Joe Pyne (December 22, 1924 – March 23, 1970) was an American radio and television talk show host, who pioneered the confrontational style in which the host advocates a viewpoint and cultivates controversy by arguing with his guests and audience members. Pyne's brusque and abrasive performances were influential on later practitioners of the genre such as Rush Limbaugh, Morton Downey Jr., Bob Grant, and Michael Savage.

Joseph Pyne was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father, Edward Pyne, was a bricklayer; his mother, Catherine, was a housewife.

Pyne graduated from Chester High School in 1942 and immediately enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He saw combat in the South Pacific, where he earned three battle stars. In 1943, during a Japanese bombing attack, he was wounded in the left knee; he earned a Purple Heart as a result of his injuries. In 1955, he lost the lower part of that leg due to a rare form of cancer.

In 1965, at age 40, Joe Pyne married 20-year-old Norwegian actress Britt Larsen in Las Vegas. After getting married, they went to a show where Frank Sinatra was performing. Reportedly, Sinatra recognized "the great Joe Pyne" in the audience and asked him to stand and take a bow.

Discharged from the Marines at the end of World War II, Pyne attended a local drama school to correct a speech impediment. While studying there, he decided to try radio. He worked briefly in Lumberton, North Carolina, before he was hired at a new station, WPWA, in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania. After an argument with the owner he was fired. Next, he got a job at radio station WILM (AM) in Wilmington, Delaware, the first of three times he would work at that station. A few months later, in March 1948, he left WILM to work at WVCH, a newly-opened station in Chester. Seeing little chance to advance his career in Chester, Pyne left after a year and a half. He moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he was hired at WLIP. He quickly realized that he wanted more than playing music and reporting on community events like the county fair or a new business opening. Six months after starting at WLIP, he got into a heated confrontation with the station owner, William Lipman, and stormed out of the station afterwards. One of Pyne's cohosts later recounted the events of Pyne's fight with Lipman to Smithsonian Magazine, saying "Joe was yelling. He had one hand on our boss' lapel. He picked up a typewriter and threw it against the wall."

After leaving WLIP, Pyne moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he took a job at WFPG as a disc jockey, and offered brief commentary to fill the silence while switching records. One evening, he made a comment about "corrupt politics in the town," which led to the station manager suggesting he change his broadcasting style — as he recalls, "the manager ran in and said 'Quit playing records and just talk.'" Pyne gradually developed his on-air persona as an opinionated host who knew something about everything.

Around 1950, he returned to WILM, where he officially debuted as a talk show host, although he would later tell reporters that he first experimented with two-way talk radio during his time in Kenosha. He called his new show It's Your Nickel, a popular idiomatic phrase referring to the fact that calls from a pay phone cost five cents. The format was Pyne expressing his opinions on various topics. Listeners would call to ask questions, offer their own opinions, or raise new topics. At first, Pyne didn't put callers on the air; he paraphrased for the audience what they had said. Soon the callers and his interaction with them became the heart of the show. Pyne became famous for arguing with or insulting those with whom he disagreed. One of his trademark insults was "go gargle with razor blades."

In the late 1940s into the early 1950s, television began to usurp radio as America's main medium for news, leading Pyne to experiment with a television version of his radio program. In 1954, Pyne hosted The Joe Pyne Show on Wilmington's WDEL-TV, which was only moderately successful and ran for just a few months. In 1957, he stopped hosting It's Your Nickel and sought out television jobs in Hollywood, Los Angeles, but his search lasted over a month and "nobody even talked to [him]." He eventually found employment in Riverside hosting a radio show very similar in format to It's Your Nickel. After exposing a narcotics scandal at a local high school, his popularity exploded, and soon multiple TV stations were vying for his attention.