Cities 97.1 has fired longtime Twin Cities radio host Brian Oake, whose last day on air was Tuesday.

Radio DJ Brian Oake. (Courtesy photo)

Oake’s afternoon shift featured no DJ on Wednesday, with KDWB’s Zach Dillon taking over on Thursday. Both Cities 97.1 and KDWB are owned by radio giant iHeart Media, the largest radio station group owner in the country with 855 stations.

Neither Oake nor an iHeart Media representative responded to requests for comment. On Wednesday, Oake posted a link to the Beatles song “Tomorrow Never Knows” on his Facebook page with the caption: “Damn. Today is genuinely heavy. Breathing deeply and snuggling with cats. I feel better already.”

Oake’s local radio career dates back some 30 years, with stints at Radio K, Rev 105 and Drive 105. He first joined Cities 97.1 in 2001 as the afternoon DJ and moved to mornings in 2012. He left the station in late 2015 to join 89.3 The Current’s morning show.

The Current fired Oake in 2019 due to a series of his social media posts that culminated with a Facebook post that called out St. Paul’s Palace Theatre for kicking him out of the venue. He wrote on a now-deleted Facebook post that staff asked his 20-year-old daughter to leave after she had consumed “the ice in my otherwise empty cup” from his drink.

“I made a few calls, a few texts,” Oake wrote. “Then, we left. I’m not someone that tries to be above the rules, but this time, the rules didn’t serve their purpose.”

At the time, he launched the podcast “The Brian Oake Show.” He posted the 375th episode on Monday.

In 2021, Oake returned to Cities 97.1 and took over the morning shift. In November, he was moved to afternoons.