Rodney Ho
Rodney Ho
By Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.com, filed originally Dec. 5, 2014
Jason Bailey, who spent a year at 92.9/The Game but was let go over the summer, is replacing Larry Wachs at Rock 100.5. He starts Dec. 15.
The Regular Guys came to Rock 100.5 in early 2008 after two stints at 96rock.
Wachs, I've heard, owns the name "The Regular Guys" so I'm not sure if the station will be able to continue to use that name without him.
"TRG has had a legendary run," Wachs texted me this afternoon. "It was a blast. Gonna enjoy the holidays and get some Zs."
I don't know specifically why management decided to dump him now.
Troy Hanson, who runs Cumulus corporate rock programming, has not returned an email for comment.
"Southside" Steve Rickman, part of the team which also includes Tim Andrews, Brandi Britain and Sebastian Davis, texted me: "It's been a long run. I've spent 13 years in the same room... I will miss Larry "love" WACHES. Yeah C'mon."
The rest of the team will stay, I'm told, and they will be on air next week without Wachs and before Bailey arrives.
The morning show was informed right after the show concluded Friday morning. You can listen to the final broadcast with Wachs here.
Wachs created the Regular Guys in the 1990s in Los Angeles with Eric Von Haessler. The odd couple came to Atlanta in 1998 and became a hugely popular show at 96rock until an obscenity snafu in 2004. They returned soon after on 96rock (after a month-long stint at WGST) but got cut again in 2006 due to Wachs' ill-fated stunt involving a sister Latino station and taping their morning show in the bathroom.
Rock 100.5 gave them a third shot in in 2008 and while they pulled in good numbers, they never reached the heights they did at 96rock. (A weaker signal didn't help and )
Rickman was part of the 96rock crew but not an official "Regular Guy" in the early days. He was promoted once he joined Rock 100.5. So was Andrews.
In 2013, the station management dumped Von Haessler and never effectively replaced him. (You can read more about why he thinks he was fired here and below in a Facebook post earlier today.)
Wachs and Von Haessler's relationship deteriorated over time to the point that Von Haessler had checked out and had stopped participating in prep meetings.
Von Haessler believed Wachs was instrumental in convincing the new manager to get rid of him, though Wachs has never acknowledged anything of the sort publicly. But if that were the case, Wachs was on notice to improve ratings.
Listenership was showing improvement in recent months for the Regular Guys, which always beats the rest of the station. But Rock 100.5 as a whole has been a struggling third-place rock station in town behind 97.1/The River and Radio 105.7. In the most recent Nielsen Audio ratings book, the station's 1.9 share ranked 18th with the Regular Guys at a 2.5 share (tied for 16th.)
As often happens, the show happened to have its best ratings in years just this last month, especially among younger listeners. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, the Regular Guys finished in a tie for third with a 6.2 share, its best monthly showing since July 2010. Among 25 to 54 year olds, the Regular Guys drew a 3.8 share, ranked 12th. (A caveat about ratings: the referenced time frames cover 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and the Regular Guys now run from 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.)
With Von Haessler gone, the show shied away from politics and focused on more irreverent topics, including pop culture. (There was a debate back in 2009 about whether they were getting too political.)
Wachs appeared to have no idea this was coming based on his departing comments Friday morning.(Does a radio jock ever have any idea? Why give someone a chance to say goodbye? Atlanta-based Cumulus, which owns the station, doesn't do it that way.)
"We'll be back Monday morning," Wachs said at 9:55 a.m. in his final remarks on Rock 100.5. "We're not off Monday. We were just off last Monday. We have a full week ready for you after a fabulous Friday and a wonderful weekend until Monday morning at 5:30. Let me take a look at what's coming up. Bill Burr will be on the show and we'll talk to winners and losers from the SEC championship game after they've had some drinks. That's all Monday and more, of course, on the Regular Guys. Until then, we say peteetong. I implore you don't step on downed power lines. We will talk to you Monday. Have a good weekend."
Bailey was let go from The Game in July after a year on air. (You can read my profile on him from last year soon after he was hired.)
In Florida, Bailey did top 40 and "hot talk." He is not a sports expert. He cares about entertaining and engaging listeners, first and foremost. He admitted in a profile last year that his confidence can be interpreted as arrogant. His boss at The Game Terry Foxx said at the time: "He's not a traditional host. He kind of lives on the edge."
Not long after, without a major ratings upgrade in the mornings under his watch (but then again, he was hardly given any time), Bailey was unemployed. Like a lot of radio hosts who come here, he liked Atlanta and was determined to stay here. Cumulus, which owns Rock 100.5, was receptive.
Jake Cook, his former producer at the Game, said he thinks Bailey will bring Rock 100.5 "a new energy."
Bailey posted a Facebook page announcement this morning:
To say this is a dream come true is an understatement. I've only wanted a few things in my career and I knew 3 years ago that Cumulus could provide that for me. I wanted a passionate team around me...check. I wanted upper management that supported their talented for today and years down the road...check. And, I wanted to be in position to grow professionally....check.
Thanks to my new family for believing in me and driving this bus that seemed at some points to never have an end point. Thanks Mike (McVay), Greg (Ausham), Troy (Hanson), Scott (Jameson) and Rob (Roberts) and especially Mr. John Dickey. You to Paul...my little gaygent.
To my new team...I know, you know, so let's do this.
I'll be in my environment surrounded by guys and girls that have so much talent. A good friend of mine once told me, "Sometimes you have to take a step backwards in order to take 2 steps forward." Stepping...
Now onto that awkward 1st couple of months of being the new guy.
Rodney Ho
Rodney Ho
Von Haessler, who has never been shy about expressing his thoughts about the Regular Guys, posted this missive below on his Facebook page. In summary, he felt Wachs smothered the show with control issues and caused Von Haessler to retreat to the point management decided to dump Haessler. In his mind, the Regular Guys ended in a whimper, not a bang.
Behind the scenes, Larry began angling for more control over every aspect of the show. On the air, he used his new leverage to steer the daily broadcast toward himself, then fashioned a whole new persona that was meant to be the new focus of the show. This was a failure from day one.
TRG started as a series of phone discussions Larry and I had back in '93 and '94 while we were both out of radio. We would improvise for hours at a time about topics of the day. For awhile we entertained the idea of recording and selling those conversations on CD- sort of an early version of the podcast concept. We never did that but when we were given an opportunity on L.A. radio we took the improvisational style of those earlier phone calls and created The Regular Guys.
When we came to Atlanta and transformed the show from a talk radio thing to a morning show thing we added some typical elements found on other morning shows. But we retained a high-level of originality when compared to most morning show fare in the country. I was very proud of our early success because I knew we weren't just winning, we were also creative and original. The main thing that separated us from the pack was the improvised style of conversation, honed since those early phone conversations, that was still a large part of the morning version of the show. We deserved the success because it came at extremely long odds and was based on merit. We lead. We didn't follow.
A few years into the run at Rock 100.5 Larry began telling everyone on and off-air that the show belonged to him. That it was started by him, nurtured by him, and owned by him. I didn't really put up much of a fight in this period because I just figured everyone knew the truth. Well, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Larry gained complete control and began turning the conversational element of the show into a nightmare. The days of working together to entertain the audience were replaced with morning after morning of highly personalized sparring and competition. In short, my favorite aspect of the show quickly became a giant drag. I lost interest in fighting to keep the show original and went into retreat behind the scenes.
Larry had put his own personality, and branding, above the branding and reputation of the show. At some point he began using the built-up equity of the show to boost and promote his new vision of his own career. In the process, he smothered and killed what made the show stand out in the first place.
Larry will do fine. Eric will do fine.
The shame isn't that the long run of The Regular Guys is over. The shame is that it has ended with a whimper rather than a bang. When Larry took over he did everything he could to make the show more predictable and less spontaneous. The exact opposite of those early phone conversations. The exact opposite of what made the show great.
All things must pass. It was fun while it lasted. Sort of.
Reality: there will be no Larry/Eric reunion. Ever. That ship has long sailed.
On a personal note, Larry Wachs was the first person I ever interviewed - as a 10th grade English class assignment on Long Island. He was in his early 20s, the night jock at the top 40 station WBLI-FM there (known on air as Larry Adams) and I listened to him religiously in the mid-1980s. I recall him telling him he wanted to do a Howard Stern-style show in the future and he ultimately was able to make that dream come true.
He cares deeply about radio. He eats, drinks and sleeps it. The show was very much in his image, even if some listeners found him annoying.
Wachs fought hard to ensure it remained a pure talk show without music. Will that change under Bailey? We shall see.
And while there were a lot of people who disliked Wachs, this person on Facebook noted quite properly:
I never cared for Larry, but it was him and EVH who started TRG. Without them it simply isn't that anymore.
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