Opie & Anthony speak to each other on air for the first time in 2 1/2 years

It’s a big day for fans of The Opie & Anthony Show as it marked for the first day for programming on the new Opie Radio channel with Jim Norton and Opie having new shows. Opie celebrated by having a guest call into the show that hasn’t happened in over two and a half years. Anthony Cumia called into Opie’s new show and the two talked for the first time since Cumia’s firing in 2014. As Opie tweeted, “funny enough it was 12 years to the day” that the two made their debut on satellite radio. The two stayed on the phone for 40 minutes and talked along with Paul Mercurio and Rich Vos who were each guests on Cumia and Opie’s shows. As you can tell, the on-air chemistry is still there. Both hosts admitted to currently working on some problems, particularly with Paul Mercurio getting heated at points. But in general they seemed to discuss the issues of the previous two years of name calling and not having each other’s backs. So it was an attempt to put water under the bridge. Before Anthony called into the show, Opie spent the first hour of the show revealing some other details about his situation.

• Opie feels screwed over from the new deal, basically feeling that he didn’t want to leave mornings and he was “fired from his own show.” He likes mornings as it affords him more time to spend with his kids.
• Cumia’s producer Keith Maresca reached out to Opie a week ago to talk about joining the Compound Network. And before the conversation ended, Anthony said he’d be “totally open to getting together and having a little chit chat.”
• Opie took a substantial paycut. The bosses told him, “you’re going to be taking a haircut.”
• He stated he didn’t want to do afternoons and was “kicked off my own f*cking show. It’s kind of embarrassing,” adding that he was “blindsided” and told by SiriusXM Exec Scott Greenstein that it was either afternoons or nothing.
• Norton reveled that he was leaving the show over a year ago and he started bringing other comedians onto the show to potential replace him. Somewhere during that time Norton went from leaving the show to taking it over.
• Hughes rejected the an A-list co-host who he might not have chemistry with.
• Opie has a one year contract and he is out after that ends if things don’t change. He wanted to walk, but felt finding another job while employed was the best move.
• He’s not sure about the futures of podcasts on the channel like, Race Wars and My Wife Hates Me, as they kept him in the dark. He added that Sherrod Small isn’t talking to him over the apparent cancellation of Race Wars.
• Opie is not trying to block guests from doing both shows but he did have a problem with Doug Benson appearing on both shows Tuesday. Which was the first day of both shows.

Here’s the video from both Opie’s studio and Anthony’s studio cropped together.