by Craig Carton
We were preparing for the biggest promotion of the year, which involved me and Dave going on the road for a week. I decided to schedule my wedding for the same week, pretending that I didn’t know the actual dates. The promotion was called “Germany” because we were going to fly to Germany and broadcast our show live from there to celebrate BeerFest. I waited a few days, and then I told Tim that I needed a few days off to get married—but not to worry; I wouldn’t take a full honeymoon and compromise the fall ratings.
When he saw the date, his first reaction was priceless. Rather than say congrats, he said, “Oh, I didn’t give you permission to get married on that day.” Fuck you. Sorry, I’m getting married and I can’t go to Germany. It shocked him, and I loved every minute of it. I thought he was a micromanager and had no appreciation for good radio. He once even sent me a rejection letter for a job after I was already working there. He was a disorganized leader. Even though he had been given the power to run the station, I felt that he lacked the ability to do the job. Screw him!
It took all of twenty-four hours for him and the station GM to call me into a meeting. I was expecting it, and so was Bob at KBPI. We had agreed on a one-year deal for $70,000 plus bonuses. I would be the main host of the KBPI morning show, which would be called The Locker Room.
Tim and the GM told me they were letting me go due to creative differences, and they would pay out the rest of my contract if I agreed not to sue for wrongful termination. I signed, went home, and called Bob. Nine minutes later, Bob faxed me a contract and I had a deal. Nine minutes of unemployment, and I would double-dip a salary for the first sixty days.
I did get married, and did keep my word about a two-day Vegas honeymoon. I started the first Monday of October as the host of The Locker Room on KBPI. I was pumped.
Then reality hit, as it so often does. When I was about three or four months into the job my wife and I found out she was pregnant. I was loving the station and the gig, and to celebrate my arrival, I organized a huge giveaway. I was going to drop the station van from a helicopter one thousand feet in the air onto an old dirt raceway field. The field would be sectioned off into huge boxes, each of which would have a number. Whatever listener had the rights to the numbered box that the van fell on would win a brand-new van. I also encouraged listeners to bring their own vehicles to be dropped from the helicopter.
With no expectations whatsoever, we did the on-air box giveaway for two weeks, and then went out to the field on a Saturday. Nearly ten thousand people showed up to try to win the van. The station had been rocking the Rockies for decades, and in a matter of weeks, I had contrived and pulled off the biggest promotion that it ever had.
But two months later I left Denver.
Without getting into specifics, my wife’s pregnancy wasn’t the easiest, and I knew I had to get her back to the East Coast. I waited for the first rating period to come, to see how we did. In three months, we were the number-one morning show in every key male demographic. The station was thrilled; it made Bob look great because I had delivered on my promise. It was the beginning of what could have been a legendary Denver career.
At the same time, I was running out of hours in the day to run the Internet company. I called Marc right when the KBPI job started and told him I would sell him my shares, act as a consultant for six months to train his guys on how to do what I did, and devote myself 100 percent to radio. I could not do both. Marc agreed to buy me out of the company. As much as I thought I let him down, sixty days later he signed a lucrative marketing deal with an offshore sports book that would be the title sponsor of the site. The site had grown to be the most-trafficked sports handicapping website in the world.
I didn’t get a single nickel of the marketing deal money, so while I wasn’t the best businessman when it came to timing, I am still proud of what I built. The site still exists, and it is still profitable. Marc has since sold out. He and I started another venture soon after, and we remain close friends.
When the ratings came in at KBPI for my third ratings book, we were number one again. It wasn’t two weeks later that I had to go to Bob Richards and tell him I was resigning. He was crushed. “Is it about the money for the show?” he asked. I told him I would never do that. I always honored a contract I’d signed, but it was nice to know he could have paid me more than he did. When I told him why I had to leave and that I would give him as much notice as possible, he hugged me and said, “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind, since you are doing it for family reasons. Let’s call it over at the end of the week.”
I told him I would regret the decision the day I walked out the door, never to return. He asked that I not announce it on the radio. This was hard for me because I had built a great relationship with the audience and felt a sense of duty to tell them. But I kept my promise and disappeared without a word.
I did my last show, packed up my house, and drove from Denver to the East Coast with a pregnant wife, two dogs, and unfulfilled dreams. We decided to move back to Philadelphia. My wife was from Philly, and having her family around seemed like a good idea. I was miserable about leaving Denver. I had moved there to resurrect my radio career and give it one last shot. As a result I sold Vegas Experts, a business I loved. I had built it from scratch and watched it succeed, and now here I was, about to become a father for the first time, and I was unemployed.
I had sold my shares in VE for a good chunk of change, but not enough to live on forever without any other income. I had to get back to work. I decided to build another Internet company, and to keep my hands in radio.
From the radio perspective, I was in Philly, so I called Bigby and told him I was back. He told me he wanted me back full-time. Middays would be mine. Ha; I’d heard that one before, but this time I didn’t have any interest in being the midday guy at WIP. The best time slot is morning drive (6–10 a.m.), followed by the afternoon drive (3–7 p.m.). I had proven to be a number-one morning show host, and if I was going to get back into radio full-time, I wasn’t going to be talking sports at WIP from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. I agreed to host the Brian Mitchell show. Brian was the new return man for the Eagles. Every Monday night he was going to have a two-hour radio show from a local sports bar, and I would host it. I told Bigby that I would also be willing to fill in for other day parts occasionally.
In my free time, I started an Internet company, Calling Stars. When I was building and running Vegas Experts, I developed and had exclusive rights to a new technology that would allow users to click a button on a website and initiate a phone call to whatever number they entered. The phone call would be a recorded message, and could be timed to coincide with a multimedia message on the computer screen. The original idea was that gamblers could have top handicappers “call” them to give them their picks, and if they were in front of their computers, they could also see the trends the handicappers were referencing when they explained why a certain team would be a pick that day.
When I got to Denver, I shared the technology with a company called CTS. They demonstrated the technology by releasing a website called Call Me Santa. This site allowed kids to get a call from Santa during Christmas and watch as Santa got the sleigh and reindeer ready to deliver presents. More than a million people initiated the call from Santa, and thus we had proven the technology and concept.
My idea was to sign up athletes and entertainers with Calling Stars so that fans could pay a couple of dollars to get birthday calls, well wishes, and personal updates from their favorite stars. I had signed about six athletes or so and had developed a contact with the manager of ’N Sync, the hottest boy band in the world at the time.
I spent most days trying to build the business and sign deals with celebrities. Then I decided that one of the coolest applications of the technology would be to incorporate it into video games. Having trouble with level three on Tomb Raider? Why not have Lara Croft call you herself to walk you through the level? I produced a demo of how it would work, with a complete multimedia presentation. I fl
ew to San Francisco and met with the top gaming companies in America. The opportunity to bring their characters to life in this manner enticed them. When I walked out of the first meeting, I left with a verbal agreement to do a single trial run for the newest Tomb Raider game, and a request from three other game makers to produce demos for them, too. I also had a date for a second meeting. I felt great about the prospects and got to work making demos for three new games.
At the same time, I decided that another great application for Calling Stars was adult entertainment. I hired two young, attractive models and had them record sexy messages in which they described doing certain things such as getting undressed or massaging themselves. Soft porn at its best. I sent the demo to Vivid Entertainment, the largest producer of adult entertainment videos in America, and also to Flynt Productions.
Both companies loved the idea, and their respective directors of new business development asked me to fly out to Hollywood. I met with Vivid first. They were based in a nondescript one-story warehouse, not impressive when you considered that they sold millions of dollars’ worth of videos and sex toys every single year. They understood the concept and wanted to produce one with Jenna Jameson, the hottest porn actress on the planet at the time. We wrote a two-minute script for Jenna. She would tape the corresponding sex scenes to go along with the audio. Home run.
From Vivid, I drove to to meet with Larry Flynt’s son, who was running all of his father’s digital properties. It was one of the most fascinating offices I have ever been in, and not sleazy at all. It was a professional building with amazing art on the walls and not a single naked woman anywhere in sight. I had dreams of the Flynt building being a nonstop Hefner-style party. But these guys ran a business, and acted that way. Flynt was accommodating, and like everyone else, he saw how the application of the technology could be a real winner.
I housed the technology on my servers, so companies that wanted to use it had no cost at all and no bandwidth issues. Their only cost was whatever they had to pay their talent to do recordings and performances. I had planned that rather than license them the technology, I would do a profit split. My feeling was that people go to these companies every day asking for money, and I would be different. If I showed them that they could improve their Web presence, and bring in significant revenue with no cost at all, I was ahead of anyone else who would meet with them that day. Flynt liked the idea so much that he took me to the Hustler store to get some stuff for my wife, and then out for drinks. I was about to become a porn mogul.
I flew back to Philly to share the good news and to host the Brian Mitchell show. I had lost interest in the show because I didn’t care if the Eagles won or lost, and other than wanting Brian to do well, I didn’t have any interest in his stats. The show was predictable: I would ask Brian a few questions about the game, and then I’d act as a traffic cop for callers who wanted to talk to him about the game. Every caller for those types of shows is the same: “Hey, Brian. Great game, I’m a big fan. Hey, what happened on third-and-six in the first quarter?” That kind of mindless banter bores the hell out of me.
After the show, I was approached by a man who introduced himself as Jeff Hillery. Jeff had just left a job as a program director at a FM talk station in Philly and was starting one in Dallas. He had loved me when I was at WIP and really enjoyed the Brian Mitchell show. We went for a drink, and he told me that he wanted me to be his afternoon guy in Dallas. Here we go again.
I was on the verge of major business and revenue for Calling Stars, but again I thought I could do both. I told him if the offer was right, I would consider it. He said that it would be a six-figure deal per year, for three years. My daughter, Mickey J., had been born in 2000, and the baby and my wife were doing well. I had no real reason not to consider taking the job and moving. Hillery also said I could bring any producer I wanted, and do whatever kind of show I wanted. This arrangement was new to me, and I was intrigued.
After discussing it with my wife, I figured why not. I called Jeff and told him we had a deal, and to fax it over to me. The last fax offer I got took nine minutes in Denver. Jeff told me he was going to his fax machine right now, and the fax would be coming in thirty seconds. He went on and on about how successful we would be.
I went online looking at houses and doing neighborhood research on suburban Dallas. Five minutes had passed, and the fax didn’t come. I checked the phone line, waited another ten minutes, and still no fax. I called Jeff and got his voice mail. Thirty minutes, nothing; an hour, nothing; voice mail, nothing, nothing. I still have not gotten that fax. I have never spoken to Jeff Hillery since he last told me we had a deal and was faxing me a contract. I was pissed—not because I wasn’t going to Dallas, but pissed that he would play me the way he did without ever calling me back or explaining what the fuck happened.
I went back to working part-time at WIP and building Calling Stars. For the Internet venture, I signed John Valentin, the starting third baseman of the Boston Red Sox; Adam Deadmarsh of the Colorado Avalanche; and Rob Ray of the Buffalo Sabres. I had ten more pending contracts with athletes nationwide.
Then I met with the representatives of ’N Sync. This deal was the potential grand slam. While the athletes would bring in core fans of their respective teams, if I could get Justin Timberlake and the gang to record nothing more than an ’N Sync rendition of “Happy Birthday,” Calling Stars would make millions. Their reps loved the concept and told me they would need a week to present me with a proposal of what they would need. They had to protect the band’s interests and be careful about who they went into business with.
During the week that they were thinking about it, I kept plugging away and, as I am still wont to do, I checked out a few radio rumor websites. One day I saw a blurb that Scott Kaplan had been fired as cohost of The Drive. The same show that he and Sid Rosenberg had done alongside me at CBS SportsLine had somehow been picked up and aired in New York City by WNEW Radio.
That one decision alone is proof that radio executives have no idea what they are doing sometimes. It was an awful show with no energy at all, and if Scott had half the talent he did ego, it may have had a shot. He didn’t, yet I’m sure it wasn’t all his fault. Sid was a degenerate gambler, a drug addict, and an alcoholic. He was incredibly engaging and talented, and people generally liked him despite his problems and his ability to lie right to your face. I felt that way about Sid.
On a whim, I sent a package up to Jeremy Coleman, the program director of WNEW. As I put it into the overnight bin, the most amazing feeling came over me. I knew I was going to be offered the job to replace Scott. It’s the only time in my life I have ever experienced that kind of premonition.
The following Monday, I was driving to the sports bar outside of Philly to host the Brian Mitchell show when my cell phone rang. It was Jeremy Coleman. He wanted to chat. I pulled over to the side of the road and we talked for twenty minutes about the radio station, the show, and about me. He wanted me to do some tryout shows with Sid. I magically enrolled my sister in New York University and told him I would be up there on Thursday. If that worked, I could do the shows on Thursday and Friday. Not having a good reason to say no, he said okay.
Wednesday afternoon I drove up to New York and crashed at a buddy’s apartment to get ready to be at WNEW on Thursday morning. At the time, WNEW had one extremely successful show, Opie & Anthony. The Radio Chick did middays, and the morning show was now going to be called The Sports Guys. Sid Rosenberg was there, as was comedian Eddie Ifft, former football player John Riggins once a week, Billy Taylor once a week, and a parade of others. In other words, they didn’t have a show. The first person I met in the waiting room was the board op (the guy who pushes the buttons that play commercials, songs, sounds, etc.), and assistant producer Chris Oliviero, or “Olive,” as I called him. I then met Mattie Moonshine, the producer, and Sid, who came in with a huge bear hug and told me how happy he was to see me. I did the two tryout shows, and based on my background and the fact that no on
e on the show had done radio really, they had me go to the calls and do the radio shit. I did my usual mix-it-up-with-the-callers banter, hung up on some of them, and kept the show moving like I had done thousands of times before.
Mattie told me I was exactly what they needed, and he would recommend that I get the gig. Jeremy Coleman, who also had no background in programming but was a nice guy, even though he was in over his head and had no control over the shows, called me into his office and told me how much he enjoyed hearing me. He wanted to offer me the job.
Holy shit. I was going to be doing mornings in New York City, and going up against Howard Stern, Scott Shannon, and all the other stations I grew up listening to. Jeremy asked how much I cost. I threw a random number out there and said well above what I had ever made before. He said no problem. You start next Monday.
Fuck, I should have asked for more than that. Actually, you know how some ballplayers say they would play for free? I would have done mornings in New York for free at that moment, for sure. Little did I know I was walking into one of the least professional radio stations in America.
The station promoted itself as the Opie & Anthony Station. That was really the only show that mattered, and the only show that would be promoted. This scenario could be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Good that we could fly under the radar and build a show, bad because we would get no support whatsoever to build it.
Here I was in New York, the number-one media market in the world and the home of the some of the greatest radio personalities since Marconi invented the medium. Yet when I looked around the studio at the collection of “talent” I would be working with, none of them had any real history of being successful on-air. Eddie Ifft was a comedian who had never done radio before the WNEW gig. Billy Taylor was a former NFL player who had been a guest on radio shows, but never hosted one. John Riggins, same deal. Blain Ensley was the on-air producer of a successful show but never had the desire or the experience in having to help carry a show on the air. Other than enjoying listening to WFAN, Sid Rosenberg had been on the air on a real radio show for less than eighteen months.