Joe Finan was an early rock-and-roll disc jockey and talk-radio host whose career included an important period in Denver broadcasting during the 1960s and 1970s. Born Joseph Albert Finan in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 1927, he served in the U.S. Navy and attended Carnegie Tech before entering broadcasting in Cleveland.
Finan became a prominent disc jockey at KYW in Cleveland during rock radio’s formative years and appeared as one of the radio personalities in the 1957 film Jamboree!. His Cleveland career was disrupted by the payola investigations that swept American radio around 1960. He subsequently came to Denver, where KTLN owner Richard K. Wheeler hired him and where Finan became an important figure in the station’s evolution.
At KTLN, Finan served as a programmer and personality as the station moved beyond conventional Top 40. By the early 1960s he was helping develop a talk-oriented approach that anticipated the station’s later K-Talk identity. His Denver career also intersected with the city’s new professional football team: Broncos historical records identify Finan as a color commentator alongside Bob Martin during the KTLN era.
Finan later returned to Ohio and eventually became a longtime talk host at WNIR in Akron, where he remained until retiring in 2004. He briefly returned to the air in 2006. Finan died on December 19, 2006, at age 79.
Sources: Denver Broncos — history behind the microphone; Denver KTLN/KTLK historical archive; John Rook memoir — Denver radio and Joe Finan; Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado — Denver Radio history.
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