Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Basketball player turned coach turned broadcast personality Dan Dakich is no longer an employee of Urban One radio station The Fan.
Dakich, known for a combative persona on his midday sports talk show that debuted in 2008, tweeted about his exit on Thursday.
“Earlier today, I did my last show for Radio One,” he tweeted.
Radio One is a brand within Urban One, the Maryland-based company that purchased The Fan—heard in Indianapolis on FM frequencies 93.5 and 107.5—and three other stations this year from Emmis Corp.
Attempts to reach Urban One management for comment were unsuccessful.
When The Fan was owned by Emmis, Dakich was suspended for five days in 2019 for violating the company’s journalistic standards.
During a September interview with IBJ, Deon Levingston, the Indianapolis-based regional vice president for Urban One, was asked if he planned to assess the futures of on-air personalities who worked for the Emmis stations.
“We did something that’s highly abnormal in our business: We acquired a brand in the market, and we retained 94% of the brand’s employees,” Levingston said. “That’s unusual for any merger. I think we’ve already signaled our commitment to the staff here and our commitment to the Indianapolis market with how many people we’ve retained.
“As we go forward, we always look at different personalities. We look at sales managers. We look at account executives. We’re a business, so we evaluate all of that. But it’s our goal, hope and desire that we have the team that goes forward for the foreseeable future.”
In Dakich’s social media post, he indicated that he will focus on the other show he hosts, “Don’t @ Me,” which streams weekday mornings on sports media platform Outkick.
“I can’t thank all the listeners enough for 14 years of unbelievable fun and controversy,” Dakich wrote.
Dakich, 60, played basketball at Indiana University before a 10-season stint as head men’s basketball coach at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
He served as interim head coach at IU in 2008. From 2010 until 2021, Dakich worked as a college basketball analyst and color commentator for ESPN.
For Outkick, founded as Outkick the Coverage by former Fox Sports Radio personality Clay Travis, Dakich can be viewed 9 to 11 a.m. at the Outkick website as well as at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Travis co-hosts “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show,” a syndicated radio show that succeeded Rush Limbaugh’s show in hundreds of U.S. cities. One of Dakich’s fellow Outkick hosts is conservative commentator Tomi Lahren.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Good riddance!! When he started taking politics and outright lying I turned him off.
Great commentator! The radio station will suffer some casualties for sure. He always spoke the truth and wasn’t afraid to call it like it was. The only ones happy with this change are woke liberals.
Totally agree.
Jadon A.
Absolutely correct.
I saw this coming a while ago.
If you understand Urban Ones politics and who they supprt, it’s obvious.
Not a good business decision.
Get back to me when Urban One cleans house at WIBC and replaces them with woke leftists.
Do we know for certain that Dakick’s schtick was reserved only for on air, that he wasn’t extremely difficult to work with?
Love him or hate him, your right he always spoke the truth. Even when he spoke of politics he said what needed to be said, love him or hate him!
Truth= Dakich opinion. Not.
I’m definitely not a woke liberal and I’m ecstatic about his exit.
Nobody likes a bully.
I know it was part of his shtick, but I was never fan of the bombast. I always wondered if anyone ever told him to “shut up and comment on dribbling”
👍👍
I always wonder why people that don’t like to hear what they are listening to just don’t change the channel and never listen again. I guess there are those that always like to moan and groan about something that they have total control over.
It’s why I wasn’t a listener, Sharon. Being an ass was part of the brand, which some revel in, but wasn’t for me. Hard to miss him though, as he routinely beclowns himself on Twitter, too.
Timothy-
The funny part is that Dan D, knows he’s bombastic.
He’s the first one to tell his listeners he’s an asshole.
But he always said what he believed.
Loved him when he called Basketball games. Hated him on the radio.
He had the most interesting radio sports show in Indy. I loved listing to him tell the truth.
*listening
Yawn.
Big ego that became to big for his own good, should stick to sports in future.
He was a great basketball analysts and his radio show used to be interesting (especially if you were an IU basketball fan). But once he commented about politics on Twitter and his show, I had no use for him or his show.
It is annoying when athletes deviate from discussing sports. We do not tune in for that.
Because Athletes opinions don’t count unless they are talking about sports? Ever heard of Gerald Ford? The President of our Country? He was an athlete too.
No comment on Dakich but beginning of the end of WIBC.
Dakich was never on WIBC. Maybe he should have been.
Oh yeah Gregg!!
I doubt any conservatives survive the cuts under These new owners.
Dakich was often on Hammer and Nigel, which last I checked was on WIBC.
Sure, because he was on a sister station. His show was never on WIBC. For what he wanted to do, it probably would have been a better fit.
A reminder, the vast, vast, vast majority of people in broadcasting get fired or replaced by someone else (look at the Colts PA guy). A lucky few get to retire on their own terms. It’s you’re going to do exactly what you want, not caring about the consequences or what your bosses think, the outcome is known.
Used to love listening to his basketball knowledge. When he decided to be a self-proclaimed “ass” I lost interest. Too bad. He was great back in the day, but sports should be fun, right? He went for the easy fame … what a shame.
Sounds to me that with the likely moves this new radio station owner is going to make that it offers up an excellent opportunity for a new station that won’t cater to the people who think the way to success is to blame and complain.
Dan knew what he was talking about when it came to sports. He wasn’t politically correct about it either. I really enjoyed listening to him especially when something big happened in sports ie the Colts sucking, etc. Really a shame. He had a lot of listeners and those that he offended didn’t have to listen…
Oh well. So goes the USA today! Look at what we found out about Twitter as if we didn’t already know!
Dakich was nothing more than an entertainer, a “shock jock” in the truest sense of those two words. The more outrageous his views, the more excited his audience got. Que sera sera…
Don’t let the door hit you Dan. Love people who speak the truth (and appreciate some political incorrectness!), but all the drama and showboating–not so much. While he is entitled to his opinion on politics, I don’t need him to form my own opinions. Next.
Blowhard
Buh, Bye!