Rock 100.5 was hunting for a new personality-based morning show last December and was drawn to the success of Elliot Segal’s “Elliot in the Morning” on DC101, an alternative rock station in Washington, D.C.
Segal came down to Atlanta and spent a couple of days checking the city out and speaking to Rock 100.5 boss Sean Shannon. He felt like they were on the same page as he was and decided to give Atlanta a shot.
“Sean and I walked the Beltline and talked radio for hours,” Segal said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also connected with Brian Phillips, Shannon’s boss at Atlanta-based Cumulus Media who had started 99X back in the early 1990s. “We felt like this was a good fit,” he added.
The show debuted on Rock 100.5 this past Monday.
Segal, who owns his show, hasn’t been too aggressive with syndication. He has been heard in Richmond, Virginia, for several years. He recently added Kansas City, Missouri. (He has had previous syndication stints in New York and Maryland.)
His show, which is a four-person team, focuses very much on pop culture, sports and life in general. The past couple of days, he had long discussions about iconic tobacco brand Red Man changing its name, rats ending up in the toilet and folks being distracted at weddings by major sports events. He took a lot of calls. (You can sample some clips here.)
Segal said he works hard at his craft and expects his cast to do the same.
“I’m very competitive,” he said. “It’s dorky. I love radio. It’s the work ethic in me. I need to put the best product out every day.”
Two of his cast members are vets: Diane Stupar-Hughes has been there since the beginning and Tyler Molnar joined in the mid-2000s. Krysten Warnes is the relative newbie who joined last year.
Segal runs his show from 5:44 a.m. to whenever he finishes. He said he just ends when he feels it’s the right time to close shop, which is anywhere from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
‘I personally believe he’s a once-in-a-generation talent,” said Shannon, vice president and marketing manager for Cumulus Atlanta. “He has an insatiable curiosity. The guy never stops show prepping. He’ll call me at 8 p.m.. He’s still working on the show then. He has that kind of passion.”
Shannon said Segal’s inability to stick with a clock makes him unable to do a traditional syndicated show that would typically run on dozens of stations nationwide at once. As a result, it took Shannon some time to figure out a way to make Segal work for Rock 100.5.
Segal does segments over his five-hour show that might run three minutes or 25 minutes. But Rock 100.5 doesn’t know ahead of time. Syndicated shows typically operate on a strict schedule per hour, meaning bits had to be finished at a particular time to the second so local traffic, news and ads could run. Segal is not like that. So Shannon has a local producer in Atlanta tracking Segal at all times and once Segal is finished, Rock 100.5 can then run local ads and traffic bits.
A Houston native, Segal has an impressive resumé, including working with Elvis Duran at pop station Z100 in New York City. After joining DC101 in 1999, he was known back in the 2000s as a “shock jock” and was fined by the FCC in 2004 for indecency charges back when that was more common. He hasn’t gotten into trouble ever since.
Indeed, the show isn’t quite as wild as it used to be, but Segal is fine with the show’s evolution.
“I don’t feel like I can’t talk about anything in particular,” he said. “There’s nothing I can’t do. I just feel like it has be presented differently. Times change.”
Segal doesn’t worry too much about changing listening habits that are leading younger people to podcasts, Spotify and other social media outlets over radio.
“Radio will survive as long as the content is good,” Segal said. “Will the delivery methods change, okay, maybe. That’s way above my head. I just have to hope what’s coming out of my speaker is compelling.”
He hopes to come down to Atlanta regularly and build his Rock 100.5 audience.
And while other syndicated shows will create special city-specific content for that particular station, Segal’s show won’t do that. He said if there is a good story to talk about out of Atlanta vs., say, Milwaukee, he’ll pick Atlanta. But he won’t pander to the city in an obvious way.
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