by Richard Neer
One Step Up, Two Steps Back
Kevin Smith was a product of St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and was, as a failed New York football coach was described, “a dese, dems, and dose guy.”
He wore his Bronx accent proudly and actually used it as a tool to baffle his adversaries. Kevin liked to be underestimated in business, which takes great cunning and native intelligence, not to mention a lack of ego.A nice-looking man in his mid-forties, you could envision him on the sidelines as a Catholic university hoops coach, exhorting his team to victory. He was a huge Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Cowboys fan, strange choices for a native Bronxite, as these were teams most New Yorkers loved to hate.
Despite his place of birth, Smith’s radio sensibilities were fostered in Detroit, a market vastly different from New York, although many great jocks hail from the Motor City. Detroit is a hard-rock town, like Los Angeles and to some extent Boston. New York tends to like British music and more cerebral material. Its rock roots are firmly planted on the Jersey shore with Springsteen. Unfortunately, Kevin’s midwestern experience caused him to be the architect overseeing the collapse of WNEW-FM.
He was an incredibly sweet man with a very good heart who saw past cutthroat corporate sensibilities and was genuinely concerned about people. He told me that his master plan was to put in five more years, become fully vested in his pension plan, and then retire by age fifty to play golf and dabble in whatever he chose. He’d saved his money carefully, and was looking forward to living modestly without all the corporate crap.
When I first met him, I took to him instantly. He exuded a mischievous charm and he liked the fact that I could talk sports with him, something he found rare in the realm of FM jocks. He’d take me out to breakfast after the show and say, “I want to bond with my morning guy.” We got along very well, even after our business interests failed to coincide.
Like Karmazin, he took the tack that as general manager he knew nothing about programming. But all the while, he believed that he knew more about the big picture than those he appointed to lead. He was under a mandate from Group W to fix the morning show, even though our ratings were solid and revenue was constantly improving. Ken Dashow and I were meeting on a weekly basis with Utz, our sessions usually lasting two or more hours. We’d review tapes of bits we’d done, and Ted was encouraging and supportive, with occasional nudges toward adjusting this or that. In all, we were pleased about what we were doing—enjoying working together along with our sports guy, Bob Papa. But we were severely limited in what we were allowed to do, and that wound up killing our chances for greater numbers.
Our first limitation was that we were not allowed any sexual humor. We were told to stay away since Howard Stern was the master of that game and we couldn’t win if we played on his field. We didn’t envision spanking naked lesbians on our show, but tying our hands in this area eliminated a huge wealth of material. We talked sports but were told to keep it brief, since if we went too far, we’d alienate our female listeners. Besides, sports were for young males, and Howard had them locked up anyway. Most of our talk had to center on music.
This is typical of narrow-minded AOR thinking. Focus groups tell you that people listening to AOR radio are mainly doing so to hear music. Duh! But by the nineties, how many AOR artists were doing things that anyone cared about? Was it compelling to hear that Van Halen was in the studio working on some new tracks, or that Mick Jagger might be doing a solo project next year? The music culture on that level was dead—only the new music scene in Seattle had any real excitement going for it, and their demos skewed younger and we were advised away from it.
One of our best features was taken away from us either by cowardly corporate attorneys or a crafty Kevin Smith, blaming them for his own squeamishness. The bit was named “the wake-up call,” and many morning shows across the country employ a similar gag. We’d solicit mail from listeners who wanted to play a practical joke. In their letters, they’d explain a sticky situation that a friend or loved one was in. Perhaps it was a tenant-landlord dispute. Kenny would call, disguising his voice with any of a number of accents at his command. He’d pretend to be the landlord and explain that he was painting the apartment that day and that everything would be left out on the street until he’d finished. The listener would naturally come unglued at the prospect. Ken would goad him on before finally revealing that it was a wake-up call from WNEW-FM. The calls were taped in advance, so they could be edited or excised entirely if they weren’t funny. But one morning, Smith showed us a corporate memo forbidding such calls unless the prankee was informed that the call was being taped for broadcast before beginning. That obviously would ruin the joke. We pointed out that other stations were doing the same bit with impunity, and that we always asked permission to air the tape afterward, in case it might prove too embarrassing or lead to some real trouble. Plus we were careful to avoid incriminating situations like unpaid parking tickets or back taxes due the IRS. Sorry, we were instructed, the consent must be obtained prior to taping. There went our funniest routine.
So what was left? Very little. We felt like we were going up against nuclear missiles with squirt guns. I thought that Ken and I were a pleasant listen and that our music was on target, but that if we were to achieve double-digit numbers, we’d have to completely let loose and do a typically trashy morning show. Even if we did that well, it would take years to put even a dent in Stern’s loyal following. And there was always the danger of losing our existing 3.8 share by chasing away listeners who enjoyed some good music, headline-style news, weather and sports, and a laugh or two.
Ted felt that if we stayed the course and sharpened our act, we’d get to a four share and make a lot of money for Group W. But Kevin Smith wanted to go for the gusto. He took Ken and me to breakfast one morning, and we listened to him describe his vision for the morning show. It directly contradicted everything Ted had been telling us. Utz joined us later and we presented him with our dilemma—Kevin wants more talk, you want the talk segments in bite-size pieces with emphasis on music. Which is it to be?
Ted started to answer and Kevin cut him off. It was clear that they weren’t on the same page, and by the way Smith hustled us out of the diner, it was also clear he didn’t want us listening to Utz. We were now going to have to choose loyalties and there was actually little choice. Ted was probably on the way out; Smith was the new boss and it was apparent that any program director he picked would be a puppet executing his game plan. If we were to survive, we’d better follow our general manager, even if he was leading us down the wrong path.
Unfortunately, what it came down to was that Kevin Smith was a proactive guy with ambitious plans for the station at a time when it needed a Ted Utz to gently guide it through its charted course. It would never be the number one station in New York with the top-rated morning show. If Group W could just accept that, WNEW would make a lot of money for them. But sucked in by the fool’s gold of big numbers in other markets, they assumed that something was wrong with the station. No one seemed to understand that New York was not a predominately rock and roll town. The ethnic makeup of the area and its history all mitigated against rock being a mainstream format like it had been in places like Detroit and Philadelphia. To quote Clint Eastwood, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
But the capitalist quest for more, more, more killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Ted and Kevin increasingly clashed on programming, and the final straw was a free concert we sponsored on the beach in Asbury Park, New Jersey. We’d been doing these shows for years, with artists like the Asbury Jukes, the Hooters, and Brian Setzer. Traditionally held on Memorial Day weekend, they often drew a hundred thousand people for a day of sun and rock and roll. The whole staff came down for the weekend, but Ted got there late and left early, sunning himself with his shirt off while his department heads handled the jumbled scene. Backstage at a rock show is always controlled chaos, and minor problems erupt by the minute. It was nothing we couldn’t handle,
but Kevin Smith seemed appalled by Ted’s apparent lack of concern. Right after that weekend, he announced that Ted would be leaving the position to pursue other opportunities. Perhaps the die had already been cast, but Asbury seemed to crystallize all that separated the two men.
Although it was Utz’s Waterloo, Asbury Park was one of our best promotions. Others were not so successful. At a U2 concert in the New Jersey Meadowlands, we tied in with the Virgin Atlantic Lightship to do a typical radio contest, asking listeners to make up banners with the station’s call letters, the airline logo, and the band’s name. The blimp would fly over the concert grounds, spot the biggest and best banners from the air, and then radio down to a ground crew who would reward the winning entries. The airship only had room for the pilot and one passenger, and Marty Martinez was selected to take the flight and judge the contest. Marty was never a big fan of flying, and in the hour prior to the trip downed a six-pack of beer and a couple of large sodas. While aloft he asked the pilot where the facilities were.
“You mean you didn’t bring an engineer’s cup?” the pilot asked.
“What the hell is an engineer’s cup?”
The pilot explained that since the blimp had no bathroom, male fliers were told to bring along a plastic bottle in which to relieve themselves. Since Martinez had no cup and a powerful need to expel all this liquid, he asked what the alternatives were. The pilot explained that although it was frowned upon, fliers in such a dire predicament had to lean out of the cupola and do their business over the side. As Martinez unzipped his fly, the pilot bade him wait and said that because of wind currents, he would have to use the opposite side of the cab lest he drench them both with a wet surprise. As he maneuvered the blimp around, he nodded to go ahead to Martinez, who proceeded to empty his bladder of seventy-two ounces of beer and thirty-two ounces of Coke on the concertgoers below, who were anxiously looking skyward in hopes of winning the contest.
Unfortunately, this act symbolizes how the station treated its listeners in its waning years. I hate death scenes in movies and want them to be over fast. So forgive me if I spare you some of the gory details of the endgame. Pat St. John became program director. Smith had casually tossed the position my way, but taking it would mean giving up my sports-talk career and I wasn’t about to do that. And even though I had been extended a two-year contract to do mornings, I knew deep down it wasn’t going to work under our self-imposed handicaps. I like to think that maybe I could have changed the course the station took if I’d accepted the PD job, but who knows?
Pat’s reign was a complete catastrophe. He immediately expanded our playlist to include a lot of stuff he’d liked in Detroit that simply had no history in New York. We lost our musical focus and consistency. Our morning jabbering eroded our ratings, and I was told by the end of the year that my stint in AM drive would be over soon. I accepted the inevitable and went back to emphasizing music. My last morning ratings book that spring was the highest since the Mark McEwen era. I went back to weekends, fill-ins, and WFAN.
My replacement was Pat “Paraquat” Kelley, an agreeable sort who’d been Cynthia Fox’s hippie morning-show sidekick at KMET. He told everyone he thought he was being hired to reprise the role he’d played in Los Angeles and was shocked to discover that he was supposed to be the main host. In truth, he’d sold management a bill of goods with his considerable powers of persuasion and they never actually heard a tape of his work. What were they thinking? His musical knowledge was extremely limited and he knew nothing about New York. He did a directionless talky program and his ratings declined within two books to half of what they had been when I left. He was fired after seven months.
The overall ratings were now spinning downward at an alarming rate. Pat St. John took over the morning show, Dennis Elsas returned to full-time work in the middays, and Ted Edwards was hired to replace Pat as PD. I took a liking to Edwards initially, but he proved to be another disadvantageous choice. In July of 1995, he changed the format of the station to some kind of alternative mishmash, while retaining all the full-time jocks at Smith’s behest. When the first monthly trends showed that we’d lost a third of our audience, he panicked and restored half of the classic rock library. Now we were pleasing nobody and the numbers reflected that.
After the switch, I had lunch with Edwards. He started by saying that at the meeting when the format change was announced, everyone had clapped and said “it was about time,” except me. He wanted to know why.
I took a risk and decided to be honest. “Ted,” I told him, “I’ve been here for twenty-five years. I’ve done mornings. I’ve been program director. I’ve done overnights. I’ve played every kind of music from Mozart to Nirvana. I’m not programming the station anymore, and I’m sure you’re not interested in my second guesses on all the mistakes that have been made. You’ve done research. You think you know the market and what’s out there for us. I’ll support whatever decisions you make. I just work here. I don’t know if this alternative idea will work. Maybe it will. And I’ll sell it on the air like a professional, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make it work. But I can’t be a phony about this like the rest of the staff.”
“Now wait a minute,” he interrupted. “The rest of the staff is genuinely enthused about this. They’re going into this with great excitement and they believe it will work. They’ve told me so.”
“Look, Ted. I like you. But I’ve known all these people for a long time. If you told them you were going to play Lithuanian folk songs and polka music, they’d tell you how brilliant you were. Look through their bullshit. As long as they have jobs, they’ll tell you whatever you want to hear.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Believe what you like. But judge it by what you hear coming out of the speakers, not what they tell you to your face. And trust me, I’m not going around sowing dissension. But they all tell me privately that they have their doubts. Whatever. You’ve got to get performance out of them. That’s all that counts.”
“I expect you to be enthused. If you can’t be, then I don’t know if you should be on the team.”
“That’s your call. Like I said, on the air, I’ll give you what you want. I do think a lot of this music is really good and I’ll be supportive publicly, despite my misgivings.”
After the lunch, I had very ambivalent feelings. I felt liberated by finally telling Edwards the unvarnished truth about what I thought. But the truth wasn’t so pleasant for me to face. I basically was repeating, “What’s the figure? Frank Sinatra, Frank Zappa. What’s the figure?” It was a far cry from my first days at the station when I passionately believed in everything I said and played. But if I had no say in the music, how could I be expected to feel passionately about all of it? That’s an impossible task, and we all were faking it now. It was a gold-lined coffin. The money was still good, and there was always the hope that someday, the right person would return to make the station work again. But I also realized that my little dialogue with Edwards could mean the end of my days at WNEW-FM. I think Kevin Smith talked him out of canning me and saved my job. Two weeks later, I was demoted to weekend overnights.
Whether the alternative format ever had a chance with the old AOR jocks will never be known. They never gave it a real chance before retreating. At around this time, WBCN was faced with the same dilemma. Oedipus was still program director, but WBCN had straddled the line between classic and alternative too long. When the alternative trend started in the early nineties, he tried to play it both ways. A competitor, WZLX, came in and instantly branded themselves as “classic rock.” And ZLX’s timing proved fortuitous as Michael Harrison had just sold his AM news/talk station and was available to come in and program. Another station declared themselves the alternative headquarters in Boston, and for the first time in a decade, WBCN was squeezed on both sides and started to leak oil. Ratings began to erode and Karmazin pressured Oedipus to stake out a clear direction. In his view, they’d blown their chance to grab the classic-rock mantle
and needed an easily identifiable handle.
Harrison imported his old friend Alan Colmes, late of WNBC in New York, to do mornings at ZLX and Colmes’s brand of quirky humor initially didn’t play well in New England. Harrison was convinced that he could build the show into a major force if given time, but the owners were pressuring him to make a change. Michael had been at WZLX less than a year when he finally admitted to himself that he just couldn’t work in a corporate environment. He couldn’t stand the politics and backstabbing that detracted from the pursuit of his larger goals. Tired of the grind, he resigned rather than fire his friend. He had foreseen the talk-radio revolution and quickly slid back into publishing industry info with a new magazine called Talkers. He was finally his own boss again, but in the meantime had established WZLX as the classic rock station.
As it turned out, WBCN had gotten on the alternative bandwagon early enough, and had now built some credibility, not to mention a familiarity with that music. They slowly converted to what is known as “active” rock. This encompassed the few classic bands that retained fans among the younger audience (like Led Zeppelin) while concentrating on new and harder-edged alternative and metal. Gradually, they began to replace some of their more traditional jocks with younger ones who had grown up with grunge and heavy metal. In the meantime, the FCC relaxed its rules on station ownership and Infinity was able to increase their holdings. Impressed with the success of the classic-rock WZLX, Karmazin simply bought it.
Laquidara was still doing mornings on WBCN and was a legitimate fan of the new music, playing quite a bit of it on his show. Since Charles still had good ratings, Boston was the only Infinity-owned FM station in a major market that didn’t feature Howard Stern in the morning. His program was tape-delayed and played at night. But this chafed at Stern’s ego so Tony Berendini, the station manager, approached Laquidara with a choice. Karmazin wanted Stern on WBCN in the morning and, as they were flipping to be completely alternative anyway, would Charles consider taking his show, lock, stock, and big mattress, to WZLX? Although he’d remained young and adventurous in his musical tastes, his audience hadn’t and most of them had already migrated to the classic rocker.