Photo by David Lutman
Scene Feature
Kicking back with radio rascals Bob & Tom
By THOMAS NORD
The Louisville Courier-Journal - original article


The woman has a problem. It seems that her husband is having some trouble in the bedroom. So, naturally, she has turned to a pair of morning disc jockeys for answers.
She has phoned "The Bob & Tom Show" with the kind of questions most reasonable women save for their gynecologist. But in the world of morning radio, this is a golden moment.

"Every time I start talking about my 'G spot,' he thinks I'm talking about my underwear," she complains. "How do I tell him how to hit this without making him feel like less of a man?"

Tom Griswold, the demure half of the eponymous team -- his partner Bob Kevoian being the decidedly earthier half -- immediately defers to the only woman in the room.
But newsreader Kristi Lee won't touch it, which is good because Chick McGee, the show's bearlike sportscaster, is practically jumping out of his chair. "Why don't you have him get his GED, first of all," says McGee, as if he has been waiting all his life to say this. "If he thinks a G spot is underwear. . . ."

Everyone is laughing now. Laughing that way you laugh when you're tired and wired on caffeine and your buddy says something that just nails it.

It is up to Griswold -- it always is -- to offer the wise counsel.

"Talk to him," he offers. "Let him know."

"I'm not sure we're licensed for this," Kevoian adds, stating the obvious. The laughter kicks up one more time before dying down.

That this caller chose to air her grievances here is a testament to the power of "The Bob & Tom Show." Without leaving their drab studio in the northern suburbs of Indianapolis, Griswold and Kevoian have planted their flag firmly in the North American radio landscape, successfully growing a local institution into a national phenomenon.

Much like the first McDonald's was once a hamburger stand, "The Bob & Tom Show" was once a pair of guys goofing off in front of a microphone, first in tiny Petoskey, Mich., where Tom met Bob in a bar and ended up on the air with him, then in Indianapolis, where they have been based at WFBQ-FM since 1983.
They are now on 100 stations and are about to increase that number. It is an empire built on dumb jokes, phone gags, sex talk, funny songs and the always reliable redneck-with-a-problem. Throw in a measure of current events and the never-ending war between the sexes, and you've got a radio show.

Because killing time is what much of morning radio is all about. Killing time and propelling you from the bed to the shower to the toaster to the car to the offices and schools or the grocery stores and factory floors that most of us have to go to every day. It gives us some weather, some traffic news and something to laugh at while we trudge onward into the daily grind.

And few people kill time better than Bob Kevoian and Tom Griswold.

IT IS THE MONDAY before Valentine's Day, and Griswold and Kevoian are having trouble getting into a groove after the weekend off. "The Bob & Tom Show" airs each weekday from 6 to 10 a.m. over the Premiere Radio Network, the syndication arm of Clear Channel Communications, one of the corporate monsters devouring radio stations right and left across the country.
The show is a relentless beast as well. They only take a couple weeks off each year, with a few days off tossed in here and there. Making something look this effortless is pretty hard work. But after more than 20 years together (the past 18 in Indianapolis), Griswold and Kevoian have nailed each other's rhythm like great jazz players. The two are as synchronized as you're going to get in this business without actually being connected at the hip.

There is no secret to their chemistry.
"We don't hang around with each other a lot," Kevoian says.
It's not that they don't like each other. Much the opposite. The show has to be fresh, and it's not fresh if they are simply rehashing conversations they had over dinner last night, or watching a ballgame together.

They spend that time in a studio that is one part office and one part frat house, a cluttered space full of tape cartridges containing classic comedy bits, rock 'n' roll posters and gag gifts sent to them from listeners.

On the wall are dozens of reminders of what "The Bob & Tom Show" has become since it was first syndicated, in 1995. They are garish yellow plastic placards listing the name of every market and every affiliate that airs the show.

It is an easy way to gauge the width and breadth of this enterprise. You can hear Bob and Tom in Bakersfield, Calif. (KDFO), and Bangor, Maine (WBYA); in Toledo, Ohio (WIOT), and Topeka, Kan. (KMKF). It is a patchwork of small- and medium-sized markets. Although they are a presence in big cities like Indianapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Baltimore, Griswold and Kevoian exist largely outside the nation's major media centers.

"We were just doing the show, and it started getting around," says 50-year-old Kevoian, whose mustache (now graying) and Los Angeles Dodgers ballcap have become his trademark. "Eventually, it spread like wildfire, to where we were covering the entire Midwest."

To some degree, they are the beneficiaries of an ever-shrinking radio universe, an industry that is taking advantage of looser laws governing the number of stations one company can own and quickly becoming dominated by giants like Clear Channel.

A show like this one is tailor-made for corporate radio, where economies of scale call for high-quality, reliable content that can be plugged in to dozens of stations at once. Take Louisville, for example, where "The Bob & Tom Show" has replaced a longtime local morning program, "The Rocky & Troy Show," on WQMF (97.5-FM), one of several stations Clear Channel owns in the Louisville area.

The shows used to compete, but last year Clear Channel announced it was moving the show to WQMF after acquiring "The Bob & Tom Show" as part of a deal to buy AM/FM Radio Networks, the company that had been syndicating the show. That left no place for Rocky and Troy to go after 16 years on the air.

It is hard to hold this against Griswold and Kevoian -- after all, their ratings were better than their Louisville counterparts -- but such homogenization does trouble some media critics.

"For the shareholders, this is an excellent trend," says Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C. "You can still get ratings, sell ads and make your money with nobody behind the microphone in your studio eating up salary and overhead. Who wouldn't love that?"

Felling, a former producer for National Public Radio, concedes that Griswold and Kevoian put out a fairly good product, for what it is. But he says national radio shows take away something when they wipe out local programming.

"Regardless of the quality of the programming -- most of it must be adequate enough to garner a syndicate's attention -- the personality and the interests of the community are erased," he argues. "The personal connection is weakened, no matter how high-quality the hosts are."

Indeed, anyone who has listened to Griswold and Kevoian since 1983 will have noticed that they no longer make many references to Indianapolis. Although they still do local cut-ins to give the weather and traffic, the bulk of the show is kept as universal as possible to avoid reminding listeners in, say, Kearney, Neb., that this is coming from a studio hundreds of miles away.

In their defense, Griswold and Kevoian are simply players in a much larger game. If it was not "The Bob & Tom Show," it would likely be something else. According to Griswold, they don't think about it that much.

"The only way you know it's different is by answering the phone and reading the mail," says Griswold, a mellow 47-year-old with thinning blond hair and sleepy eyes. "The other day we got an e-mail from a guy in, where was that, Holland? (The show is streamed over the Internet.) It's like being on stage and the lights are so bright that you can't tell whether there's 10 people out there or a million."
Specifically, about 4.8 million people, the latest estimate on total listenership in the 32 states where the show airs. And the only direction for the show is up, says Marty Bender, the show's executive producer.

"We're doing all this without even being in the major markets," says Bender. "We're everywhere in Ohio -- but Cleveland. We're everywhere in Michigan -- but Detroit."
Granted, the show has been tried in bigger cities, where the competition is a lot fiercer, but didn't catch on. Bender isn't worried. It's important to resist tinkering.
"There's no reason to mess with the format," he argues. "The show is like a stock that keeps splitting. One of the reasons is that we never had that goal (of being a dominant player.) It just progressed naturally."

IT IS JUST PAST 8 A.M., and the show is finally on track.

An offhand comment from Lee about Valentine's Week turns into a gripe session about a man's increasing obligation to buy Valentine flowers, candy and whatnot for his sweetie. Soon, it devolves into speculation about what gay couples do on the holiday.

Fortunately, a gay man named Stan calls in to clear things up. When you are on the air in 100 markets, there is always someone who wants to talk to you. According to Stan, gay couples are just like everyone else. They buy each other gifts on Valentine's Day. Or, in Stan's case, forget to.
"I haven't shopped yet," he confesses.
"You must be the 'guy' part of the relationship," Lee quips.
Everyone laughs, including Stan.
"I think we're both that way," notes Stan.
"Sounds like a couple of 'guys,' " blurts Chick.
More laughter.
Meanwhile, McGee wants to know more about Stan, the man. "Are you married?" he asks.
"Uh-huh," Stan responds.
"Where was our invitation? How many people were at the ceremony?"
"About a hundred."
"So we were 101 through 104 on the list?" he blusters. "Is that what I'm hearing?"
The laughter grows even louder, led by Kevoian's familiar nicotine-coated chuckle.
"Well," says Bob. "He knows you would have pulled a chair up to the buffet and never left."
People are in tears, it's so funny.

"We would have brought a gift," McGee says, bringing things full circle.
There are a few more questions about gay traditions, relationships and the like before Stan is sent on his way. The tone is never mean-spirited.
"A lot of people think, 'Jeez, who would want to call just to be made fun of?' But, in fact, we're not making fun of them in particular," says Griswold, unwinding after the show. "The one guy called up just to make fun of his boyfriend. There was something very geniune there."

The vibe here is less Leno or Letterman than it is about a bunch of friends sitting around drinking coffee and cracking each other up. Yes, it is an acquired taste that can be quite irritating at first. To the unitiated, they are that loud group of people at the next table in the restaurant. We just want them to simmer down.
But then they invite us over to sit with them, and everything changes.
Just as the things our friends say that get us giggling like simps make little sense to anyone outside the circle, the banter on "The Bob & Tom Show" is aimed at the loyal friends who tune in every day. To them, it is perfectly natural for Bob to laugh at almost everything anyone says; he thinks it's funny. And at the same time, it is Tom's mission in life to pull that throaty laugh out of Bob as much as possible. Because that's what friends do.

"Tom is the smartest guy I know," says Kevoian. "And he's easy to feed off of. I've always said Tom is 'book smart' and I'm 'street smart.' "
DESPITE BEING ON THE AIR for an eternity, there is precious little structure to all this, other than a few recurring themes, such as rock 'n' roll, politics and sex. They seem to a have a peculiar fascination with gay people, but the humor is more curious that cruel. They are genuinely interested in this stuff, like a kid who always sneaks behind the sideshow curtain.

"It's very free-flow," says producer Dean Metcalf, who came to work as a college intern in 1988 and never left. "It surprises people how much is not scripted."
Credit much of this to the fact that Griswold and Kevoian have found a solid team to work with, and have kept it together. McGee and Lee have been with them almost from the start, along with a stable of writers and comedians who contribute songs and comedy bits. They are 18 years older than when the show started, and they make no effort to hide that. Tom went through a divorce. Chick had open-heart surgery. Kristi got married, an event that supplied an endless stream of jokes.

While there is a definite boomer vibe, the show cuts a wide swath. Griswold and Kevoian seem to have found just the right mix of humor, from juvenile to cornpone, to satisfy the target demographic of adults between 25 and 54. For every new mom who must give up the show because her kids just aren't ready for fart jokes yet, there seems to be someone taking her place.

Nor do they court controversy. While their humor can cross the line, they are quick to reel it back in. Their politics are that of a typical comedian -- they make fun of anyone who is in power. In Indianapolis, they have established themselves as extremely good neighbors, contributing millions to local charities from the sales of CDs containing highlights from the show.

The closest thing to political activism is their long-standing beef with Indiana's quirky stance against daylight-saving time, which means they must do the show an hour earlier seven months a year to make the 6 a.m. start time on their many East Coast affiliates that do reset their clocks.
Material is culled from every source you can think of. On breaks, when Kevoian is out grabbing a smoke, Griswold might scan the Internet or one of the four newspapers he reads regularly. Next to him on the floor is a pile of magazines, everything from Maxim to Redbook.

In the production booth, where Metcalf edits comedy bits, screens phone calls and more or less keeps the wheels from falling off, a special hot line blinks, indicating a call from one of the show's inner circle of comedians, singers and all-around funny people who supply a steady stream of material.

It is voice-over artist Steve Salge, who wants to go on the air as President Clinton. Like most of us, the gang is having a hard time letting Clinton go, so Salge is quickly patched into the studio.

Salge warms up with a few lame gags before finding his groove in the Marc Rich pardon. In addition to oodles of cash, it seems that Rich's ex-wife, Denise, also gifted Clinton with something extra, says Salge.

"She also gave me a beautiful saxophone to blow on," says the ersatz Clinton. You can see where this is going. "I told her I'd like to reciprocate and give her something to blow on."

In your head, you hear a rimshot. On the show, you hear McGee laughing like a nut. "Very good, Mr. President," says Bob dryly.

Taped gags are another staple. On this day, we get a parody of the XFL, outrageous dating tips and a guy singing parodies of Gordon Lightfoot songs. Being nationwide also lures a steady stream of celebs, from musician Don Henley to NASCAR racer Jeff Gordon to comic Robert Klein, whom Griswold idolizes. Today's marquee guest is Ed McMahon, who appears frequently to plug his various endeavors.

Griswold good-naturedly grills McMahon, who is on the phone from Los Angeles, about the latter's singing career. It seems Ed has a record floating around out there.
"I don't think it ever made it to CD," says McMahon. "CD was not invented at this time. They were still using kerosene. . . . You remember a guy named Edison? He was instrumental in recording it."
Once again, the room erupts.

THEY GET ASKED A LOT about Howard Stern, the 800-pound gorilla of radio. While Stern is on fewer stations, what counts is that he is huge in markets like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. He also makes movies, produces TV shows and writes books that make the best-seller list. He appears on "The Late Show With David Letterman." He dates supermodels.

While they would no doubt enjoy that last part, about the supermodels, neither Griswold nor Kevoian seems too enthusiastic about taking on Stern if it means playing his game. Much of Stern's appeal -- OK, 99 percent of it -- comes from his taste for controversy, his shrewd stoking of his bad-boy image that requires him to be constantly at odds with his bosses, the Federal Communications Commission and good taste in general.

"He gets a tremendous amount of publicity, and he's very successful in huge markets, but I don't really want to be him," Griswold says. "I don't think anyone respects him as a person. He's looked upon as a jerk."

What is not being pointed out is the key difference. Whereas Stern is creating radio that revolves around his outrageous persona -- "The King of All Media," as he likes to put it -- Griswold and Kevoian are the exact opposite. Just a couple of ordinary guys gabbing with their pals. If Stern is a plate of habanero peppers, just daring you to take a bite, then Bob and Tom are a hamburger and fries. Basic, but filling.

Besides, it's hard to be Howard Stern when you can barely stay up past 8 o'clock anymore, the price you pay for owning the airwaves at 6 a.m.
"We never dreamed of anything like this," says Kevoian. "We were just thrilled to be getting paid for radio work."