Imus returning Monday after 8 months off air

NEW YORK (AP) — Will Don Imus be defiant or contrite? Will he mock his skeptics while making his triumphant return to radio Monday.

Or will he muzzle his mouth?

"That question is part of the drama of his re-emergence," said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, an industry trade journal. "Imus faces some choices."

Imus isn't talking, yet, but it's safe to say radio's best-known curmudgeon will have lots to say when his show kicks off at 6 a.m. EST Monday on WABC-AM and other Citadel Broadcasting Corp. stations around the country, ending his nearly eight-month banishment from the air.

The morning show will be simulcast on cable's RFD-TV, owned by the Rural Media Group Inc., and rebroadcast on radio in the evenings.

Monday's four-hour premiere will be broadcast from Town Hall in Times Square, where $100 tickets were sold to benefit the Imus Ranch for Kids With Cancer. After its debut, the Imus spectacle will be on 6-9 a.m. weekdays, from a studio across the street from Madison Square Garden.

MSNBC and then CBS Radio jettisoned Imus in April after he called the Rutgers University women's basketball players "nappy-headed hos."