Ed Curran gets out of the house — and back to radio

Ed Curran gets out of the house — and back to radio

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As Yogi Berra might say, for veteran Chicago broadcaster Ed Curran, it has to seem like déjà vu all over again.

Howell, Curran & Jacobson

Big John Howell, Ed Curran and Amy Jacobson

Curran, the meteorologist and technology reporter who left CBS-owned WBBM-Channel 2 last March to sit out the remaining 14 months of his contract, has been popping up lately on a couple of radio stations that figured prominently in his early career.

On Monday, Curran will fill in for morning host Big John Howell alongside Amy Jacobson from 5 to 9 a.m. on Salem Communications news/talk WIND-AM (560). Under Group W ownership, that’s the same station that employed Curran as a host and program director in the mid-1980s. (Over the weekend, he took this photo with Howell and Jacobson at a Rockin For the Troops fundraising concert at Cantigny to benefit Operation Support Our Troops of Illinois.)

And on several occasions in the past few weeks —  including last Friday —  Curran turned up as fill-in news anchor on Tribune Co.-owned news/talk WGN-AM (720). That’s where he spent nine years on the air in the ’80s and ’90s, and first teamed with Al Lerner as half of “The Al and/or Ed Show.”

“I’ve enjoyed filling in on the news,” Curran told Facebook friends. “Actually, I think it’s all a plot by my wife to get me out of the house!”

Keeping Curran at home these days is the deal he struck with Channel 2 when he declined to accept a drastic pay cut after eight years at the station. In turning down management’s take-it-or-leave-it offer in exchange for additional years of security, Curran was pulled off the air March 26. But he continues to collect full pay for the duration of his contract, which runs through next spring. So how’s it going? “Life is great,” he shared on Facebook. “I started teaching my son to drive in the past few days and that’s a fun and rewarding milestone.”