FM (33 page)

He was hired by CBS television to be the jolly weatherman on their new network morning show, even though his weather background consisted of reading ten-second reports off the wire. Al Roker was the obvious role model, but Mark’s comedy experience and friendly persona were a natural for morning television. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, until Kakoyiannis approached me about producing a sports show for WNEW-AM. As it turned out, I wound up hosting
The Sports Connection
on that station, which led to my current career path. But as events would curiously transpire, my next air work was on WNEW-FM.

McEwen and I had no idea that Charlie Kendall himself was on thin ice. His drinking and cocaine use had gotten worse as his unhappiness at WNEW grew, and it caused mood swings that made him difficult to work with. He had resigned time and again in battles with Kakoyiannis about control. Mike had resisted moving Dave Herman to middays, and was now battling Charlie on his plan to return him to mornings to succeed Mark and me.

Mike felt the need to be in complete control of what went over the air. He told Charlie that as a rookie general manager, he’d made the mistake of not riding herd closely enough on me when I was program director, and he wasn’t about to make the same error. He also felt that Charlie could be a bit of a loose cannon, and needed to be reined in at times to save him from himself. Mike had a tight relationship with our promotions director, Rose Polidoro, and if Rose wanted a campaign on the air over Charlie’s objections, Rose generally won out. Mike had also usurped Charlie’s authority by hiring Carol Miller without Kendall’s knowledge or approval. It was presented as a fait accompli and Charlie had to bite his tongue and live with it. He was forced to fire Meg Griffin and replace her with Carol. Jeff Pollack would soon replace Abrams as consultant and his advice about retooling the station by firing everyone was reaching some of the proper ears within the company.

Finally, not two weeks after we’d been sacked, Kendall’s frustrations built to the point where he’d had enough. He typed a lengthy, strongly worded memo to his bosses, detailing his unhappiness with Mike’s constant undermining of his authority. He spelled out the conditions under which he would stay on, and stated unequivocally that if those conditions weren’t met, he would resign immediately.

Before submitting the memo to Kakoyiannis, he showed it to Muni. Scott perused it and said, “Why don’t you just put a gun to your head now, Fats. It’ll be less messy.”

He showed it to his production manager, who also urged him to withhold the memo. But his wife knew the toll the constant grief was causing her husband and favored the power play. She was convinced that Charlie was in the right and that Mike would cave in to his demands. Kendall agreed, and never seriously considered the possibility that he was overplaying his hand. So Charlie submitted his Magna Carta and within minutes was called in Kakoyiannis’s office.

“Charlie, I’m going to pretend this never happened. I’m going to tear this memo up. Now let’s sit down like men and reach some kind of understanding. I don’t want to lose you, but I can’t accept this.” This showed progress for Mike, who had reacted impulsively to inflammatory memos in the past.

Buoyed by his wife’s support and his own sense of righteousness, Kendall believed that if he stood firm, Mike would have to agree to his ultimatum. “No, Mike,” he said defiantly. “The memo stands.”

Two days later, Kakoyiannis sent for him again and accepted his resignation. Mark Chernoff was elevated to program director. Dave Herman returned to do mornings, but was unable to stop the Howard Stern onslaught. Chernoff came to see me in my
Sports Connection
office, shortly after he’d gotten the job of his dreams.

“I didn’t agree with Charlie’s decision to fire you guys,” he said. “I’m not sure this would have been the morning show I would have gone with, but I thought you deserved more time. In any case, it’s too late now, but I think you’re a good jock and I want to keep you active here. Can you work next Saturday afternoon? I’m stuck. I really need you.”

Barely a month after I was fired, I was back on the air, albeit as the lowliest fill-in man, instead of a popular and highly paid morning cohost. But under Chernoff’s more gentle guidance, the station rose to new heights, achieving a high-water mark of 4.4 in the 12+ share. Mark continued Charlie’s format but with a lighter touch, loosening the musical restrictions just a bit and adding songs that he knew had been popular in New York before Charlie’s arrival. He softened the sound by taking a little of the harder-edge songs out of the rotation, on the belief that they encouraged teens at the expense of our older audience. He wasn’t the pushover some expected him to be, showing surprising toughness when the station’s interests were involved. He solidified what was to become the golden era for WNEW-FM, in terms of ratings and revenue. But a series of business transactions having nothing to do with good radio pushed him into the waiting arms of the competition—and Mel Karmazin.

The Long and Winding Road

Ironically, the seeds for WNEW-FM’s ultimate destruction were sown as it reached the height of its ratings popularity. It took years for the vine to finally wither and yield no more fruit, but for KMET, the end came with shocking suddenness.

George Harris, Charlie Kendall’s successor at WMMR in Philadelphia, was brought in to fix KMET after Harrison resigned and lasted only a few months. There was no chemistry among Harris, Howard Bloom, and Lee Abrams. Frank Cody was next and was out within a year. Larry Bruce was last in the string. Barely a year from the time Harrison departed, the station’s ratings sank back to a one share and they flipped formats, becoming “The Wave,” a smooth-jazz station. One of the first triple-Z jazz outlets, they changed their call letters to KTWV and hired Harrison’s
Goodphone
assistant Christine Brodie to program it, where she remains to this day. It has been a modest success, but never achieved the ratings it had in the early eighties.

Harrison moved back to the East Coast and bought his own talk station in Springfield, Massachusetts. He did the morning show, served as general manager, sales manager, and almost everything else. Caught in the crossfire after the changeover at KMET, Howard Bloom was dismissed.

Metropolitan Radio, as many had predicted, was a fool’s errand. Carl Brazell had known that he faced an uphill climb, but believed that he and his other general managers were up to the task. Was it altruism, sentimentality, or shrewd business acumen that had caused John Kluge to sell his life’s work to Brazell and company?

It was probably a combination of the three. He undoubtedly wanted the company he had formed to remain in good hands, staying true to the principles that had guided him in amassing an enormous personal fortune. This was not the prime consideration, however. By giving his general managers financing and only forty-eight hours to respond to his offer, he executed a cagey business deal. He left radio and television completely for the nascent cellular-technology business. I don’t have to tell you how that worked out.

These were the go-go eighties. It was a time when you could buy a home for three hundred thousand, live in it for a year, and sell it for four hundred. Wall Street was creating new millionaires daily. No one saw an end even remotely in sight. So when the numbers at Metropolitan didn’t add up—when you leveraged $285 million with the only hopes of payback coming if your gross doubled in two years—it wasn’t blocked by more conservative heads. The financiers at Morgan Stanley figured that if Brazell and company couldn’t hack it, they’d sell at a profit to someone who could.

One by one, Metropolitan spun off stations until only three remained—WMMR, KMET, and WNEW-FM. By then, they were grateful to find an angel to bail them out of their fiscal condition, and that company was Legacy, which was investing heavily in what Karmazin famously called “oceanfront properties.” In New York, that meant WNEW-FM, a stable AOR with an impeccable reputation and solid management in place. Ratings had jumped to a 4.4 share under Chernoff as the competition struggled to find an identity. But whereas Brazell was a veteran radio man who profited by the sale after an honest attempt to run the group, the owners of Legacy had a track record of buying and holding short term, and then selling at an immense profit.

This hadn’t been possible in the past. With Reagan’s policy of deregulation, the FCC had relaxed its rules on station ownership. Previously, the government viewed broadcasting as a public trust and wanted stability. When a license was applied for, they sought proof of sufficient capital. They wanted to know that their licensees would operate their businesses for at least three years in a responsible manner in the public interest. But now broadcasting was looked upon as just another business, with the stations a mere commodity. If leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers worked for Gordon Gekko, it was good enough for radio. The bankers were in charge and FCC approval was merely of the rubber-stamp variety. As long as Wall Street ratified the deal, the FCC was assuaged and gave transactions only a perfunctory look.

It was at around this time that Kid Leo decided to leave WMMS in Cleveland after a sixteen-year run. Malrite had a national program director, and every decision Leo made was being questioned, down to the level of what singles they decided to add. There were so many layers of corporate management that radio just wasn’t fun anymore for this child of free form who loved music. He resigned to take a position with CBS Records that allowed him to work directly with artists.

Mark Chernoff initially wasn’t too concerned about new ownership. The intelligent thing to do would have been to leave well enough alone. With ratings and profits at an all-time high, why upset the big apple cart? But Legacy wanted instant results so that their bottom line would look good to potential suitors. That meant using their own people rather than Metropolitan’s and their hastily made decisions started a snowball rolling that would turn into an unstoppable avalanche.

The first ghastly move was to bring in a general manager from Rochester’s WCMF named Pete Coughlin. Under his leadership, the station in upstate New York had shares in the mid-teens and dominated the AOR market. This was impressive unless one looked further and discovered that when Coughlin had taken over the station, it had numbers in the mid-twenties. He had spent his childhood in the metropolitan area, so it was assumed he understood the market. This assumption allows that when a ten-year-old leaves New York for the hinterlands, he takes with him a complete understanding of the media in the tristate area. Sound business reasoning, to be sure. Immediately upon joining WNEW-FM, he wanted to tear the place apart.

Actually, he planned to wreak havoc well before he started. Although the Legacy takeover wouldn’t actually take place until after the first of the year in 1989, Coughlin called Chernoff and asked him to brunch before the holidays. At the meal, he made it clear to the young programmer that WNEW’s current ratings were unacceptable, despite the fact they were at an all-time high. Chernoff gently tried to tell him that New York City wasn’t Rochester and that rock stations could never aspire to double-digit numbers. Coughlin took this as defeatist talk. He then proceeded to tell Chernoff that every jock on the station was either too old or too weak to continue, and that he wanted to replace the entire air staff. The music needed extensive pruning as well. And if Mark was unwilling to go along with his directives, he’d be looking for a job along with the rest of the staff.

The brunch had a dampening effect on the holiday season for Chernoff. There was no way he would be able to work with this man in the long run, but he held out the slight hope that someone higher up at the new company would see Coughlin’s agenda as destructive. But at around that time, Legacy co-owner Carl Hirsch visited the station and it fell to Mark to show him around. While touring the offices, Hirsch asked Chernoff about how he felt about dealing with consultants. Treading lightly with his soon-to-be boss, he said that the program director should be the ultimate authority for what went over the air, but that a consultant’s input could be helpful in certain areas. Hirsch then asked about specific people and Chernoff was either mildly critical or noncommittal. Then the name Jeff Pollack came up.

“There’s a guy who’s really out of touch,” Chernoff began, and then detailed his negative feelings about Pollack’s history of slash-and-burn tactics at stations he had consulted.

“That’s too bad,” replied Hirsch, who then went on to tell Mark how close he was with Pollack, how they’d been neighbors in California.

It soon became clear who was pulling the strings. Coughlin had been Pollack’s recommendation—a weak man he could manipulate. All of Coughlin’s critical comments about the air staff and the music were the same ones he’d heard from Pollack in one form or another over the years. Trouble ahead, trouble behind.

Muni was an obvious target. Approaching sixty, he didn’t fit the stereotype of the young, hip AOR jock. His health had improved since he’d given up drinking, and his voice was still the most distinctive New York had ever heard.

A quick story about the power of Muni’s pipes. I had built a house on the shore in Toms River, New Jersey, and invited Scott over to watch some football. I’d adopted a golden retriever named Lindsay several months before, but although she was generally well behaved, she had one vexing habit—she wouldn’t come when called. She had broken loose from her leash several times, and finding her was an annoying hour-long exercise of cat and mouse until we could trick her into coming close enough to be captured. Dog treats, cajoling, stern warnings—nothing seemed to work when she wanted to play her games. She once got free and swam out to chase some ducks, almost drowning when she realized that she was too far out in the bay for her exhausted legs to power her back ashore. Luckily, a friend and I borrowed a paddle boat and rescued her before she went under.

During halftime of one of the football games, Muni excused himself to go out for a smoke, the one vice he continues to cosset. He asked if he could take the dog with him as he strolled along the shore. As they began their walk, Lindsay saw a squirrel and tugged at the leash, easily breaking Muni’s light grasp. She took off in hot pursuit, but Scottso immediately yelled, “Dog! Stop!”

The disobedient and startled Lindsay halted in her tracks and waited, shoulders bowed, until Muni reattached the leash. We’ve tried the same approach many times thereafter, but it doesn’t work, even when we imitate Scott’s throaty growl.

Muni’s numbers were solid, but afternoon AOR jocks in other markets had stronger ones. Plus, Muni was still the most powerful man at the station and a potential roadblock to any changes Legacy wished to make.

The apparent disregard for Muni highlights a problem that managers have made for decades and continue to make. When coming into a station, it is common for a new program director or general manager to listen to the current air staff and evaluate them based strictly on what they sound like at that given moment. But so much of a jock’s popularity is based on a vast reservoir of goodwill built up over years. In Muni’s case, some listeners went back with him to WABC in the early sixties. His Beatles connections still held a warm place in their hearts. Those who knew him only from WNEW recalled his classic interviews with Elton John, the Who, the Grateful Dead, et cetera. Most saw him as an avuncular presence who had experienced musical times considered almost mythological. Muni had attained larger-than-life status and reverence. His name was instantly recognizable and identifiable with the station, To many, he
was
WNEW-FM.

Objectively, were there other jocks who did better interviews? Almost everyone did, but most didn’t have the respect of the rock community that Muni garnered, so he could still score exclusives where others couldn’t. His long-term relationship with artists allowed him a kinship with many of them that no one else had. While they were both still drinking, Muni conducted his most notorious interview with Elton John. Elton liked to play DJ and, with his encyclopedic musical knowledge and keen sense of humor, probably would have been a good one. Scott would let him take over the show on occasion and, this time, John was reading a live commercial for the Pink Pussycat Boutique, a shop that sold sexual paraphernalia. WNEW’s sales department had a difficult time convincing the emporium’s owners that it was possible to craft a commercial that could sell their products and yet remain appropriate for airing at a time when the FCC’s restrictions on salacious material were much more vigorously enforced than they are today. The carefully worded live copy intimated much about the sensual pleasures awaiting the customers of the Greenwich Village shop, but was couched in vague terms with harmless double entendres to please the station’s legal division. In bold letters on the top of the page was a clear instruction: “Read exactly as written, NO AD-LIBBING!!!!”

This presented a challenge for Elton John, who was riding a crest of popularity, with record sales in the millions and sold-out concerts throughout America. If he had thought at all about the worst-case scenario, what could happen? Would his old friend Scott Muni ban him from the station? Refuse to play his records? Certainly such a penalty might affect his sales to a minimal degree, but the ensuing publicity could only enhance his naughty reputation. John had recently declared his bisexuality in a
Rolling Stone
interview, so what did he have to lose?

“Do you like to rim your boyfriend?”

Pete Larkin, WNEW-FM’s production director at the time, immediately stopped leafing through a pile of discarded albums in the music library and bolted for the on-air studio, incredulous at what he’d heard through his radio speakers. Through the double layer of soundproof glass, he saw Elton John, obviously feeling no pain from the effects of his champagne of choice, Dom Pérignon. He’d toted three magnums with him on his annual visit to the Scott Muni show, and was now deeply denting the second bottle as he spoke into the guest mic.

“Or do you just like to eat pussy?”

Larkin sprinted to the professional model TEAC reel-to-reel tape machine that was chronicling the events of the day’s broadcast. He tore off a sliver of paper to insert into the ten-inch rolling reels to mark the spot of the infraction, knowing that he’d be called upon many times to document what Elton had said.

“So if you’re the world’s biggest faggot, or you just like to, you know, fuck, visit the Pink Pussycat Boutique. And now here’s my latest record.”

Muni had turned purple at this point, restraining the impulse to burst out laughing. WNEW-FM’s license survived the incident.

The annual Elton John visits changed in tone after Muni gave up drinking. Elton confided that he had gone through a twelve-step program as well and now whenever they meet, John whispers into Muni’s ear, “Sober for ten years now, Scott. One day at a time.” When Elton told him that he was getting married, Muni exclaimed, “C’mon, Elton. You? We both know you’re not serious.”