Morning Mouths

Melissa Schorr

Thursday, Feb. 5, 1998 | 9:10 a.m.

Morning DJs must have one of the hardest jobs in the world: dodging stalkers, chasing ratings, not to mention being witty at the crack of dawn.

Then again, it's also one of the most rewarding: They are the highest-paid talent in the business, sitting pretty in the growing Las Vegas market, and have license to sound off daily on their topic of choice.

We sat them down recently for a midday, off-air chat to let them do just that: Rant about radio in Las Vegas, in a two-hour round table discussion that covered everything from "prize pigs" to consultants and, naturally, the dreaded "H" factor -- Howard Stern.

Our panel: KKLZ's irreverent morning guys, Ken Johnson and Jim Tofte, and their news director, Dennis Mitchell; KQOL's oldies DJ, the "Kahuna," Steve Marchese; KLUC's Jay Casey, who will be moving to all-talk KXNT on Monday; and KXNT's current morning talk host, Dominick Brascia, who will move to the 6-9 p.m. slot.

Why did you choose radio, out of all the possible mediums? Do you have any regrets?

Johnson: That's the assumption, isn't it?

Casey: I think I can speak for everybody -- we all got into radio for the women. Because none of us had any chance in hell of having any kind of female relations if it wasn't for radio.

Johnson: We were the guys in school who pushed the audiovisual cart. The jocks got all the girls, and our revenge is that now, all the gals call us.

Tofte: I found so many TV people were just into the makeup thing and a lot of that became more important than what they were actually doing. Then I met some radio people and they were having fun.

Johnson: It gets in your blood, and you do it at an early age because you heard something cool on the radio and you wanted to emulate that. It's a passion, I guess.

Brascia: I got into it differently. I do television and (parts in movies) and my family needed me out here. So I dropped my tape around, and they said come in and do substitute work and that's how it started. I have a terrible voice, so I never looked at it as a career. But one of my program directors said, "there's some guys with really great voices -- but nothing to say."

Casey: What's nice about radio is it's the only true immediate medium. TV is live, but they can't say anything they want -- we can. If there's a question we have about anything, turn the mike on. Ask anything you want and you'll have an answer in 10 seconds.

Brascia: I love radio. In a movie, you have to have the director's vision and the writer's words. Here, we have our own little environment.

Do you (Jonhson and Tofte) ever envy that freedom of talk radio, to talk without interruption?

Johnson: There are times it's a blessing to have a song to go to, because you realize you have nothing to say.

Casey: Or a caller will have a great punch line, and you can't top it, so let them be the funny guy.

How does doing a morning show affect your personal life?

Casey: You're supposed to relate to your audience. That's tough to do when you can't stay awake long enough to watch "Seinfeld." So I bought a satellite dish, and watch everything on East Coast time.

Tofte: You've got to get your family in sync with the schedule, otherwise you don't see them. My family goes to bed the same time I do.

Brascia: Being I'm new, I thought, I'd handle the morning show like a nighttime show, so for a week, I tried staying up all night.

(They all hoot at his naivete)

Tofte: I just turned 40. In my 20s I was able to do the late-night thing, get an hour's sleep, still feeling OK.

Johnson: It wouldn't be a good show, but you'd think it was.

Howard Stern: Brilliant visionary? Or self-absorbed idiot?

Mitchell: We thought 'A' before he arrived here, and now we think 'B.' In the years that have transpired, the main topics seem to be how cool Howard is and who Howard hates, and that gets old.

Tofte: Dominick was bringing up guys who don't necessarily have great voices, and I put Howard in that category. It's changed a lot that he's become so big, now that it's all about, "do you dig me as much as I do."

Johnson: You say visionary or idiot as if you can't be both. I think he is both. I think he is an idiot who's taken it farther than any other idiot. When I say idiot, it's the act he has, the persona he has. The guy always is and will be a genius.

Casey: The one thing I'm put out about is when people still refer to him as a 'shock jock.' I think that when he first came on the scene, some people were shocked by some things he said and did, but today, if you listen to his show, it's the same stuff he did last year and the year before. I'm not shocked anymore.

Marchese: I think if you call him an idiot, you're just jealous. Obviously, he's got to be a visionary.

Has what Stern has done made it easier or harder for you?

Tofte: In some ways, we don't have to worry as much about language as much as we would have a few years ago. Other than that, it's a pain in the ass to have guys call you and say, "you're ripping this guy off," when, in fact, we're on at the same time, we don't listen to him.

Johnson: Yeah, we've been ripping Howard off before we ever heard his show ... You labor over something and think that's great, then someone calls and says, "Well, you know ... (I heard it on Stern)."

Casey: That's what comics refer to as parallel development -- if you came up with the idea, and he came up with the idea at the same time, and he has more listeners than all of us, he gets the credit, because more people heard him do it than us do it.

Johnson: As far as stealing, if you find the one guy in radio who has not stolen a bit from someone else, then you've got a bitter little man in a room somewhere.

Tofte: We don't steal from Howard -- just everybody else.

Does it frustrate you that the No. 1-rated morning show (Stern's) in town is not local?

Casey: You know what frustrates me? There's a newspaper in town that does a survey in the city, and they will list Howard Stern as the No. 1 radio show. Well if it's the best of Las Vegas, it should be the best of Las Vegas.

Johnson: Wouldn't that destroy that poll's real purpose as an advertiser suck-up device?

Can you get away with more in this city than in others?

Tofte: Kansas City (where he previously worked) was very conservative, and we pulled back a lot, and by the time we got here, they told us to pump it up a lot, because we had gotten so conservative.

Casey: Tolerance is different for us. We always envision the 28-year-old mom in her car with two kids, trying to figure out what she will feel like when her 7-year-old turns and says, 'Mom, what did that mean?'

Tofte: I'm of the opinion lately that we're right on the threshold of s--- being acceptable. Because nobody complains when you say it, it's in several songs that we play, it's been printed in the newspaper, Channel 8 ran it once. Not that that's a good thing, I just think it's the next thing that comes down.

Johnson: I'll tell you what a big difference is. This is where the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is drawing the line, too. If you're talking about, "that's bulls---," that's OK, but when you're (saying) look at this big pile of s---, then it becomes "excretory."

Casey: I would give credit to John Wayne Bobbitt more than anyone. Prior to John Wayne Bobbitt, we never said "penis" on the air. Now, you hear Dan Rather saying it.

And now we can discuss "oral sex" because of President Clinton?

Mitchell: The old adage is, you can say anything you want -- as long as nobody complains. Now, complaints are so rare, it makes you wonder where the threshold is.

So how do you know when you've gone too far?

Casey: I think you know when you say something if you're going to get called on it. You know what your audience will tolerate. Sometimes you can diffuse the situation before it gets started. You can go on the air and say, "Don't call and complain, we didn't mean to do that." Or, you can go the other way, and say, "Alright, send your cards and letters, complain to such and such," and you'll never get a complaint card. Sometimes you say something that you never think in a million years that someone would complain about, and you'll get a phone call. I made a comment about how I disliked matzo ball soup, and I had a phone call from a Jewish woman who claimed I was being anti-Semetic. Management took it seriously. I was just shocked when my boss was telling me. I was like, "You're wasting my time over this?"

Johnson: Oh, that's a good attitude. I bet that was well-received.

Brascia: I did something on Martin Luther King, and what I usually say to my callers when I have to (take a break) is, "I'm going to set you free," or "let you go." And I had this black caller, and I said, "Let me set you free," and then I realized how it sounded, and I started going, "Blah, I didn't mean ...," like a moron. I got scared. I thought, I'm out of here.

Casey: Everybody's so politically correct nowadays. We're all good guys, we don't mean anything bad by anything, but every now and then we make a slip of the tongue or a slight mistake and we get called on it.

They say most DJs have had fans that cross the lines. What is your worst stalking story?

Johnson: Once in Peoria, somebody said he was going to come down and spill our blood all over the turntables.

Brascia: One time, a woman came to the station and said, "Jesus said she had to kill me." Another night, at KLEV, I talked about Bo Gritz (who has been accused of being a white supremacist) and this man came to the station and started banging on the window, and I thought he was going to kill me. To this day, when I mention him, even on KXNT I get really nutso calls, I'm really frightened, (but) to this day, it hasn't deterred me. Whenever there's a chance I can say anything about this creep ... I will.

Johnson: I, on the other hand, have nothing but nice things to say about militia men ... radical sects ...

Casey: We had one instance where the radio station had to take out a restraining order against someone.

Mitchell: And how many people were freaked out when (the movie) "Talk Radio" came out?

Tofte: We hear Stern's got a bulletproof car.

Mitchell: Curiously enough, in all the news stories where someone storms in with a shotgun, it's usually with adult contemporary music. Something makes then snap. It's all soft romantic stuff and people indulge their fantasies.

Johnson: From what I understand, in order to be stalked, you have to first be able to draw a crowd when you appear in public.

Marchese: The stalking I get is on the air. Every day, the minute after you turn the mike on, the phone rings, and you think, "God, not her again."

"Brenda!" they all hoot simultaneously. "Prize pigs!"

Johnson: Brenda Gallagher. She was featured in this paper and the other. She's the top-rated (contest) winner in town.

Casey: I'm really shocked, I really thought it was just me.

Johnson: I would get really angry with Brenda, and do anything I could to bar her from the premises. I was devoting so much negative energy and time to getting her out of there, when finally I woke up and said (to himself), is this your money? No. She'd win and I'd give her something and she'd leave. And I was at peace.

What are some of your trickier callers?

Johnson: We learned a good thing -- it's probably going to sound terrible, but early in our careers in Peoria, we had Rebecca, she was disabled, and she'd (in a whining voice) talk like this and it would take 11 minutes to get a sentence out, and bless her heart, you'd listen to what she had to say. But after a while, it's sucking the life out of you. Even the nurses were saying, "just hang up on her," and you finally realize, disabled people can be jerks, too -- and that makes them human. You can hang up on a disabled person just like anyone else, because it treats them like a person.

Brascia: We had a couple of drunk callers that would call all the time, and the other day, I got so aggravated, I said, "Listen you drunk, stop calling," and she said, "No, I had a stroke," and I said, "That's what they all say!" and I hung up, and I felt like an idiot. I felt really bad.

Casey: I think the best phone call we get are the ones that start out, "This call is from the Clark County Detention Center."

Marchese: A few weeks ago, I had a person win a contest, the person had a tracheotomy, spoke with a voice box, and I thought somebody was mimicking a sidekick that I usually air. I wanted to be cautious and yet play along. You have to be careful, 'cause you could be made out to be a real cruel bastard.

What are you biggest fears?

Casey: Getting fired.

Marchese: The 17th of every single month. (when the ratings come out)

Brascia: When you go on at 5 a.m., nobody calls, and you sit there for three hours.

Johnson: I still get the DJ nightmare: dreaming you're on the air and you're not prepared and you can't find the next record and all the tapes are falling apart and the song is fading out.

Casey: I thought it was just me!

Any on-air horror stories?

Marchese: I had appendicitis on the air. In between (breaks) I was laying on the studio floor, writhing in pain. Finally, I got a hold of my program director and said, "if you're not here within half an hour, the radio station is on remote control." I got to the hospital and found out I was about to burst.

Tofte: In Kansas City, I was doing the show with this news girl, and she started having a heart attack and she went down on the ground on her back, and I'm looking at this, like it's real surreal, and my only concern was, get the Journey song on! She's dying over here, and I gotta segue into the song.

Casey: Mine isn't as traumatic, but when I was in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on a Saturday morning, I was all by myself at the radio station, it was pouring rain, and I helped (a man) carry (some equipment) out to the trunk of his car, turned to walk back into the station, and it totally escaped me that its a self-locking door.

(They all moan sympathetically)

Casey: I was the only person there, I was playing a Debbie Gibson record, and I knew there was only three minutes left. So I'm running around in the rain, trying to find a window. Fortunately, our program director only lived about two blocks from the station. So I'm running to his house in the rain, and I come up screaming (in a high pitched voice) "I gotta get a key!" My song had long faded out by the time I got back. I was so embarrassed.

What can't you do on air that you wish you could?

Casey: I'm sure you're all as aggravated as I am, "60 Minutes" or "20/20" doing secret cameras, can go in there and record somebody like Food Lion, but we have to get permission -- not only to call somebody, but if they call us.

Johnson: You gotta tell them they're on the air.

Casey: It makes it impossible to make a phone-out prank.

Johnson: That killed some of the best radio that ever was. We don't do it any more, but even recently, we heard of people that did.

What's your feeling about radio stations hiring consultants: Do they help or hurt?

Casey: The biggest problem is they never lived here in Las Vegas, so they don't know anything about the nature of this city. They will listen for two days of the month or the quarter, then come into town and give all their suggestions on everything that should be done. Then, we do them for two or three days until they leave town, and then it goes back to the way it used to be.

Mitchell: If the program director doesn't know what sounds good on the radio, he doesn't belong. If you have to pay someone $100,000 to $200,000 to tell you what sounds good on your station, you have the wrong person in charge.

Casey: But for employees at radio stations to say they don't need them would be like the Chicago Bulls to say we don't need a coach. Sometimes, you need an outside perspective to help put the whole team together.

Brascia: The consultant at KXNT has a book out, with (various radio hosts) talking about their theories of radio, and they contradict each other. I read 'em all, and the only thing that's good is it tells the programming director how to deal with talent -- it says: Talent needs to be coddled.

How do you prepare for a show?

Casey: I don't think the average listener realizes exactly how much work goes into preparing our show. I think they think we wake up at 5, go in at 6 and leave at 10.

Johnson: And if you're doing a good job, it sounds that way.

Casey: Listeners expect you to know everything. So it helps if you do. They'll call you and ask you, "Can you tell me how to get to Walker Furniture?" They'll ask you anything. So it really helps if you know.

Brascia: Or a little bit about it. Just enough to fake it.

Mitchell: What's also a gold mine for radio is the Internet.

Casey: It's completely revolutionized the way everybody does show prep. We can almost cancel every service we've ever had.

Mitchell: I threatened AP (the Associated Press, with cancellation) last month. I don't know if we need that (anymore), it's all on the Net.

Tofte: There was a great Bill Clinton song we used this morning.

Johnson: It took two hours to download, but my laptop wasn't doing anything, and by 8 o'clock, we had a funny song to play.

Casey: The Internet, boy if that ever went away, we'd, uh, have to work.

Marchese: Early on, I used it more than I should have, and it became a crutch, and you start not thinking for yourself. You go, 'What would this guy say?' So I try not to use it at all any longer.

Tofte: Nothing beats reading the papers.

(They all make kissing noises at him.)

Do you ever rely on canned jokes?

Casey: There's probably 20 or 30 radio services that put together parody songs, parody commercials and bits and schtick, and we subscribe to two, of which we use virtually nothing. And I have to question why we have 'em.

Johnson: Well, you have them so we can't have them.

Casey: That's pretty much it. Only one station per market can have it. Many times, the motivating factor is to keep the competition from getting it.

Johnson: When we first started out, we would get so militant and outraged. Now, if we hear someone else's song and think it's funny, we'll play it and say who did it.

Tofte: Even if you can get all the services, there's not much to pick from.

Marchese: I really like drops.

What's a drop?

Johnson: A drop is pieces of a TV show or movie that can mean something else if you plug it in the right place. Like for instance, if you had a drop from Clinton's speech saying "I never had sex with that woman," and you play it after every female artist that you play that morning, it's a great running (bit).

Can you describe the local market?

Casey: One exciting thing about Las Vegas, this is the only city, the only market, that I've ever worked where by staying put, I keep on advancing in market sizes. When I moved here, we were market No. 54, and now we're No. 45.

Johnson: We were 72 when we moved here.

Casey: But on the bad side, I'm not sure radio stations have caught up with the size of the market. I'm not sure the facilities and the jobs here are paying what they should for this market size.

Mitchell: The commercials, that's where it hits. I'm sorry -- small town. A lot of it is so Des Moine.

Marchese: These guys, (pointing to Johnson and Tofte) can make three times as much if they wanted to go somewhere else, and it's been a difficult decision for them to stay.

Johnson: We love the town. We're at the age where you want to put down roots and it seems like a good place to do it. Staying put is still dangerous, but it's much more attractive.

Is this a competitive market?

Casey: We all get along. We're all men and women trying to do the same thing, make money, have fun, raise our families.

Mitchell: We all want to win. But if you get nasty, well, in two years, you might be working side by side with that person.

Tofte: When we first got here, it was more go-for-the-throat between stations.

Johnson: We went after KOMP to try to make a name for ourselves and try to attack what we saw as the icons of the time. And they took the bait and took it personally. But it gets old. You gotta meet people in public.

Casey: And have situations like this here.

Johnson: Exactly.

Who has the best chance here of going national?

Casey: Those guys (pointing to Johnson and Tofte.)

Marchese: It's almost embarrassing, but my wife will call and say, "you should see what they're doing over on KKLZ."

(Laughter.)

Casey: But I don't think syndication is good for radio. What happens is you get these major market personalities in small markets all across the country. The small markets are like the AAA baseball teams, that's where the young talent learns what to do and works their way up. So if we keep cutting down our Triple A teams, there will never be any fresh talent to take over for the major leagues.

Marchese: Two to three years ago, it was very intimidating when a national person came in a marketplace, but as has been proven recently, Don Imus is here and not doing well, Mancow came on The Edge (KEDG) and got booted after six months.

Brascia: It's such a charge to know I'm kicking Don Imus' butt in the mornings! It's like, "Wow he's got Dan Rather on, and I'm dealing with some drunk lady."

Are ratings do or die?

Mitchell: Yeah, it's a shame, but that's the way it is.

Casey: What's a real shame is there's no way to prove that they're accurate.

Johnson: Here's the deal -- they're (listeners) paid four bucks, sometimes, to fill out the Arbitron diary, and who wants to waste their time? Just people who will waste their time for that.

Casey: I wouldn't have a problem living or dying by the ratings -- if I knew they were accurate.

Marchese: I'll give you an example. In just this last (ratings) book ... I was No. 2 in my demo (demographic category) ... The very next month, I was 11. Now how do you go from No. 2 to No. 11 in one month?

Mitchell: In the monthly sheet that comes out, there's a paragraph this BIG at the bottom that says, "don't rely on this, this isn't accurate."

Brascia: I'm new to this, I didn't know what ratings were. And I've got my friend, on KVBC, they were getting nothing, no ratings, and their phone lines are going, boom boom boom. I thought, Oh, they're wrong, I've discovered it's a fraud. Well, everybody who calls gets a free ticket to see a movie. So one morning at 6 a.m., we give away something, all of a sudden, all six lines (light up). I was like, people really are listening. They don't want to call, but they're there.

Casey: I think I can sum this up really well. Whenever the ratings are down, they're completely inaccurate. And whenever the ratings are up, they're the most accurate piece of information you can get your hands on.

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