by KSSK as vice president of community relations in 1977, not long after his two-year stretch as the head football coach for the University of Hawaii.
Price also worked as an investigative reporter for KITV in the 1980s; a decade in which he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and became an MBA professor at Chaminade University, where a classroom and scholarship have been dedicated in his name. Price also was a columnist for MidWeek for many years, until his last “The Right Price” column appeared in the weekly publication on April 2014.
His rise to household-name status started during his football playing days at Roosevelt High School, the University of Hawaii, and with the Los Angeles Rams.
The duo will do their last broadcasts together from the stations’ Iwilei studios this week, and then will air live shows from a cruise next week for the final time.
Perry will continue handling the morning show and the live broadcasts of the Saturday morning breakfast show solo, the station announcement said.
CORRECTION: Larry Price’s column for MidWeek ended in April 2014. An earlier version of this story and Thursday’s print edition had an incorrect date.
