Longtime beloved Boise radio personality abruptly laid off. I’m off the air, too
When I got the jarring text from Tim Johnstone, my part-time colleague and longtime friend at 94.9 The River, my stomach sank.
“Is this a joke?” I replied.
After sharing more than two decades laughing, arguing and discovering music with Tim, the end had come. “The Other Studio,” our weekly specialty show on The River, had aired for the last time Sunday night.
No warning.
But that was only the peripheral damage.
The gut punch? Tim’s actual text?
“Heads up,” he wrote. “I’ve been let go due to budget cuts.”
This can’t be real. Tim Johnstone, program director at 94.9 The River, was laid off this week.
The comforting afternoon voice you heard back-announcing songs by Alabama Shakes and Rainbow Kitten Surprise. The enthusiastic guy on stage you watched introducing acts at Boise concerts and thanking sponsors at events such as Alive After Five.
The smiling professional who emceed the Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in Arts & History at JUMP just weeks ago.
Tim has been unceremoniously yanked off the air. After a radio career that got its start at Boise State’s KBSU way back in 1983.
“The Other Studio” cannot exist without him. We’re done. After 21 years. To underscore that fact, I was notified that my services were no longer needed.
Media layoffs
The media industry can be ugly. But radio layoffs often feel especially cruel. That’s why, in my heart, I knew Tim’s ejection from 94.9 The River by Lotus Communications Corporation wasn’t a prank text.
He didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to listeners.
Tim worked at The River for almost a quarter of a century. He was a part-timer starting around 2001, when he was still marketing director for The Record Exchange in downtown Boise. A full-timer since 2004. His time in the building goes all the way back to 1995, when he helped launch rock station 100.3 The X.
The River was his life — for better or worse. And a rewarding part of so many of ours. As the program director at the Treasure Valley’s only Triple A (“adult album alternative”) station, Tim has exposed countless Idahoans to great music. And songs that often don’t get played on other formats.
Pushing boundaries
When we launched “The Other Studio” together, the idea was to push the new-music philosophy to cloud-scraping heights. For two guys, often with different tastes, to spend an hour playing killer acts that might not get aired on commercial radio stations at all. To debate the merits of the bands. Mostly, to have fun. And crank the volume.
Some of my favorite in-studio moments included welcoming guests such as Curtis Stigers, Josh Ritter, Brett Dennen, Randy Brecker and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers. (I got pulled over by a Boise police officer while giving Hood a ride to the radio station. Long story.)
Above all, though? My favorite memories are walking into the studio — each week, like clockwork.
To interact with Tim.
As a full-time entertainment journalist who freelanced as guerrilla radio talent — in my case, “talent” in bush-league quotes — I’m grateful to The River for allowing me to co-host “The Other Studio” all these years. The show was just a fragment of Tim’s duties at the station. I’m sure it felt like a chore sometimes. But “The Other Studio” was a massive deal to me. (Like, “Look, Mom! I’m on the radio!”)
Yet watching it vanish is nothing like the loss Tim is experiencing: his livelihood.
Embracing the future
Tim wants listeners to know he’s not panicking. He plans to spend a week or two doing all the things around the house that he put off because of his job. Radio — and all the promotions involved — can eat up a lot of weekends.
But what’s next? He really doesn’t know.
Texting back and forth in stunned silence after he’d given me the bad news, one of the first things Tim wrote illustrates the sort of person he is.
“I will miss doing our show more than anything,” he told me.
I truly hope to hear Tim’s voice again on Boise’s airwaves. But only if that’s what he wants.
Me? I’m not sure the lump in my throat will ever let me talk into a microphone again.
This story was originally published November 6, 2025 at 3:50 PM.