Me and Reid
went lookin’ for muses
In dark dingy bars
filled with losers.
We needed something
that would appeal to males
Hey, “Radio For Men”
How could that fail?
As I was saying in Chapter XXXVII (Wall Street), the Dog & Pony show that Tom Hicks and I had done together on Wall Street, according to Tom had gone well, so while waiting for the merger to come together, I headed to Europe with my special friend Jamie for a little vacation.
After spending a couple of days in Paris, we boarded the magnificent Orient Express and sipped Dom Perignon as we wound our way through the beautiful Alps on our way to Venice.
It was all fascinating, but in the ’80s, unfortunately, there were no cell phones or email, so I had no idea that the merger back home was blowing up.
Finally, after exploring Venice, Innsbruck, Luxembourg, and London, it was time to head home to begin building the best radio company in the world.
UHowever, when we got back, we discovered that the whole deal had fallen apart.
It turned out that when Bill Yde discovered that the Hicks owed more for their stations than they were worth, he walked from the deal.
And as I said, stupidly, I’d resigned most of my clients. What the hell was I supposed to do now?
The collapse of the merger had us all scrambling; my brother Reg decided to get into the internet big time. (Reg shown above in front of my place in Coronado)
He’d figured out a way to combine some of our money-making promotional ideas with the way American Airlines did their AAdvantage program using the internet.
As they say, “No risk, no reward,” and Reg risked it all when he created his Rewards Program, which ended up on 1100 radio stations around the world.
My problem was, the Adult Contemporary format I’d created in Toronto was so successful that now there at least two other types of AC in every market so I needed something new.
So what we decided to do was revisit those smokey bars back in San Diego, where we created most of the “Class” format because we knew there were a few more great ideas waiting for us at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.
Finally, after drinking more than our fair share of whiskey, the muses served us up a dandy, “Radio For Men.”
We realized that we’d been so successful targeting women that there was very little on the radio for men to listen to now.
The first thing we did was put a billboard up that featured the ladies’ restroom symbol, but just like the Ghostbusters logo, we circled and then drew a diagonal line through it.
The slug line read, “Radio For Men” begins (date) on 100.7 FM at 4:00 PM.
Then we put Reid on TV during the evening news sitting on a huge radio dial.
He began with, “Good evening, my name is Reid Reker, and I’m the General Manager of a Phoenix radio station, and I need to talk to the man of the house.”
Then he said, “Gentlemen, as you go up and down the dial, are you as tired of all that sleepy Barry Manilow music as I am?
Well, I’m not going to take it anymore because I don’t have to. So beginning this Monday at 4:00 PM, I’m turning 100.7 on the FM dial over to the men of Phoenix as we proudly present “Radio For Men.”
The radio station exploded right out of the box, and before the sun went down, the local media were at our front door.
Soon the national media, ET, People Magazine, and USA Today, were also all over us.
The Phoenix ladies were in an uproar because they thought it was against the law to do anything exclusively for men.
We, of course, counted on all the negative publicity to get the word out because we knew that the ladies wouldn’t be able to resist tuning into a radio station where they weren’t welcome.
Then, when the “NOW” organization marched on us, Reid and I did leaping high fives. Can you spell syndication, baby?
With this one in the bag, I left town to start putting our plan together to roll “Radio For Men” out nationally. It couldn’t fail.
Unbelievably, within hours, I got a call from Reid saying, “It’s over, man!” “What the hell do you mean it’s over,” I asked. Reid explained that the owners had pulled the plug, fearing women would begin boycotting the station’s clients.
Reid then said that the owners were ok with the programming; we just couldn’t call it Radio For Men.
“Reid,” I said, “You know as well as I do that nobody gives a shit about programming, they only care about the concept, and without the name, we’re just another boring radio station.”
Then, before disgustingly hanging up, I said, “I guess your management doesn’t buy into “The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward, huh Reid?”