Anthony Cumia

Anthony Cumia (born April 26, 1961) is an American radio personality, podcaster and broadcaster.

He is the host of The Anthony Cumia Show on the online video platform Compound Media, which he founded.

The song was a hit with Hughes, who played it several times on his show and, in September 1994, invited the Cumias to the studio to perform the song live.

Cumia began to contribute and produce comedy bits for Hughes and the station's morning show soon after.

Along with Gregg "Opie" Hughes, he was the co-host of the Opie and Anthony radio show, which aired from 1995 to 2014.

Hughes and Cumia accepted an offer to host afternoons at WAAF in Boston, Massachusetts, and launched Opie and Anthony in March 1995.

Cumia originally thought that by getting into radio he would make very good money, but later said his salary at WAAF was barely higher than doing manual labour.

The pair were fired in April 1998 for an April Fool's Day prank that had listeners believe Boston Mayor Thomas Menino was killed in a car accident while transporting a young female Haitian prostitute.

In June 1998, Opie and Anthony began at WNEW in New York City in afternoons, becoming a top 10 afternoon drive show in two years.

Around 2000, Hughes considered leaving the show but Cumia convinced him to stay as Infinity Broadcasting promised them a more lucrative contract and have the show nationally syndicated.

The show developed further when comedian Jim Norton joined the show as their co-host in 2001.

By mid-2002, Opie and Anthony was syndicated on 17 stations nationwide.

On August 22, 2002, Opie and Anthony was cancelled over their "Sex for Sam 3" segment five days earlier that involved a Virginia couple having simulated sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Infinity kept Hughes and Cumia from being hired for the duration of their contract which expired in mid-2004.

On October 4, 2004, the show returned to the air on XM Satellite Radio, a subscription-based satellite radio service.

From April 2006 to March 2009, part of the show was simulcast on nine terrestrial radio stations owned by CBS Radio that was compliant to the broadcast regulations imposed by the Federal Communications Commission.

During this time, XM suspended the show for thirty days on May 15, 2007, after a homeless man, dubbed "Homeless Charlie", who appeared on the show, expressed his wish to rape Condoleezza Rice and Laura Bush.

In 2012, he launched Live from the Compound via Ustream that he started as a hobby and involved discussions on a variety of matters and "drunk karaoke".

In 2014, Cumia was fired by SiriusXM Radio after posting a series of racist tweets in which he claimed to have been assaulted by a black woman.

On July 3, 2014, Cumia was fired by SiriusXM for a series of tweets in which he condemned a black woman who he said assaulted him and described her as an "animal"; the tweets were described by the company as "racially-charged and hate-filled".

Cumia said that he was repeatedly punched by her as he was taking pictures in Times Square.

In the following week, Cumia refused to apologize for the incident.

He deleted the tweets after being fired.

During his time at SiriusXM, Cumia gradually built a studio in his home to broadcast.

Cumia retired the program in 2014.

In the week after his firing from SiriusXM in July 2014, Cumia announced the launch of The Anthony Cumia Show.

The show launched on August 4, 2014, through his subscription-based network Compound Media, which was initially known as The Anthony Cumia Network, from Monday through Thursday from 4–6 pm.

In June 2015, Cumia expanded the network with new shows added to the weekly schedule.

He started his own video podcast soon after named The Anthony Cumia Show, which aired until September 2017, when he started The Artie and Anthony Show with comedian and actor Artie Lange.

In May 2018, Lange left the show and was replaced by Dave Landau; the show's name reverted to The Anthony Cumia Show.

Cumia was born in Flushing, Queens, into an Italian-American family.

He has an elder brother, Joe, and a younger sister, Dawn.

The family lived in various locations on Long Island including Elwood and East Islip.

Cumia attended Timber Point Elementary School in East Islip, followed by Elwood-John H. Glenn High School in Elwood.

One of his teachers was actress Joyce Mackenzie.

After his parents separated, Cumia spent his early teenage years living with his father in San Juan Capistrano, California.

Before he started his radio career, Cumia installed heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.

He wanted to get into radio, and was influenced by popular New York City personalities Howard Stern and Don Imus.

Cumia first met radio personality Gregg "Opie" Hughes when the latter held an O. J. Simpson song parody contest on his Nighttime Attitude show on Long Island radio station WBAB.

He and Joe decided to enter the contest, and recorded an entry as Rotgut titled "Gonna Electric Shock OJ" to the tune of "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding.