Boston Man Killed by Fiedler Obituary...

I spent 47 years in the radio business, most of it when radio was fun, the last 10 or so sucked, mainly because the bankers discovered how good the cash flow used to be.

Here's the reason radio was so fun, the people were creative and for the most part funny as hell.  Here's a couple of funny radio stories....

I had a guy on staff at WVBF in Boston. He was funny on the air and funny in the halls too. Women really liked him, so much so they would tolerate things coming out of his mouth that would get most guys slapped or kicked in the nuts.

One day we had a cold cut lunch at the station, free food was always a hit. In addition to all the meats, veggies and cheeses, there were about 5 different kinds of bread included baguettes.

After everyone had drifted back to their desks, the funny guy, grabbed one of the remaining baguettes, unzipped his pants and let the baguette hang out like it was his, ah you know what I mean.

He wandered down the hall and our National Sales Manager is coming from the other direction. He's grinning at her and she says with a smile, "Pretty nasty yeast infection, Tom."

In the summer of 1979, I was the Program Director of WHDH in Boston. Arthur Fiedler the world famous conductor of the Boston Pops was near death. Jim Sands, Ed Bell and I began to prepare an audio obituary in advance, we wrote it, Jim produced it, Donna Halper dug up interviews and music to add to the obit. We had it ready and all we would need to do is write the latest details and get it on the air. Arthur Fiedler was an institution in Boston and we worked our asses off on it. If I remember correctly, when it was all said and done we won a couple of awards for the production. 

We decided it was going to be an hour long, no commercials. We had 50 minutes completed in advance. It was really good. Sands carefully recorded the master on a 12 inch reel of tape, boxed it and put it on the bookcase in his office. Fiedler lingered for weeks.

On hot summer day, it was stuffy as hell in the station, Jim opened his window and used the obit to prop it up. We were on the 9th floor of the old new England Power Building at the time, just off Copley Square on Stuart Street. Sands somehow knocked the obit out of the window. Out it went, those old reels were made of metal, the tape was heavy too. The entire package weighed between 3 and 4 pounds. The obituary just missed a guy walking down Stuart, it bounced in the air, over a parked car and landed in the middle of the street. Sands ran out of his office, down the hall and into the elevator. He dodged cars and rescued the obit from the left hand lane of Stuart. When he came back to the studios, he said, "The fucking thing just missed the guy by inches! It would have killed him for chrissakes!"The reel was banged up pretty good. Sands straighted it and ran the tape onto another reel. It lived to make the air a few days later.

Eddie Bell, Jim Sands and I went over to the Oak Room at the Copley for a drink after work. We were sitting there and Bell, ever the newsman said, "Imagine the headline in the Globe, "Boston Man, killed by Fiedler Obituary".

"That Son of a Bitch!"

After the 3 radio stations I managed in LA were sold…that made a total of 6 sold in 11 years. I’d had it with the radio business….

Of course, I decided to take one more shot.

I bundled together the money, made an offer on a station in Boston, the guy accepted the offer, we shook hands on the deal. My lawyer sent him a purchase agreement. 

This was Thursday, I was excited as hell. I flew home to LA on Friday morning, I was a little hung over from the celebration with Sharp in Boston on Thursday night, but I was good.

My wife picked me up at LAX, we stopped at Pann’s for lunch. I had chicken and waffles, she had a salad. We laughed, we made plans and decided we’d move to either Beverley or Marblehead. I voted  for living in the Back Bay again, but somehow in a democracy of two, she has more votes than I do.

I waited the entire weekend for the purchase agreement to show up, I was supposed to get the document via email and then a signed hard copy to sign and send back with a 10% deposit. I didn’t get it Friday or Saturday. I didn’t get it on Sunday. I called him at noon pacific time on Monday.

He answered his phone on the 8^th ring.

“Oh hi, I was just going to call you.” He said.

“Hey man I haven’t got the purchase agreement yet.”

“Well, I ah…ahh.”

“Do we have a problem?”

“Well, uh huh, yes.” he says. I could smell the sweat from all the way across the country.

“If you tell me what the hang up is, let’s get it fixed.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve sold the station already.”

“What? You already sold it to me last Thursday. We had a god damned deal, you and Sharpie and I pounded it over breakfast, we agreed on everything. For Christ’s sake, you sat there and made a deal with me and you were working another deal at the same time?”

“Not really.” He sounded nervous.

“What do you mean not really, what did you do, use our agreement to leverage more money from another buyer? I’ve known you for 15 fucking years, you’ve eaten at my house, you’ve been over at Christmas. My wife thinks you walk on water. We’ve hung out together, I sat by your hospital bed when everybody thought you were going to die from a god damn stroke…and this how you fuck with your friend?”

“It isn’t like that, not at all, I uh, kind of had this going on before we talked and uh…”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“It kind of came up after we talked last week.”

“We didn’t just talk, we made a deal, we forged an agreement and we shook hands on it. It was done.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry enough to complete our deal?”

“I can’t, the other deal is done.” He said.

“How much more money did you get?”

“Way less money.”

“What, you sold it for less money?”

“I sold it to the Archdiocese, for 250 grand cash and a 1.9 million dollar tax credit, plus they are going to rent the tower site from me and pay a monthly fee for program production and studio rental. They signed a ten year deal on the studio and a 25 year deal on the tower site.”

“I hope you and Jesus get along….and I hope his checks are good.”

I hung up the phone. I was pissed. The minute I set it down, Sharpe the broker called from New York.

“Did you get the agreement back yet?”

“No. He fucked me and you at the same time.”

I told Sharp the entire story, when I finished he said, “That son of a bitch.”

I hadn’t hung up from Sharpe for more than a couple of minutes when the phone rang again. It was a guy I’d worked for early in my career, he called to congratulate me on becoming a station owner, I told him the story, when I finished, he said, “That son of a bitch.”

I took the dog to the park and threw the ball for him until my arm damn near fell off, I got back, checked my phone, two messages. I called back, told them what happened and guess what? The son of a bitch thing. Both times.

When my wife got home, I told her the story of my day. She didn’t say anything, she got up poured herself a glass of wine, came back into my office. She looked at me and said, “That son of a bitch.”

No Trumpets before 9 AM

 1.

On a warm and sunny day in Southern California, a man is sitting at a table, across from him is an earnest young woman with a tape recorder. It begins

“I have no idea why anyone would be interested in any of this or what I think about what’s happened to the radio business.”

“You spent most of your life in it, your opinions and thoughts matter. They’re a part of the history of the business. You were there at the beginning, as a participant.” She said.

“I wasn’t there at the beginning, when I showed up and got involved it was a few years after it began, So I wasn't a pioneer, that’s for damn sure." The man lighted a cigarette, an American Spirit Yellow.

"The opportunity for change was there, the big guys, the smart money, just couldn’t see it. Think of it this way, the fire was ready to burn and a few of us showed up with the matches, all you had to do was strike one and light the kindling. The smart guys didn’t even think the stack of wood would burn, to the point of denying that it was even burning, after it started. Some couldn't even feel the heat.”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“It was obvious at the time FM would work, there were beautiful music stations on FM all over the country generating huge listening audiences, some of the money men and the smart guys, the big companies, owned the damn things, who knows what they were thinking? A company has a facility. Let’s say in San Francisco, the fucking thing is number one or two in the market. At that point in time, almost nobody owns an FM receiver, but somehow the station is generating a huge audience. I used to wonder what the hell went on in the board meetings. I had dinner one night with the father of beautiful music, the guy they were paying to create the programming. I asked him, you know what he said?”

“I haven’t a clue.” She said.

“He said nothing, he just shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know either."

“So what happened?”

“The music changed for one thing, that was the catalyst. The music needed an outlet. It sure as hell wasn’t going to get it on sixties era Top 40. Stations at the time tried to play an edited version of “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan. The listeners revolted and forced them to play the song unedited, all 5 minutes and 56 seconds of it. That happened in the mid 60’s and it was a big deal in an era of record companies editing songs down just for radio, shit they used to cut old Beach Boys songs to under 2 minutes. I can’t remember which of the Beach Boys songs it was, whatever it was, I think the original was 2 minutes 36 seconds long. They cut it to 1:56." The man took a long drag on his cigarette, blew the smoke up in the warm air. 

"Capitol actually put out radio only albums called “short cuts”. Really, really stupid and the listeners wouldn’t put up with it anymore. The people running the radio stations at that time couldn’t understand what was happening. Actually, the silly bastards didn’t want to understand, they couldn’t get their heads around the fact things were changing, that they could no longer dictate musical tastes or control it anymore. Neither did the record companies."

"Our generation certainly wasn’t having or taking it anymore. There had to be a medium where what the listener could hear what they wanted to hear, demanded to hear. The un-loved, underutilized step child FM signals were the solution. Somebody once called them, the funny little stations down the hall.”

“Only took about 5 years for them to stop laughing. A few of them never got it.”

“Want another cup of coffee?” The man asked.

The woman nodded, yes.

Man radio Sucks

I'm an old radio guy, haven't been in the business for 6 years, I don't listen to commercial radio very often, but yesterday, I listened to KOST-FM during our half hour drive to our friend Ann's birthday party.

One of KOST's positioning statements is "Your favorites from the 80's, 90's and today."

Okay, a decade is ten years and we're 16 years into a new century, maybe I'm being picky, but that's, on the surface anyway, kind of a stupid thing to say, isn't it?

I have no idea who produced KOST's ID package, they're terrible and irrelevant, they don't fit the station and they're poorly produced.

Speaking of production, the audio levels of KOST are all over the spectrum. The mic was too loud, some of the music was too low, the commercials were loud and harsh. KOST's audio is just terrible. The high end is shrill, the bottom end is muddy and the midrange is squeezed to death, none of it worked. KOST is hard to listen to, very hard.

We heard a commercial set, with a live intro, into a produced station promo, then 8 commercials another produced promo and then a live liner read over the intro of a song. After the first song of the music set ended, the jock read another liner over the intro to the next song. Once again the audio mix was so garbled, it was hard to understand, something about a ticket give away.

In the middle of the music sweep, guess what popped up after some over produced piece of music from today? "Brown-Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison, a hit in 1967, followed by Madonna's "Lucky Star". It made my teeth ache. The jock then hyped the ticket giveaway again. When he finally revealed the ticket giveaway a few songs later, it was for a concert at the OC Fair, which is months away. Exciting? No it wasn't.

We finally gave up on KOST and switched over to 95.5 KLOS the classic rock station. "Rock you like a Hurricane" by the Scorpions was playing. Once again the audio was so bad about a 1/3rd of the music came out of the speakers. The sound was muddy and shrill at the same time, hard to create an audio mix like that, ask an engineer, they'll say, "it's damn near impossible". Somehow in 2016 radio gets it done.

When I look back on my years in radio, it's not always as good as I remember or I'd like it to be, but Jesus people at least we gave it a try and put some effort into it.

I was relieved when we shut off the radio when we arrived at Ann's party. On the way home we listened to music I've downloaded into the car's infotainment system. It made for a pleasant drive home and the audio was perfect.

The Two Story Brick on North Illinois and a few memories from our get together in Cambria

The two story brick was built as the home of WIBC radio in the 30's. When the company moved to new facilities on North Meridian street in the 80's the old two story brick was donated to Butler University by the Fairbanks family, Butler housed their student and public broadcast stations there for years. I wonder if anyone connected to the Fathers and Families Center in Indianapolis has any idea of the old buildings history.

Tom Cochrun and I started at WIBC, Indianapolis the same week in 1969. Tom was hired by Fred Heckman, the storied news director of WIBC. In anticipation of the interview, Tom got his long hair cut. The interview went well, Fred hired him. When the interview was over, Fred said to young Tom, "Get your hair cut."

I left KQWB in Fargo to go to WIBC. My first job there was the all night show. From Midnight to 5, I did everything, played the music, did the news, weather, sports, you name in it, I did it. When I arrived at WIBC my news experience was "rip and read", as in tear the stories off the AP wire and read them. I soon found out I had to have News Director and morning drive anchor Fred Heckman's 5am,5:30am and the 10 minute 6am newscasts, written and ready. Fred gave me a crash course in broadcast journalism. It took a month of poking and prodding by Fred to get my news writing to an acceptable level, another month before he passed out a complement. I wrote those three newscasts a day for a year. Fred’s guidance gave me a foundation, I was later able to put to good use when I built news departments, hired news people and directed news/talk radio stations. Thanks Freddy for training me and kicking my ass when it needed kicking.

WIBC was a national trendsetter, one of the first major market radio stations to embrace the changing demographics and to redefine what adult contemporary radio would become.

The WIBC vison came from a young General Manager named Jim Hilliard. Jim came to Indy from Philadelphia where had built and programmed legendary Top 40 station WFIL. For whatever reason, Jim took me under his wing. He would get to the station early in the morning (6:30) a couple of days a week and go over air checks of my show. He taught me what I could do better and more importantly, what not to do. Those early morning teaching sessions with Jim gave me a foundation I could build on as I moved on in my career with Fairbanks and other companies. Jim worked me hard, 5 all night shows a week and a midday show on Sunday. I’d get to the station at 10 at night and usually get home between 10 and 11 the next morning. Jim had enough confidence in me to have me do fill in for our morning man Gary Todd when Gar was on vacation and then my eventual move down the hall to WNAP FM to do mornings and later on to program our stations in Boston.

Jim had a lot more confidence in me than I had. Until I got to WIBC/WNAP I wasn’t even committed to radio as a career. Jim taught me to see my possibilities and gave me the confidence and encouragement to make a commitment to broadcasting. Everybody worked hard for Jim, he made it so damn much fun, the long hours and dedication he required were well worth it.

Working at WIBC and WNAP was an honor, a privilege and one hell of an education. So thanks for that and so much more JCH.

We had some tremendous talent in that brick building on North Illinois. The great Chuck Riley, Orly Knutson, Gary Todd. Fred and Lou Palmer anchored either end of the day in the newsroom. Young guys like Tom Cochrun and Bruce Taylor doing reporting and occasionally anchoring. Tom and Bruce moved on to successful careers in television news. One of the reporters was a classy old guy named Bob Hoover. You could imagine him with a press card stuck in his hat. Hoover had been a broadcaster for so long, he had covered John Dillinger in the early days of radio news. Bob Hoover was a walking talking history book.

WIBC had a nationally recognized Farm Director, Harry Andrews. Harry did the bulk of his Farm Reports in the early morning hours, beginning each broadcast with "Howdy Neighbor". Harry was a Purdue University grad, a school with a very good program in agriculture. Interesting thing, Harry's degree from Purdue was in drama. Harry played a character on the radio who was an expert in agriculture, he certainly wasn't. He was so good at it, the farm community didn't notice.

We had a great mix of old pros and young kids at the station. When I arrived at WIBC, Sid Collins, the voice of the Indy 500, was the Sports Director. Paul Page was a young police reporter. Paul replaced Sid on the 500 broadcasts and later did the Indy 500 race on ABC TV for many years.

WIBC was the flagship of Indiana University sports, the Pacers, the Racers (with a young kid named Wayne Gretsky centering a line) and later the Colts. Those sports broadcasts were anchored by legends like Jerry Baker, Joe McConnel, Bob Lamey and later a kid named Kevin Calabro. Today Kevin is "the" sports guy in Seattle.

We did traffic reports, the reporter was Deputy, then Sergeant, then Lt. and later Marion County sheriff Jim Wells. We had a young mayor in Indianapolis named Richard Lugar. Mayor (later Senator) Dick Lugar was a regular guest on the WIBC morning show.

Down the hall at the Buzzard, WNAP FM. The talent level was scary. WNAP had broadcast hall of famer Cris Connor, Major Tom Lewis, Tom went to be the top meteorologist on TV in Washington DC. Old friend Mike Griffin was a mainstay of the WNAP staff in those early days. Mike said the other day he was astonished at the music we played, he remembers it as much hipper than it was. Sugar-Sugar, right Mike? Mike moved on to become one of the owners of the Panther Indy Car racing team. Fresh from the Navy, Charlie Kendall did nights. Charlie went on to a programming career at some of the finest stations in the country, WMMS, WBCN, WMMR and WNEW. The list of WNAP talent is long, guys like Buster Bodine, Psycho Billy Cadillac and so many more opened the mic at WNAP.

I did mornings at WNAP for a year and a half and then moved onto Boston. I couldn’t have made the move without my WNAP experience.

The two stations at 2835 North Illinois in Indianapolis became the foundation of the Fairbanks Group of stations. Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, later Kansas City, Tampa and Palm Beach. We were the best.

Our success all began with Jim Hilliard. And Jim, I would be remiss not to say thanks for dragging Geo out of Canada, he has been my colleague and friend for so many damn years I can’t even remember when it all started. One thing I do remember is sharing an office with Geo, no windows, no ventilation and we both chain smoked Marlboro Reds in those days. The Duffy Twins would open our door and the smoke would just roll out into the hall. We must have smelled like ash trays, lucky the smoke alarms didn't go off. Maybe they did.

It seemed everybody in that old brick building was a character, we even had an engineer named Will Fix.

Don’t get me started on the sales department...they were crazier than we were. Yance, Johnson, Seeley, Shelton, Cooper, Bobo...you guys know who you are.

It was a special time in broadcasting and in my life. Special friends too.

BTW, growing up in North Dakota, until I got to WIBC/WNAP, I didn't realize I had listened to Jim, Gary and Chuck on Winnipeg's CKY when I was a kid driving around in my car. I later found out Geo was working behind the scenes at CKY as well. Small world.

Communication at the Speed of Light...

There was a story in the LA Times this morning about the beginning of WWI in 1914. A steamship arrived at a Pacific Island with the news the war had started three weeks before. The English and the French living on the island were surprised to find out that they were now the enemies of their German friends on the island. And had been for three weeks. Slow communication.

A book came out a few years ago about the change radio brought to every corner of the country and the world. It wasn't a very good book, but it opened something like this...

"Imagine you are living on a farm in a remote corner of one of the western states, it takes you a full day to go to town and back. When you go, maybe two or three times a month, you get things you need for the farm and your family, you haven't any idea what's going on in the world until you get to town. You get your mail, you see the local paper, you talk to friends and shop keepers. At the end of the summer you travel to the state fair and you see for the first time something called a radio. It requires electricity to operate, you have none. But this radio has a wind powered device that makes electricity to charge the radio's batteries. You buy the radio and take it back to the farm."

What changed for this farmer and his family in their little, remote corner of the world? Everything. Grain prices in the morning, national and local news and baseball. Late Saturday afternoon Standard Oil brought the New York Philharmonic to the farm. For the first time in your life you heard the voice of the President. You had music to listen to anytime you wanted it and you had weather forecasts. What's more important to a farmer than the weather?

When we built our lake cabin in the 50's we had a 30's era Zenith (my grandfather bought it new) console radio with a cat's eye tuner in the corner of the living room. The big old Zenith had AM, something called FM and multiple bands of shortwave. My grandfather ran the antenna wire to a window screen and the old set was ready to go. The Zenith had push buttons below the dial just like a car. The buttons were labeled with the call letters of the big clear channel stations of the time. WCCO, WGN, WLS, WLW, WBBM, KMOX and of course, North Dakota's first radio station WDAY. I listened to the sinking of the Andrea Doria as it happened on that radio. The radio played rock and roll and it made me despise Patti Page. The first time I heard the BBC World Service was on the old Zenith. I heard short wave broadcasts in foreign languages, including I suppose Russian propaganda and our propaganda on Radio Free Europe

The old Zenith had a "eye" it looked like the eye of a cat when you tuned it perfectly on the station you wanted to listen to. Still a good idea.The sound quality was great on the old radio, better than the car or the little Arvin I had in my room. The radio in those days was a window on the world. Then I got my first 6 transistor radio, it fit in my pocket, it had a little speaker and ear buds. I could ride my bike and listen to Little Richard and Gene Vincent. I could listen to R&B played by John R "Way Down South in Dixie if I turned my little radio in the right direction at night.

Early in my career I worked with a guy named Lem Hawkins. Lem was from Oklahoma and had started as a radio musician on a station in Oklahoma City. The station was owned by the publisher of the newspaper, the publisher also owned a farm. Lem and his band mates worked on the farm, got in a truck at noon drove into the station and played hillbilly music on the radio from 12:15 to 1, Got back in the truck, drove back to the farm and went back to work. Lem started announcing full time and quit the farm. When I worked with Lem he had been in radio one way or another for 35 years. Lem should have written a book, he was definitely not the guy he "played" on the radio.

Today's instant communication and information would amaze my grandparents. They were born before radio existed. My parents grew up with radio and adapted quickly to Television, I grew up with both and I've adapted to the instant communication/gratification of the internet. I suspect my grandchildren will read this post with skepticism, shake their heads and laugh...as they sit at their 3 screen computer set ups with an I-Phone in their hand. Keep in mind kids all of this has happened in less than a 100 years, TV wasn't common outside of the big cities until the early 50's and the web since the late 80's and it didn't start to work very well until 10 or 12 years ago. Until the telegraph came along in 1837 people in Boston had no idea what was going on in New York for days, the telegraph, the first mass electronic communication system prompted massive changes in society including the adoption of standard time zones.

20 million people still listen to Prairie Home Companion on the radio, the replays and the web...a good show is a good show. Always has been no matter where you find it. And I still read the newspaper too. 

Dateline Los Angeles

“Radio’s Young Turks”

                      “A morning show co-host with a better idea and the numbers show it!”

 

When I interviewed MB for this story, she asked that I not disclose her market, her station or the identities of her co-workers or her real name. I agreed.

“MB” has a master’s degree in English Literature with a specialization in 18^th century female poets. She graduated from a prestigious university and like most of today’s liberal arts grads; she couldn’t seem to find the right job. Unemployed after college, MB drifted into food service jobs, hostess, waitress and then cocktail waitress. 6 months ago in a Midwestern market she exploded on the scene in radio. I met her at a coffee shop in the market where she works. MB had on a baseball cap, her hair in a ponytail, no makeup and was wearing a pair of painter’s pants and a washed out sweatshirt, she had a pair of well-worn Chuck Taylors on her feet. In her words this is the story of her radio career.

“After I got my MA, I just couldn’t find a decent job, I had an offer from a community college in a small southern town, part time with no contract. A friend of mine helped me get a job at a cafeteria, mindless, minimum wage and no tips, I moved to small local café, I got tips, but the wage for tipped workers is ridiculous, I was broke, broke, broke. My roommate Denise suggested I start cocktailing, it was better, but I noticed the girls with big boobs were doing better than I was. I was flatter than a pancake, something I’d never thought much about to tell you the truth.”

I said, “You certainly don’t look like a pancake now, even with that big sweatshirt on.”

“Well, my great aunt died and left me a few bucks, so I took part of the money and bought myself new boobs. When I went back to work the money started rolling in, I’d bend over to serve a drink for 12 dollars and the guy would leave me a ten dollar tip. They’re idiots. Ten bucks for peek at the tops of a set of double D’s. Frankly, I couldn’t believe it.”

“Tell me how you got into radio?” I asked MB.

“Frank XXXXX, the GM of the station started coming in on a regular basis, the station had a trade at the bar and so he was a giant tipper, he’d leave me 30-40 dollars after one or two rounds of drinks. Over time, Frank started to hit on me and I’d put him off. It continued for months and months, finally out of frustration he offered me 200 dollars for a peek at my boobs. He paid and I showed them to him in the parking lot. After that he was worse than ever, he was trying to get me to sleep with him, so I lead him on a little and he offered me a job on the morning show as a sidekick. "I took it and its been great for me." MB said.

“You’d never been on the air before, right?” I asked.

“Right, but the two morons I work with didn’t care. All they wanted to do was tell dick jokes and talk about my boobs. Those idiots even wanted me to use Dee Dee Cupp as my air name. These morons would ask me questions like if I had ever kissed a girl. I’d answer, "why haven’t you? They didn’t know what to say." After a couple of weeks, I realized that the on line numbers were going through the roof because the pimple faced geeks who listen to the station were watching on line and were crazy to see my chest. If I wore a tank top the on line ratings would spike up 25-30 per cent. So I came up with a plan to capitalize on the rating increases. The idiots had never been better than 9^th in the morning. After I joined the show, we were fifth in the book and the on line numbers were the best in the market, so I cut a new deal with Frank and I couldn’t be happier.”

“You do your show from home now, how’s that working out?” I asked her.

“My friend Denise studied video production in college and she helped me wire my apartment for HD video and sound. She produces and we feed it to the station.”

“How does a typical morning go?” I asked.

“Denise turns on the camera and I’m usually sleeping in bed and the idiots from the studio call and I answer the phone at 6. I may have on a bra and panties, sometimes a station t-shirt, sometimes I sleep naked. I pretend I’m talking to them on the phone and answering their moronic questions while I roll around, showing the geeks as little as possible. Then I just go through a girl’s normal routine, coffee, juice, a piece of fruit, taking a shower, the audience loves that even though they see nothing. They go nuts when I put on lotion. They love it when I cook breakfast and do a routine about them sitting at the table with me. Frank wants to do a promotion where some jerk would actually come to my place and I’d make him breakfast. No way I’d do that.”

“What show got the biggest response so far?” I asked MB.

“The one where Denise and I were in bed together when the camera came on.”

“Wow!” How big were the numbers,” I asked.

“Through the freaking roof, Frank gave me a raise. Then Howard Stern called and wanted me to do his TV show, I told him to find somebody else to ride a sybian and hung up on him.”

“How do you get along with the guys on the morning show?” I asked MB.

She smiled and said, “Frank cut their pay to give me my last raise.”

I want to thank “MB” for her candid interview for our series. It was announced last week that her co-workers were being let go and the entire morning show would be broadcast from her apartment. MB is being paid the salaries of her former co-hosts as well as her own. Look for her show in syndication soon. She feels she’ll bigger than Stern ever was on the air. Her plans for the future, getting her PhD. Then , in her words “getting out of radio as quickly as possible.”