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Tuesday, May 9, 2000
Macho radio
lives on the edge
Sometimes it seems anything goes for young male
listeners
Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News
Jeff Deminski, left, and Bill Doyle
have quadrupled WKRK-FM's (97.1) audience
in the afternoon drivetime slot with
a style of humor aimed at 18- to 34-year-old
men. "I think your average guy
is a lot smarter than radio stations
give them credit for," Deminski
says.
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By Tim Kiska / The Detroit News
It's a Thursday afternoon, thousands of commuters
are driving home, and WKRK-FM's Bill Doyle --
half of the Deminski & Doyle team that broadcasts
between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. -- has a question.
He's about to have a vasectomy,
and he wants to know what to expect in the way
of pain, suffering and after-effects.
And so the guys call up: "Nothing
to it," says one caller from Shelby Township.
Others discuss in great detail the most intimate
aspects of their sex life.
It's testosterone radio --
FM talk in the business -- and it's catching
on in Detroit, New York and Dallas, particularly
in the morning and afternoon drive-time periods.
Young males 18 to 34 are an especially valuable
commodity for advertisers, and stations will
do virtually anything to grab their attention.
While young men are the target audience, the
shows are airing at a time when school children
can listen in, too, which has some parents concerned.
Other examples:
* WRIF-FM's (101.1) morning
drive-time hosts Drew Lane and Mike Clark routinely
get into edgy material. (For instance, they
do a routine with a character by the name of
Mr. Methane, who is unusually flatulent.) Their
5:30-10 a.m. weekday show was the second-highest
rated morning show on Detroit radio during the
January-March period, according to Arbitron
Co. The duo, which has been on the air for eight
years, routinely places among the top three
shows in Detroit.
* All-sports WDFN-AM (1130-AM)
also pushes the line on a regular basis. The
morning team once discussed which of the three
female Friends stars was -- to put it most politely
-- most appealing. And one of the morning hosts
once asked women to call in with pet names for
their breasts.
* Howard Stern. WKRK-FM brought
the New York shock jock's syndicated morning
show to Detroit via satellite several years
ago. Stern is known for such outrageous antics
as asking female guests to show him their breasts.
While he says he takes a hard line about youngsters
not listening to his show, he sent a Long Island
youngster to his prom with an X-rated film star.
Among the radio stations in
other major cities to pick up on the trend,
New York's WNEW went FM talk last summer and
Dallas' KYNG-FM followed last month. Both, like
WKRK, are owned by CBS. And the switch to FM
Talk in Dallas was at least partially inspired
by Deminski & Doyle's success, according
to WKRK officials.
Since Jeff Deminski and Bill
Doyle came to WKRK (97.1) from Trenton, N.J.,
last year, they have quadrupled the station's
audience in their time period, according to
Arbitron, boosting the number of people 25 to
54 listening at any time between 3 p.m. and
7 p.m. from 3,400 to 13,200. And among young
males, the audience has more than doubled. Their
show is fourth among men 18 to 34.
Although the station still
has a long way to go -- placing 17th overall
in the 25-54 audience during afternoon drive
time -- they weren't even on the map a year
ago.
Deminski says although the
duo can get into touchy territory, they know
when to back off the edgy material.
"We can do the beer and
fart jokes as well as anyone," Deminski
says. "But we try to give guys more credit
that most radio stations give them. Guys are
thinking about more than sports, sex and politics.
I think too much of radio insults guys in general.
Guys are treated like lowland gorillas. I think
your average guy is a lot smarter than radio
stations give them credit for."
That attitude has grabbed
plenty of young male listeners, and female listeners,
as well.
Tara Lipinsky, a 29-year old
Walled Lake resident, is one of those female
listeners.
"It's intellectual humor,"
Lipinsky says. "And when they do get close
to the edge, it is usually nothing that offends
me."
Adds Eric Braun, 28, of Birmingham:
"What I like about them is that they're
exploring all sorts of different things, and
there's always a local angle. They always get
the listener involved. That tells me they care
about what people think."
Over at sports-radio WDFN-AM,
morning host and operations director Gregg Henson
says the problem is the pressure to attract
male listeners.
"A lot of guys are very
busy," says Henson, "so you've got
to grab them by the lapels and tell them, 'Hey,
we're here.' "
The way Henson explains it,
guys like crude humor -- but in small doses.
"We try to appeal to
every aspect of the male personality. Guys can
be funny, mean, sensitive and nice. So we try
to be all of those things in a given day. People
will listen to borderline material -- if it's
funny.
"Typically," he
adds, "we aren't dirty for the sake of
being dirty. We'll push the line, find out where
it goes, then back up. We don't want to be crude,
but sometimes we can't help it."
The testosterone trend is
driving some people crazy.
"I think the idea of
sports radio is a wonderful idea, and I could
listen all the time," says Wes Baldwin,
a 40-year-old marriage and grief counselor from
Grosse Pointe Farms, and father to an 11-year-old
son. "But they (WDFN-AM) have succumbed
to what I call trash radio. They're not talking
about sports. They've talking about sexuality.
In a lot of ways, it degrades women. And I don't
want my 11-year-old son hearing it. I'm raising
him to respect women, and then I hear these
guys talking about a female athlete's sex life.
I don't want to hear it. And I don't want my
son hearing it, either.
"The sad thing is they
don't have to do it," Baldwin says. "I
think that, in too many respects, it shows we
have lost self-respect for ourselves when they
get into that stuff."
So what's a parent to do?
Former Federal Communications
Commissioner Jim Quello, who held a seat on
the commission for 23 1/2 years and led a fight
to have Howard Stern's employers fined $1.7
million, thinks sending the FCC tapes of offending
broadcasts might help.
"Look, I have as raunchy
a sense of humor as anybody," says Quello,
"but there are some things that shouldn't
be on the radio. If you send the FCC's enforcement
division a tape, they're almost forced to do
something about it."
Teresa
Tomeo, a longtime Detroit radio
and TV newswoman, says "none of this is
going to stop until somebody -- like the FCC
-- steps in and puts a stop to it." She,
too, recommends contacting the FCC.
Longtime Detroit morning host
Jim Johnson, of WCSX-FM (94.7), believes the
marketplace itself could fix the trend because
this type of humor can hurt as well as help
a radio show.
Johnson says during the 1970s
and 1980s, his show did well in the ratings
with occasional locker-room humor. Now, though,
"We've gone in the direction of being available
to everyone. You may want to appeal to guys,
sure. But a guy may have the family in the car,
the boss may be sitting there in a car-pool
situation. So if you cross the line, it's embarrassing
to the listener who may be listening with somebody
else.
"There are times when
we come close (to pushing the envelope). But
we try to watch it," Johnson says. "The
other thing is you want to be accessible to
people listening in the workplace. If you go
too far over the edge, no work place is going
to put you on."
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