Pouting radio boremeister Adam Carolla‘s sickout last week from his morning radio show heard in Los Angeles and other markets on the west coast has backfired as his professional cohost Danny Bonaduce has been cut loose from the second banana role and elevated to own afternoon radio show.
Bonaduce’s forced entry onto the Carolla team a year ago led to blossoming ratings, new energy and unprecedented relevance for the struggling monotonous replacement for Howard Stern’s broadcast. But despite the intelligence and wit Bonaduce brought to the proceedings, Carolla’s jealousy has been evident on air in recent months, especially after Bonaduce began to receive rave reviews for his raw-nerved honesty in wake of his divorce, new television deals and public controversy that only raised his own profile while dragging the show along behind him. Last week, Carolla "called in sick," hoping to force his bosses to return creative control and to boost his salary, as they had rewarded Bonaduce.
As a result, the CBS Radio suits showed they’ve been watching this space, and have done what we’d asked them to do in October– they’ve given Bonaduce his own afternoon show, stealing an hour from the mirthless laughfest of Frosty, Heidi and Frank.
With word that radio droner Adam Carolla has wrested– and wrestled– back control of his morning Los Angeles radio show, Carolla’s core group of male fans is literally giddy with a homoerotic glee not seen since the N’Sync farewell tour.
Fan boys and dumb jocks alike have been spreading their wet tears and slobber across the new UN-Official Adam Carolla Show Message Board that they quickly set up to swap spit in their private he-man woman hater’s club after– as we reported exclusively— CBS Radio suits stupidly shut down the official message board earlier this week because of all the negative comments posted by Carolla boytoys who were worried their hero was about to lose his show to Danny Bonaduce, the former child star and radio veteran who was hired to save the show a year ago.
Bonaduce’s presence in the morning mix is what injected a jolt of real-life vitality that opened it up beyond the small-minded, anti-intellectual, immigrant-hating, woman-fearing, fake macho, blustering blockhead know-it-all hole that Carolla mines– and did indeed raise ratings and make the show a viable, if tail-dragging morning show.
It was Bonaduce, after all, who was most in demand in 2007, with offers to host a show in Chicago, as well as working more television gigs that will earn him millions.
Carolla’s meanspiritness in the past months and his bullying backstabbing of Bonaduce is reflected in the humourless braying of his fanboys, who, as their reaction to these posts can attest, wouldn’t know a joke if it bit them on their cottage cheese asses.
It also bodes ill for Carolla’s radio future. While he managed to move his competition to another timeslot, his survival has more to do with his connections to comedy star Jimmy Kimmel and Kimmel’s consulting deals with the CBS Radio Group than his own prospects. Without Bonaduce, and left to his own devices, the Ace Hole is bound to beat the same dead horses morning after morning, to the approving chuckles of his in-studio mopes and his listless, obedient fifties-style "news girl," and be out on his own ass by next December.
Unfortunately, it’s looking like the joke is on Carolla’s boypen.
