I'm listening to Adam Carolla online in NY this morning. I'm filled with sadness, anger, disappointment, and other badness because Fri 2/20 is the last morning the Ace Man broadcasts from 97.1 FREE FM in LA.
I hired Adam for this job back in 2004. For the past four years he built one of the best morning radio shows in the country. Adam is being so gracious this morning to all the enemies of good radio that it's....well....too gracious.
Over four years ago, nobody could 'replace' Howard Stern, he could only be 'followed.' Adam followed better than anyone else ever could. A caller to his show remarked that Howard may not be the same man in real life as he is on the air. Adam is an unusual talent. If you were sitting at his house, poolside, with a beer - you'd be hearing much the same man you'd hear on the radio. He'd be grabbing every, seemingly small detail of the oddities of life and pulling you inside the inately funniest aspects of all of it.
Adam Carolla is an entertainer, a radio host, an improv artist, an actor, a writer, a producer, a boxer, a filmmaker, a carpenter, a car nut, a husband, a father, a dancer, a brilliant brain, and above all ... an extremely decent human being.
You won't find many of those in the radio business in 2009. The magic of truly free thinkers and the music stations many of us all fell in love with long ago is all but dead. There are too many killers to name.
Instead, thanks and respect go to Adam, Teresa Strasser, Bryan, Angie, The Mikes, Kimmel, Dixon, Brusca, Dameshek, every affiliate that helped create big numbers in markets all over the country, and to the fans who embraced all of it.
As a fan, I'll keep tracking the movement at www.AdamCarolla.com.
As an new media outlet, truly FREE, without any job justifiers, or weak-kneed corporate suckass wannabees....the doors of My Damn Channel will always be open to you my friend. You're a class act Carolla.
Happy Jack tells the Wall Street Journal: The "good thing about Howard Stern leaving our station is that it already happened to us," he says.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120535527639031299.html
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Howard Stern on 12/19/2007 9:19:00 PM by Rob Barnett
Last weekend, I googled the man I hired for the awesome little job called "replace Howard Stern." I found an anonymous blog that smelled like something rotten was stinking up the kitchen at CBS: http://somedudefromjersey.blogspot.com/2007/12/shit-in-my-awesome-sandwich.html
Adam Carolla has a playbook filled with more options and winning strategies than any idiotic morning zoo or any hack program directors can ever hope to create. Danny Bonaduce was a desperate hail mary pass thrown by people too short-sited to see that it took Howard decades to build his radio empire. When Stern first syndicated, it took four years for him to lay waste to the competition. Adam was always first to say that Howard was irreplaceable. I couldn't have agreed more. But when 'the KING' departed for a new throne, someone was left having to figure out how to start over. That someone was me.
I went home the night that I was given the ball and told my wife there was good news & bad news. The good news was that I was made President of CBS Radio programming. The bad news is that I had to figure out how to replace Howard. We'll skip the long stories here about who the REAL choice was for NY & save all that for later. The ONLY choice for LA, and for the west coast Stern stations was the man who'd been on Howard's show for scores of LIVE appearances - the man who rocked THE MAN SHOW with Brother Jimmy Kimmel - the man who made LOVELINE a latenight hit - the man with unique comic skills to improv and create immediate compelling content out of every scrap of raw material - the man who can build a house with his bare hands - and you get the drift: C-A-R-O-L-L-A.
We gave Adam a new start in a new format called FREE FM.
Our mission wasn't complex. Hire BIG talent and give them the support and freedom they need to build better radio on their own terms. People are sick of over-formatted radio with too many commercial interuptions. No breaking news there. Talent is the only answer to better ratings and revenues. But old media doesn't have a terrific track record backing talent. The current writers' strike is front page news that tells the same story in Hollywood.
A great drama seems to be unfolding. Morning radio fans in LA, Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, Sacramento, Reno, Fresno, Palm Springs, Portland (Oregon & Maine), Boise, and Pittsburgh wait to find out if Adam Carolla will be back on January 2nd.
I'll lay down this bet with a song:
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go.