FORMER top flight politician, Bruce Golding will tomorrow start hosting a new four-hour talk show on HOT 102 FM in the time slot that veteran journalist Wilmot Perkins presented Perkins On Line up to Friday last week.

HOT 102 co-owner, Godfrey Dyer yesterday confirmed that his radio station had entered into a deal with Golding to host the show between 10:00 am and 2:00 pm and, according to Dyer, reaction to the selection has been “fantastic”.

“The news has been leaking out and we have been getting a lot of calls complimenting us on the choice,” Dyer told the Observer on the Jamaica Product Exchange (Japex) trading floor at the Renaissance Jamaica Grande Hotel in Ocho Rios.

HOT 102 chairman, Robert Russell spent most of yesterday fine-tuning arrangements for the new show that, up to the time of writing, had not been titled. Russell was also meeting with the radio station’s staff to inform them of the development.

Golding, who up to last May served as president of the National Democratic Movement, which he formed in 1995, has been receiving a lot of press coverage since he participated in a recent panel discussion with his former boss, Edward Seaga, leader of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party. There were speculations that Golding would be returning to the JLP, but he has since made it clear that he has fundamental differences with the policies of the JLP and has no intention of returning to that party.

Perkins, who parted company with HOT 102 last Friday, has signed with Power 106 FM from where he will broadcast his show starting on April 29. His moved followed that of Cliff Hughes’ Nationwide, an evening news and current affairs programme that has captured a significant chunk of listenership and is arguably the leading show of its kind on local radio.

Yesterday, Dyer told the Observer that he and his partners had sensed that Perkins would have left the station, therefore they had started talking with Golding some time ago as a contingency.

This week’s Sunday Observer had reported Russell as saying that he learnt for the first time last Friday of Perkins’ intention not to return to the station. However, Perkins told the Observer on Sunday night that he had, in accordance with his contract, given the management of HOT 102, six months’ notice of his intention not to renew after the agreement expired in mid-February.

According to Perkins, he had tried on Friday, after signing with Power 106, to reach Russell at his home and office, but was unable to do so. Perkins said he eventually spoke with another of the radio station’s directors who, he said, contacted Russell on his mobile phone, the number for which he (Perkins) did not have.

Meanwhile, it appeared last evening that HOT’s influential morning programme, The Breakfast Club, which was not aired yesterday, will be replaced.

Dyer would not comment on the situation with that programme, hosted by Anthony Abrahams and Beverley Anderson-Manley. However, Observer sources said that HOT and the Breakfast Club hosts have not been able to reach agreement on a new contract.