Luke Ford

Here are some highlights from this 2018 book:

* Patrice O’Neal once said that Anthony could “access funny” faster than anyone he’d ever met.

* Jennifer could be considered sexually adventurous. The first time we had intercourse, I had to come home to Carrie and I had the smells of passion all over me: sweat, cum, vaginal juices, and spit along with a spritz of disloyalty. I knew that if Carrie saw me, she would smell that I’d just had sex. I was driving a Baja Bug at the
time, which was having engine problems. I decided to pour gasoline on myself and reach underneath the car to get oil and grit all over me to mask my infidelity. I got home and said, “Son of a bitch! This car broke down again! I finally got it started. Don’t even get near me; I’m a mess.” I was just going to jump in the shower and wash off the gas, oil, and vagina.

* Girls would call up, and we’d tell them to come down to the studio. We did something called the “Blue Tarp Cabaret”—we’d put out a blue tarp, and the girls would get completely naked and we’d throw maple syrup on them. These disgustingly sticky girls, who were hot as shit, would just be smashing each other with cakes and assorted pastries. We’d get the food products from local bakeries and advertise these bakeries like a real plug: “These cakes were supplied by Mom and Pop’s Pastries.” It was great.

* We never said we were married or had girlfriends, which pissed my wife off terribly. I didn’t want to be a married guy on a young rock station. So, whenever we went out to do these station appearances, there were constantly girls around us.

* This [program director] Dave Douglas guy was always just a bug up our asses. He once said, “You know what you should do? Take a picture of who you envision as an audience member. Who do you picture? Find a magazine with a picture of someone who resembles this person you have in mind and put that picture in front of you on your mixing board. So when you’re talking into the mic, you get an image of who you’re talking to.”

We went on the air, and we just started talking about the meeting and how what he’d said was so ludicrous and idiotic. It was. Then we found a Swank magazine and cut out pictures of a woman squatting and posted the pictures. “Here’s how we picture our audience: a bunch of filthy cunts.”

* We knew how to stretch shit out where we could and just barely squeak past FCC rules. We would use the first letter of curse words. I’d “F” her in the “A” and wipe my “D” on her curtains.

* We then said someone else had been killed with the mayor in his car. “Just getting this news: the passenger in the mayor’s car, who was also killed, was a young Haitian boy.” We wanted to lead up to the fact that he had been having sex in the car with this young Haitian boy while driving and the car had spun out of control.

* I didn’t want to go home to my wife. We would drink and get hammered. They were the ones who could bring the girls up to the studio. Once again, no supervision. This workplace was like a frat house with constant drinking, smoking, drugs, and sex. I used to get laid on my desk in my office.

* Penthouse did a big article and photo shoot with us, which was literally a dream come true. I’d been jerking off to that magazine my whole life!

* Our marriage lasted nine years. The only thing that kept me in it that long was that I found out early in the first year of marriage that my wife was part lesbo and wanted to do threesomes with hot chicks.

* [Howard Stern] had a particular family situation of a very private nature. We alluded to it on the air in a very ambiguous way, and it got back to him. He was quite upset.

* We had a point system with certain bonuses. If the guy stuck his dick up her ass, the team was awarded a two-point conversion. The harder the location, the higher the point value. Central Park had a lower point value because it was easier to find a place to bang in than a church, which had the highest point value.

We took calls during the contest, and we got one from chaperone Paul Mecurio. Within a second he was telling us, “We’re here at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and he’s doing a two-point conversion.”

We knew that for listeners to hear he was fucking her in the ass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral was great.

“Really? Paul, what’s going on?” “Well, we’re here by the front door, and he’s pumping her really hard. Oh wait, there’s someone coming over to us.”

Now again, we could have said, “Run!” but we chose to get the play-by-play, asking, “Who’s coming over?” We wanted that dialogue between whoever was coming over and Paul, who was going to attempt to justify this couple’s having anal sex by the front door of the most highly regarded religious landmark in the United States.

“It was one of the security guards from St. Pat’s.” We were now listening to the back-and-forth between Paul and this security guard. The security guy was like, “What is going on here? Why are you two pulling up your pants?” “Oh no. Don’t worry, it’s just a radio contest.”

he kept it going with the security guard in St. Patrick’s up until the police came. Once the cops came, all bets were off; there was no leaving. We were riding this whole thing out with him. We heard everything up until Paul was handcuffed. They arrested Paul and the couple—who, by the way, did get the highest points for one place but sadly didn’t win the contest with their overall score.

NEWS:

NEW YORK – A Virginia couple was arraigned today after they were arrested for allegedly having sex in a vestibule of St. Patrick’s Cathedral while parishioners worshiped nearby.

Loretta Lynn Harper, 35, of Alexandria, and her boyfriend, Brian Florence, 37, of Quantico, were charged with obscenity in the third degree and public lewdness.

Another man, Paul Mercurio, 42, of New York, who allegedly engaged in a live radio commentary on the sex act, also was arraigned on a charge of acting in concert with the couple.

The three were arrested Thursday.

The couple had entered a radio contest of the WNEW afternoon talk program, “Opie and Anthony,” a police spokesman said. As part of the live show, six couples were given a list of 54 different high-risk locations at which to have sex in the city, including St. Patrick’s on Fifth Avenue, and nearby Rockefeller Center.

* Looking back, if there was ever an addiction Opie and I shared, it was that need to constantly top ourselves and make our show the most talked about. We wanted our ratings to always go up and our listeners to be rewarded daily with our insanity. It was inevitable that we were going to get fired from WNEW. The thread finally broke, and the piano crushed us.

* David Lee Roth might be one of the worst people ever on radio. Nonstop rambling about eighteen different topics at a time and then throwing in a “bozzie bozzie bop!”

* Opie is still in trouble with people to this day because of what he did to one homeless guy, Andrew, who offered us a piece of his cake. Opie just stomped on it with his foot. The poor guy was just sitting there saying, “I paid for that cake. I earned that cake.” Opie didn’t give a shit as long as it was good radio.

* One of our funniest bits was with the comedian Patrice O’Neal. We called it “Nigger vs. Nazi.” During this time period, the actor Danny Glover had made his plight known publicly that he couldn’t get a cab in NYC because he was African American. Patrice was on the show and we were talking about it, and he said, “Yeah, nobody wants to pick up a nigger.” I was like, “Hey, I have a Nazi helmet. I’ll put it on and you stand upstream from me. We’ll both try to hail a cab to see if the cab driver picks up a nigger or a Nazi.” The first cab blatantly passed by Patrice and stopped for me. Patrice screamed, “Nazi! Nazi! You pick up a Nazi over a nigger? You motherfucker! You didn’t stop for a nigger! You picked up a goddamn Nazi over a nigger! You chose a Nazi brother!” The second cab stopped for Patrice. The third cab hedged its bets and went between us. The next one went for the Nazi. Patrice said, “I’m gonna pull this out for niggers!” Then Patrice tied it up and it was going to game seven. The deciding cab passed right by Patrice and stopped in front of me. I thanked him for picking a Nazi over an African American. The Nazis won.

* We had passionate fans who were really into it, and they knew how we treated each other on the show—comics constantly busting each other’s balls. We brought the audience into what we were doing; they genuinely felt like they were part of it. The only negative to this was that they felt they were also part of the stand-up show. They felt entitled to heckle the comics unmercifully, which sometimes made the shows a fucking nightmare. We’d take the bad with the good and the good with the bad. It happened, and we understood it. They were enjoying
themselves, so be it.

Philly’s own Dom Irrera was booed off the stage. It was brutal. Dom just disappeared. He was shell-shocked. Next up was Bill Burr. There was a digital clock facing the comic that would count down their time onstage. I
think the sets were fifteen minutes long. Bill got huge applause when he walked onto the stage, and the clock started ticking down. Almost immediately after the applause, they started booing and yelling shit at him. Bill wasn’t going to take it. “Really? Really?” Bill just started lambasting the crowd with a history lesson of
Philadelphia and the inadequacies of Philadelphians. This guy knew everything there was to know about Philly. I defy a historian to know as much as Bill Burr knew that night about the City of Brotherly Love. He destroyed them. He referenced pop culture, sports, personalities, and the fucking Revolutionary War! Everything
he brought up was a twist of the knife screwing Philadelphia, and the audience loved it.

* Race and being politically correct were always issues, even on satellite radio. Even though we were on a censor-free network that wanted to be cutting edge, we still almost got fired right away. I’m talking right the fuck out of the starting gate. Leave it to Opie and Anthony to push the parameters on a censor-free network their first couple of months working.
There was this funny homeless guy down the street from our studio who would talk all this outrageous shit. We decided to give this impoverished man a voice and let this batshit crazy guy get in front of our microphone. We brought him up to our studio and let him talk. He was actually pretty sharp and had some ideas—one of which was that he wanted to rape first lady Laura Bush. He also wanted to rape the queen of England and Condoleezza Rice. We were just laughing our asses off at the whole thing and how crazy he was.
We got done with the show feeling good about it. Then we started getting phone calls: “People are getting concerned. We’re getting complaints, and the bosses here are a little upset about it.” “What? This is satellite radio. This is absolutely what should be going out over their digital airwaves.” The bosses said, “Something
about raping Condoleezza Rice and you’re all laughing.”

* XM began heating up with some personal conflicts. I think Opie had a lot of resentment for the business at that time. We were relegated to a medium that didn’t have a lot of listeners. I don’t know if he felt guilty about our getting fired, but we started understanding what satellite was about and what we could do to start getting back into being the Opie and Anthony show.
We wanted to get back to doing things like the Wiffle Ball Bat Challenge. We’d take a Wiffle ball bat, and if a girl wanted to try to win, we would put it up her vagina. Then we’d mark it with a Sharpie and measure it.
At the end of the year, the girl who got closest to the middle of the bat would win. Wholesome family fun, right?
The coveted bat would be displayed in a glass case in our studio. We would always play holy music when taking it out when a girl came to compete. This was okay to do on satellite radio at the time. It was race that was the sticky wicket and frowned upon. Sex was completely fine.
We’d have girls get completely naked in the studio and perform sexual acts. We had a porn star come in and blow one of our producers in front of everybody. Hey, say what you want, but chicks getting naked and doing crazy shit is always fun.

* Once XM merged with Sirius, they were all about corporate, which translated to being censored for sexual content stringently. On April 14, 2009, we did our first show at the new Sirius building. There were no more girls doing the Wiffle ball bat contests or getting naked. In the bosses’ eyes, these acts could make Sirius liable for litigation. This meant no more girls on our show unless it was a real interview. Sirius corporate was the ultimate cock blocker.

* O n March 12, 2009, Opie and I had an on-air fight known as “the Grape Argument.” I was eating grapes on the air. I remarked on something, and Opie said, “Are you gonna wait till you finish those?” This argument had nothing to do with the fucking grapes. It was like any argument: you start out with the issue and then it just splinters into a thousand things that pissed you off ten years prior. He was obviously mad at something. So, I said, “Oh really? You’re gonna give me shit about the grapes? I could read you twenty texts about you scraping your yogurt container!” How petty was this?

He gave me this face that I knew all too well. This pissed-off face. Opie kept saying, “Leave it alone,” but I didn’t want to leave it alone. Then he quipped, “Just because you’re really into doing the show again, leave it alone!” to which I replied, “As opposed to when I really wasn’t into doing the show?” That was it! I saw fucking red. He had passive-aggressively suggested I wasn’t into the show for a certain period of time. Opie then said, “Don’t worry, dude. This will be over soon. You go your way and I’ll go mine.”
How prophetic he was. For months he had been alluding to this inevitable breakup on air. “It’s just time for us to break up. We’ve done everything there is to do together, and it’s time for us to move on to some new challenges.” I told him, “I actually enjoy coming in here to do this show and don’t bitch about every little
thing going on. I try and keep it light.”

* For radio personalities, publicity is the number-one goal. Getting more people to hear your name, regardless of what it’s attached to, is your goal on a daily basis. Getting them to talk about you. Even with the worst firing catastrophes Opie and I had, our first thought was, “Cool, we got some press.”

Here are some highlights from this 2013 book:

* One way to create your character at first is to emulate or model your favourite presenters. You can borrow some of their techniques before you find your own. This is not to suggest, of course, that you try to sound like anyone, but rather learn how they articulate themselves and adopt one or two content formulation ideas from
them.

* Another useful tip is to imagine stepping out of your skin and into a person who is already very experienced. Adopt the same mind-set as this professional broadcaster and act accordingly. This is a form of creative visualisation, which can be useful in everything you do.

* Callers are also a brilliant way to gauge your ability to sound natural. The more natural you sound and conversational you are, the better the caller will respond to you. If you “DJ voice” all over them and try and make jokes, they will respond in a clipped or guarded fashion.

* Example 1: A radio boss once insisted that one of his breakfast show presenters never used headphones during his show. He liked the presenter’s articulation but thought his voice sounded too “DJ.” The presenter was offended at first but now agrees that it was a worthwhile and valuable exercise. He eventually agreed with his
boss that he sounded more like a normal person without headphones. This is your goal too.

Example 2: Another presenter in his early career decided to develop a “laid back” element to his character in an attempt to sound proficient and relaxed. While it sounded relaxed to him, he was actually told he sounded bored, sleepy and intoxicated! It was not until quite late in his career when a producer made him force a grin before talking that he was able to notice the difference and make a change. Radio management will encourage presenters to speak as though they were addressing a friend.

Here are some highlights from this 2022 book:

* The movie or TV star is distant from the people; he is a star. The radio talk host, on the other hand, by nature perfectly embodies the thinking of the “man on the street.”

* Research indicates that personalities appeal to listeners more than music.

* I worry—as do others—that while in a functioning democracy everyone’s opinion should count, the loudest voices are sometimes wont to overpower all others. Perhaps “expertise” itself always needs to be given more weight than ignorance.

* There is something absolutely perverse about lonely misfits and amateur information distorters waiting on hold for an hour and more just for the opportunity to be abused by a loudmouthed so-called “host,” a host often equipped with no discernable credentials other than a fast-paced patter.

* Talk radio is a carnival—an amusement show. Fancy parades as fact. The uninformed opinion is championed as thoughtful commentary. Groundless innuendo gets the same respect as investigative journalism. …talk radio often drones as a noisy waste of time; it usually just broadcasts a bunch of malcontents yelling at each
other or a bunch of blowhards impressing each other.

* the medium—to subvert Marshall McLuhan’s slogan—is not the message. The problem with most talk radio and its technological variants is the literal message: demagogic slurs and lies designed—for the most part—not to influence policy but to gain audience share and hence fame and fortune.

* We considered the callers merely disposable foils for our acts. We were convinced there always would be another caller—and there always was. At KABC our program director, the late Jim Simon, believed callers weren’t
just expendable. He considered it a rare caller worth much more than a minute on the air. To keep us from forgetting that philosophy, he installed an old-time police car red light upside down on the ceiling of our studio—the type known as a gumball machine. A timer started when we put a caller on the air. After 90 seconds, the gumball with its flashing red light started spinning. That distraction definitely helped motivate us to say goodbye (or, often, hurl an insult) and go on to a next caller.

In an email exchange with Eric Bogosian, the star of “Talk Radio” and its author, I asked for his thoughts about the role of the caller—both for his film and for talk radio shows.

“The key to success in the talk radio format, as I understand it,” he wrote back, “is boosting ratings. Serious discussion of serious topics is anathema to popularity. (Except say, on local NPR stations, which never get the numbers that Rush Limbaugh used to get.) Ludicrous discussions attract a wide spectrum of listeners. Especially those who are killing time by listening to the radio. So I guess you have to ask first, why do people listen to talk radio? The human voice has tremendous power. Charisma. People like to hear a voice. An emphatic, funny voice gets people to listen. The voice is a friend, coming by to hang out.

* For almost all the American talk shows on commercial radio stations, the host first acts as the picador and the caller as the confused bull. Quickly the host morphs into a matador and hanging up the phone serves as the coup de grâce swordplay.

Points of view aren’t the only drivers that cause the frenetic pace and tone of most commercial talk radio in the States. “I listen from time to time to commercial radio and to sit through all those commercials means the host must make the audience want to stay through the commercials.” Audio clickbait, Krasny calls it. “And so, the burden is always to keep things lively, controversial, engaged, but also in many ways outrageous and tabloid and sometimes funny. Hysterically funny or hysterically outrageous, like Howard Stern.”

* the callers often are picked for their nut factor, depending on the show. Anybody who’s going to subject themselves to potential host abuse after waiting on hold for an hour, I noted, is suspect.

* Talk radio, as practiced by the screaming right wing, says Franken, “is a monetization of resentment.”

* As Covid surged, one after another anti-vaxxing hosts succumbed to the virus. Colorado host Bob Enyart followed Tennessee broadcasters Phil Valentine and Jimmy DeYoung to a station in the great beyond, as did Floridians Marc Bernier and Dick Ferrel.

* From the listeners’ point of view, the talk radio host is a credible relational partner, which puts them in a privileged position to enact uncertainty reduction processes. The positive relationship between the creation of an intimate relationship with a subject and that subject’s ability to trigger mechanisms of self-categorization and identification (useful in reducing uncertainty regarding one’s identity and views through identification with a group) is essentially replicated in the mediated interaction.

* Among the defense mechanisms against information overload are filtering and the more radical information withdrawal strategies. These are designed to determine what information is relevant to a user based on a pattern of importance/priority; in this pattern, a fiduciary relationship with a host, who can offer information and viewpoints modeled on the community of which the listener is a part, can certainly fit.

* The ABC research also showed an opening for what was termed “non-guested confrontation talk radio.” McLaughlin recruited a Sacramento, California, radio host to play the lead role. His name was unknown to most Americans when he was recruited: Rush Limbaugh.

Here are the details behind the phrase “non-guested confrontation talk radio.” The show is centered around the host and his views, with no interviews. Instead of confronting an actual person who could argue back, the host plays a sound bite from the targeted person and attacks the recorded point of view. Leaving no opportunity for the opponent to respond, the host is, of course, confident of winning the argument.

* Limbaugh’s syndication reached about 600 stations at its peak and spawned many imitators. Local stations built formats around Limbaugh and his clones, often using the brand “Hot Talk.” Increasingly AM Talk is equated to right-wing talk. In many major markets, there were three conservative AM talk stations. The top tier was headlined by Limbaugh (on a station with a strong signal, usually 50,000 watts) along with hosts like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage. The second tier, with lesser-known hosts, was typically on a less powerful station. The third level was mostly comprised of quasi-Christian stations owned by Salem media.

* “Who commands the story is not the voice: it is the ear,” this is how Italo Calvino, in his 1972 novels Invisible Cities, restores the sense of listening, including that of the radio: what drives people’s interest is not so much the narrator but the ability of the story to enter the intimacy of the listener’s life and turn into personal history, making this process all-encompassing and highly personalized and participatory. The encounter between the audio, which is specific to radio, and its user occurs in a “subliminal echo chamber that has the magical power to touch remote and forgotten chords.”

* Italians never entertained a particularly intense relationship with the radio medium, preferring the more invasive, powerful, and seductive television as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

* Radio is the most personal form of media, and talk radio is its most personal subset. Air personalities playing music constitute the majority of radio’s history as a cultural force, but even the most legendary disc jockeys did not spend hours each day in direct, unrehearsed live conversation with listeners, ushering them through issues large and small.

* No host becomes popular by being the most well-spoken, the most politically astute, or the most scholarly. While those are valuable, the common trait found in all successful shows is a host with a personality that makes the show desirable to consume.

* One could hardly imagine a better fit than former New York governor Mario Cuomo, a spellbinding orator and
riveting interview guest. But at the press conference heralding his new show, asked about his goals, he listed as first “to educate.” The show lasted a year. The best answer to that question is: To conduct a show in a way that draws people in to hear the host’s views and the views of others in a compelling and entertaining fashion.

* The Limbaugh show was a phenomenon for more than 30 years because he delivered his topical content in a
manner that featured an upbeat mood, an appreciation of humor, and a showman’s gift.

* You don’t need to know anything to work as a talk radio host. That is not an overstatement. The enterprise is entirely predicated on engaging entertainment peppered with factoids and truthiness and driven by emotionally charged hype. It’s a great caffeine-driven formula that keeps listeners tuned in and flipped out.