Straight From the Mouth

and we talked too much and we were not funny. By chance the book came out the next day and we were number one against a huge competitor that we had knocked out and suddenly we were geniuses. We had an enormous book we had shares well into the 30's and it was a huge confirmation that we were not as bad as we thought. Then out of no where a few weeks later we got a phone call from I think it was Birmingham, Alabama. The guy said I was wondering if you guys would consider moving here? We didn't even have a tape. I thought 'Where did this guy hear of us? In the course of the next two or three days we got about 20 phone calls. We found out much later what had happened. Dwight Douglas (then consultant with Kent Burkhart) used to have a seminar where he would ask you to bring tapes of people in your market that you wanted to get rid of. It turned out that a guy up there wanted us out of the market and he made a tape of our show and played it at the seminar and like I said, about 20 of the people there called us up out of no where. So, I whipped a tape together and sent it to various people. As it happened my vacation was the following week so I went to Indianapolis because it was the closest place to where we were living. Bob flew down and we talked to these guys and they hired us and that was it.

What year was this?

T: 1983.

Did it take long for the show to catch on?

T: Yeah it did. When we came down, the station was involved in a promotion in which they had to play five in a row for you to win $5000. It was hard to do a morning show with all that music, it is laughable now because we have not played music in a decade, except for our own stuff, we just talk. To make an impact anytime, when you go into a new city depending on what you are up against and what kind of promotional stuff is being done for you, it takes awhile for people to change their listening habits. We fight that to this day, most people listen to what they listen to and to get them to change the dial is real tough. When we first got here we were out in the streets every night and doing stuff and we finally convinced them that it was not doing us any good to be out until midnight or until two in the morning doing bar gigs and then getting up at six and trying to be funny. We had to really focus on doing the show. I remember those were the days of the Birch Ratings. Our experience was they were sort of a year ahead of the curve, they seemed to be

numbers and eventually it all just kicked in and we started having absurdly large numbers.

Is it fair to say that you've dominated in Louisville for over 20 years?

T: Yes I think we have been number one in our key demo's forever, but we have also been number one in the morning as long as I can remember.

How have you managed to stay funny and successful that long?

T: This is like asking people how you lose weight, you tell them diet and exercise and they go 'But it's boring! We keep it funny by working hard and we have a great group of people that we work with. And we try to keep it as fresh as we can. Let me give you and example in the last been a tremendous success for us and I hope for them.

I would be remiss if I didn't ask about your Christmas CD's. You were in the forefront here and with some 30 CD's under your belt, haven't you raised something like 4.5 million dollars?

T: Yes something like that, it's several million.

Any tips that you'd like to pass on?

T: To do a Christmas CD you really have to think about it every day. You have to take notes and figure out what you are going to do. Because of the success of our CD's, I have the advantage actually owning a recording studio. We record stuff on a weekly basis and it's mostly our stuff, our band. My suggestion is to do as much original stuff as you can and you really have to be up and running to get the CD's out in between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

When do you start pulling material that you want to use for that?

T: Right now. This year we did a free DVD with our CD when you purchase it on our web site. We have a camera now running in the studio so we have just that much more stuff the first dvd was called "The Bottom Fell Out of the behind-the-scenes and out takes from the commercials. In the Classic Rock area a lot of CD's now come with a free DVD. I did not want to get on board that but we were extremely successful for us.

You're show's always been a haven for great comedians. Who makes you laugh the most?

T: It's hard to pick out one. Heywood Banks, Rodney Carrington. I think Tim Wilson is one of the most energetic and great performers out there. Sean Morey is great. One of the things I've always found is a lot of times the best comedians are the guys you haven't heard of because they have to work it. Sometimes these guys who get a little more fame can't seem to turn it on as bright as they used to.

What do you make of the whole indecency issue?

T: It's such a grey area, it's making everyone's job kind of difficult. We've all had to adjust. The problem is if we do a piece and get fined, it's after the fact. We can't take a song and send it to the FCC and ask "Is this okay?" We have to do it on-air, and then if they make a judgement later it could be our careers. We're doing live conversations with comedians and people on the telephone. During the span of a 7-second delay we have to decide if something is actionable. The FCC has a year!

I want you to leave us with a phoner that every show out there would be crazy not to do.

T: This one was fascinating to me and the response was unbelievable. I'll try to make it brief. The genesis comes from conservative writer William F. Buckley. He was telling the story of boating in the Colorado river when the boat he's in, capsizes. As he was hurdling down the rocky rapids -- a time most others would be thinking of death -- all he could think about was a magazine article he was writing on pornography. He remembers he has a box of porno magazines in his closet and he's concerned he would die and his wife would find them and think he's some kind of pervert. We started taking phone calls on 'What is in your closet right now that if you dropped dead would be troublesome?' We had some of the greatest phone calls ever. One guy called and said he found a 16mm film in a closet which turned out to be a porno film of his mother-in-law that she had made in the '60's.

Thanks for that and for the interview. We'll cut it off here so everyone can quickly head for their closets.