by Richard Neer
WBCN was now dominant in the the market with double-digit shares. Charlie Kendall left in the early eighties when Mel Karmazin’s Infinity Group purchased the station and refused to honor the bonus clauses in his contract. After a brief stop in Indiana, he landed a PD job at WMMR in Philly. A former weekend jock named Oedipus succeeded Kendall at BCN and built on Charlie’s success, keeping his format largely intact. Like Harrison in Los Angeles, they were able to play the best of new wave and blend it with acts that later were categorized as Top Forty like Duran Duran and Madonna. With their large college population, they could walk the line between the classics and cutting edge and make it work.
In New York, however, the music seemed hopelessly splintered. Disco had taken away some of our blue-collar audience, as “Disco 92” WKTU hit the airwaves and went from a one share to an eleven in the course of one rating period. But new wave was our real problem. It was embraced by the cognoscenti but the mainstream rejected most of it as nihilistic garbage. The punk image of purple mohawks and pierced body parts wasn’t playing well in suburbia, and that’s where the AOR audience lay in the metropolitan area. We had to fight our natural inclination to gravitate toward the adventurous and balance it with the increasingly conservative atmosphere that Reagan had ushered in. But along with the new prosperity and optimism for the future, average people were now dabbling in recreational drugs.
The drug culture particularly affected our news department. One part-time newsman had developed a heroin addiction, and was stealing albums to support his habit. For months, Muni, savoring his role as amateur sleuth, tried to determine who was robbing the station of records we needed to play on the air. The news guy kept a syringe, telling everyone that he was a diabetic who needed to inject insulin several times a day. His big boo-boo was coming into the studio to chat with Muni one afternoon, while scarfing down several Hershey bars. Scott immediately suspected something was afoul.
But his Marine background and boyish conspiratorial side wanted to catch the fellow red-handed. So he convinced Marty Martinez to walk by our suspect with a box of twenty-five shrink-wrapped Led Zeppelin albums, and ostentatiously place them on the desk in the music library. The man’s eyes widened as Martinez strolled by with his treasure trove, and sure enough, minutes later the box was gone. Muni positioned Tammy Tracy on the back staircase and within the hour the guilty newsman stole down the stairs with his stash. Tracy grabbed him from behind, alerted Muni, and the man was fired on the spot. We tried to set him up with counseling, but it would take years before he finally cleaned up his act.
Tom Morrera was fired a year after Scelsa left. The building was having a problem with its heat in the off hours. It was constructed such that when they turned down the temperature in the outer offices to save energy, the studios got cold as well. Morrera complained about this several times, and each time we spoke to building maintenance who assured us they had solved the problem. One night after a particularly bad Rangers loss, Father Tom was in a foul mood. He’d brought a hockey stick with him and proceeded to pound it harder and harder on a newsroom desk, until it shattered. He then went to work, and as the overnight wore on, the studio got colder than the water around the Titanic. This was it. He took one of the discrepancy forms kept for reporting technical problems and wrote:
Dear Mike . . . you mother f—ing Greek son of a bitch. I’m freezing my ass off here, you little cocksucker. What the f— are you going to do about it?
Despite Marty’s advice not to post it, the angry Brick slid the note under Kakoyiannis’s door. The next morning when I arrived, I was greeted with, “Call Pete Larkin. I’ve just fired Morrera. Look at this note.” Indeed the memo was so coarse that, coupled with the knife-wielding incident, there was no convincing Mike that Morrera was just having a bad night.
One of my most naÏve mistakes as program director was to believe I could, through a logical presentation of the facts, convert the disbelievers to understand and adhere to the current music philosophy. But the truth was that the only way to get them to act more responsibly about the music was to tighten the system so that they couldn’t abuse it. The consultants suggested harsh measures like removing the library from the studio so that they had no access to anything we hadn’t approved. Symbolically, I thought that went too far, since I wanted the jocks to have some hand in programming, so that they would be engaged in, and enthused about, the music. But it wasn’t like working at WLIR with a bunch of young people united in a common cause. Some members of the staff thought they were holding back the barbarians and that I was allowing them in via a Trojan horse. I saw my efforts as a compromise position—to accept the consultant’s advice that made sense for us and reject the ideas that wouldn’t work in New York. In reality, I was fighting a war on two fronts, and both sides were girding for battle by entrenching themselves in positions that gave no quarter. “Live Free or Die” was not only New Hampshire’s motto.
Since everyone there had done this for so long, they thought they were radio icons. But in reality, they weren’t humorists. They weren’t great raconteurs. They were generally skilled interviewers, but people were beginning not to care what rock musicians had to say, given that the average listener could not relate to the excessive, overblown spectacles that many rock bands had become. All we brought to the table was a knowledge of music that was now compromised by the different directions rock was taking. My goal, like Harrison’s in Los Angeles, was to play the best of each subgenre. But by allowing the jocks freedom, they were distorting that goal to their personal tastes.
Ronald Reagan had made it fashionable to be capitalistic, and the whole country was becoming proud of their materialism. People were beginning to flaunt their wealth, instead of hiding it, as our generation had. The stock market was not just for a few Wall Street types, but the average person was now investing and wanted to see his pet companies pay dividends. In mainstream music, art took a back seat to enterprise, and we were slow in reacting.
My biggest disappointment was Meg Griffin. I thought she had the makings of a star. She was bright, attractive, and had a great straight-ahead delivery. Unthreatening to other women and appreciated by men for her intelligence, we thought she gave us a perfect nighttime presence. In May of 1982, she was awarded the still potent 6 to 10 p.m. shift at the expense of Dennis Elsas. It proved to be one of the biggest mistakes I made as program director.
Dennis wouldn’t fight the system, played the music the audience wanted, and his pleasant personality never got in the way. His interviews were well prepared and he enjoyed good relations with some of the staples we were playing. In fact, Pete Townshend was so impressed with the chat they had that he asked a friend to tape Dennis’s shows so that he could listen to them while driving his daughter to school in the morning. He executed the format well and didn’t babble on endlessly with no plan. His ratings were generally just below a three share, even with or slightly under the rest of the station. Firing him completely would have been patently unfair, so he was demoted to weekends for slightly less money. The timing was especially bad on a personal level, because the longtime bachelor was scheduled to be married the following month and had laid out a big deposit on a house.
But Meg was a hot item, in that she was a champion of new wave, sharing her knowledge and friendships with the musicians in a very unpretentious manner. I had long talks with Meg about the music. I was in sympathy with her tastes, but stressed that she was being handed a great opportunity to maximize her talents. If she played by the rules and didn’t let her own preferences for punk and new wave subvert her, the sky was the limit. She nodded in agreement and then proceeded to break every guideline we set out for her. Worse yet, when caught, she lied about it. I tried to convince myself that she didn’t fully understand the concept, but she was far too intelligent. She would support the format publicly, and privately do everything she could to undermine our efforts. Within a year, fully a third of the audience Elsas had left her was gone.
A concurrent move
had equally bad results. Since Dave Herman’s ratings had never reached Laquidara’s levels at WBCN, or even Cynthia Fox’s at KMET, we thought that it was time for a more exciting morning show. Even if we could afford to go after a big-time program from another market, the audition tapes we heard consisted mainly of puerile T&A jokes, and we were seeking a funny but intelligent presentation that wouldn’t insult the audience’s sensibilities. Unfortunately, although Dave had a great ear for good comedy, he wasn’t a funny guy himself. In retrospect, the smartest thing we could have done would have been to team him with a wacky sidekick earlier on, so that Dave could be the straight man and music maven and the sidekick could play the fool. But Dave had an ego, and didn’t want his star diminished by a foil who might attract more attention than he did. So along with Vicky Callahan and Kakoyiannis, I tried to come up with a solution. The only person on the staff who we thought was even moderately funny was my brother. He certainly was more high energy than Dave and by virtue of that alone, we hoped to improve on Dave’s increasingly low-key delivery.
What I didn’t know was that Dave had joined the party crowd and was coming to work at less than his best. All I knew was that our morning show dragged and had no pace, and we felt that Dave was the wrong guy for that slot and that he’d fit in better from ten to two at night. Dan-o was given mornings at the same time as the Meg Griffin move and to put it quite simply, it didn’t work. Within six months, his ratings were half of what Dave’s had been. We were trying longer talk segments and importing professional comedians to work with him, but listeners used to Dave’s laid-back approach weren’t ready for a wacky morning show. A panicked Kakoyiannis was constantly pressuring me to try new combinations but nothing seemed to work. The old way didn’t cut it and the new one made it worse. Was this a hopeless situation?
Finally, after another devastating ratings book, Mike told me it was time to pull the plug. I was charged with the unenviable task of firing my brother after only six months and putting him back on weekends. He saw it coming and took it well, but was disappointed in the support he’d gotten. The truth is that we spent more on trying to help him in six months than we’d spent on Dave in years. It was just the wrong show at the wrong time.
So it became my job to find a new morning show, while filling in doing the old one. We asked our sister stations to make us tapes of their competition in hopes of killing two birds with one stone—eliminating a competitor in another market and finding ourselves a great show. I traveled up and down the East Coast, checking into motels and listening to morning shows. Unfortunately, there was nothing out there that we thought would be appropriate. We liked John DiBella at WLIR, but in his initial conversation with us, he threw out a number so high it immediatelydisqualified him. He told us what he was making on Long Island and I couldn’t believe it. My skepticism was well founded when WMMR brought him in a few months later for considerably less than we would have paid. His show worked for them and their morning problem was vanquished soon after his arrival. My interim morning job stretched into the new year, and by some quirk of fate, the ratings immediately were restored to the level Dave had left them at. Mike and Vicky were starting to see me as less a program director and more as a morning host.
I’m afraid I clinched that decision with another programming move. A new station, WAPP, had hit the market on May 3, 1982—debuting with 103 days of commercial-free music. Abrams believed that with WPLJ playing a tight AOR list and WAPP doing a variation of the same, we couldn’t survive by straddling the fence, playing some new wave and some traditional AOR. He’d just invented a new format called Superstars 2 that was having some success in the Bay Area. It was based on the premise that the traditional AOR stations were burning out all the classics by playing them endlessly, and that the adult rock audience was ready for a blend of new wave and alternative tracks from the big artists. For example, rather than play “Born to Run” by Springsteen endlessly, we should play “Backstreets.” It sounded good to me, and most of the jocks embraced the idea, tired of playing the same hit records that everyone else was. Lee and I combed through the library for days and I came up with a list that I thought made sense for us in New York. He agreed with my choices, and we entered 1983 with hopes that our latest innovative approach would save the day.
Highway to Hell
The one concrete benefit we received from WAPP was Mark McEwen. He had been imported along with E. J. Crummy to be part of their morning team, but the combination didn’t work and he was axed rather quickly.
He called me the day he was fired and I agreed to meet with him. Although I didn’t know it at the time, Mark is black. After all that time at WLIR and five years programming WNEW, I finally had the opportunity to work with another black rock-and-roll jock. Race was about the only thing he had in common with Bill Mercer, though, because his style was completely the opposite of Rosko’s seriously cerebral and political bent. Mark was a personable guy who had started out doing radio and some stand-up comedy in Maryland. His humor was gentle and inoffensive. I liked him at once and told him that we’d make some space for him on weekends, and try to find a more permanent place as things shook out.
Superstars 2 was interesting radio, but the only place it worked was in San Francisco at KFOG. We were guinea pigs, constantly refining and redefining the format. Coupled with the new jock lineup and changes within the market, it clearly was going to take some time to gel. Unfortunately, it wasn’t given time. Carl Brazell was pressuring us for instant results, and this new format wasn’t going to provide them. It probably was an idea ahead of its time, since nowadays there seems to be a clear place in most markets for an adult rock station. But after two down ratings books in 1983, I was called into a meeting with Kakoyiannis and given a choice.
The station needed a full-time program director. The job was mine if I wanted it. But frankly, Mike and Vicky Callahan thought I was having more success in the morning than I was at programming and recommended I stay with that, for the good of the station. PDs were easily found, but successful morning shows were hard to come by.
The decision wasn’t a hard one. Mornings would pay me twice the money for half the work. I could go home at eleven most mornings and have the entire day ahead of me. I’d already had a taste of what mornings could do for me on a social level. All my work behind the scenes might give me a nod of recognition from some listeners, but in the prominent morning slot, everybody knew me and couldn’t do enough for me. It felt strange, because I was the same guy doing the same thing on the air I’d always done, but now I received star treatment, whereas before I was barely noticed. All sorts of sponsor freebies came flying in, and I was given discounts and special consideration by scores of merchants. Where were they when I didn’t have money and had to steal food? Now that I could afford to pay my own way, everyone wanted to give me things. I was asked for autographs everywhere I went. By contrast, programming required a twelve-hour day and every shift on the station was my responsibility. I was paid much less and everyone on the staff saw me as a real or potential enemy. Any success I might have was only known within the industry. The few reservations I had were quickly dispelled by Kakoyiannis. I didn’t like leaving the job in programming undone and I was leaving myself and the station vulnerable to outside intervention, but I was assured that I would be involved in approving my successor and that they wouldn’t hire someone I wasn’t comfortable with.
I swallowed that one whole. I began to set up interviews with prospective program directors, and soon winnowed the field down to three. First, there was Dave Logan. He’d been a Burkhardt/Abrams programmer in Seattle and was the consultant’s choice. I liked Dave, but thought he was too inexperienced for the job, especially dealing with the gigantic egos at the station. I also didn’t think he knew enough about New York music. I filed him away for the future, thinking prophetically that someday he’d grow into the job.
Norm Winer was the longtime PD of WXRT in Chicago, a station that paralleled WNEW in many ways. He’d
had continuous success there, and had also worked to great acclaim in the seventies at WBCN. Winer was a nice man who ruled with a strong but wise and compassionate hand. He was extremely intelligent, and seemed suited to easily win the respect of the jocks. His vision for the station linked with mine perfectly, and I recommended him to the powers above as my choice.
The third candidate was Charlie Kendall. My personal encounters with Charlie were at company conventions and I got along well with him. He had visited us when he hired John DiBella to do mornings at WMMR, and I was impressed with his thoroughness and subsequent success at making DiBella’s Morning Zoo a hit in Philly. He worked at Metromedia, and that was a plus in advancing someone from within. Any telephone contact I’d had with him on cooperative matters within the chain was constructive.
But Charlie was someone I couldn’t recommend. His reputation was not good—people said he played dirty, fast, and loose with the truth, and was seriously unbalanced because of his drinking and use of cocaine. Record promoters and former jocks who knew him told me horror stories about his reign of terror at WMMR, where they had nicknamed him the “Prince of Darkness.” Many who had worked with him at WBCN had nothing good to say about him.
Imagine my surprise when Mike Kakoyiannis told me without prior discussion that he had hired Kendall. I felt betrayed and told him so. I was supposed to be consulted every step of the way and have veto powers over any candidate. Too late, Mike said, it’s done. I slammed the door to his office, shouting at him to find another morning man because I wouldn’t work for that “drug addict.”