10 Questions with ... Don Geronimo

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

WROK/Rockford, WKTQ/Pittsburgh, WXLO (99X)/New York, WPRO-FM/Providence, WDRQ/Detroit, KIIS/Los Angeles, WLS-FM and WBBM-FM (B96)/Chicago, WPGC/Washington, "Don and Mike Show" with Mike O'Meara on WAVA and WJFK/Washington and Westwood One, WOCM/Ocean City, MD-WGMD/Rehoboth Beach, DE-WCBS-FM/New York (while on hiatus from CBS), KHTK/Sacramento

NOTE: The following is a transcript of an interview conducted live on the air at KHTK on September 10, 2010

1. During the time between the old show and now, when did the urge hit you that you had to be back on the air? You ended the old show, you go out to Ocean City... I'm wondering if there was a point when you felt like, okay, that's it, I just have to get back in front of a mic?

The day that I left the old show. I mean, I knew when I got in my car, I knew it the day that I left. I had to leave, because, you know, Freda had died and I had to get my life together. There were things more important to do than a radio show. So I walked away from it. But I knew the moment I got in my car. Are you kidding me? It's the only thing I've known how to do in my whole life. I love it and I missed it.

2. When you worked at the smaller stations (WOCM/Ocean City, MD and WGMD/Rehoboth Beach) during the time you were away, what would you say you learned from that experience?

Well, you see, this is where I'm going to be honest with people. I'm not going to give you my smart-ass answer. The real answer is that even in the bad situation, at the staion in the bar (WOCM), I learned a lot. And working on that little Contemporary Christian conservative station, I learned a lot, too.

I worked very briefly at the station where I played records, but at the station that was talk, the station that was conservative talk, that was a real challenge, because I was thrown into a hostile environment where nobody wanted to hear what I wanted to say, nobody wanted to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, and it was a real... hatred is too strong a word, but it's a very small community and I was like a round peg that was put into a square hole. And as stupid as it sounds, it made me into a "better broadcaster." Because what I did was, I learned again how to tell someone to go to Hell without just saying "go to Hell." Not that that's the only thinkg I had learned, but I was privileged that for so many years I worked in a format where I could just say "kiss my ass." All of a sudden I'm working at a radio station where, first of all, they didn't even want you saying the word "ass." I think it would be out of line to say even "kiss my butt."

So I would have to come up with clever ways to fight off the senior citizens who called in, many of them on oxygen machines, to complain that Michael Savage wasn't on. My first response would be, I would take calls like, "Where is Michael Savage?", and what I WANTED to say was, "somebody please turn off your oxygen." And then I found out that one of the big sponsors on this station was a funeral home. I also had to learn, guess what, it doesn't work to say "I hope you jump off a cliff. I'll be right back... 'Have you just lost a loved one? Wilkes Funeral Home is here for you.'" I also had to relearn doing everything for myself. I always ran my own board, I pushed oll the buttons myself. But at this radio station, man, you would walk through the door at 9:00 and it was like, you're in there with nobody helping you. There was one broke-ass computer, telephones that didn't really work and a microphone that was tempremental. So the whole thing was weird, but I want to tell you something, I sure walked out of that situation... if I ever walked in thinking that my S didn't stink, I walked out positive that my S did stink. So there you go. I guess a little humility is what I learned.

3. (While you were at WGMD) did it ever occur to you that you would want to do political talk? Would it ever occur to you to do a political talk show?

No, and they wanted me to. At one point, when I would talk to Dan (Gaffney), the program director, off the air I would say to him... sometimes, Perry, i would get so frustrated I would say to him, why did you even hire me? I know that it's a conservative station, I know that, but it's like anything I do would be taken out of context and the people hated it. For instance, this whole station, 24 hours a day, it's "Obama sucks," "Obama sucks," everything's Obama's fault. And he said, "yeah, why don't you go on the air and say that?" Okay, great, because I want to be the anti-Rush Limbaugh. No, I don't care enough. I found that disheartening. After a little while, it was like, you're walking into -- I guess it would be like someone walking into a station like the old WJFK with guy talk. After a while, you'd go, "all these guys ever do is talk about sex and farts and football." Well, all they ever did at this station was talk about, even OFF the air, you know, it's always about how the government is out to getcha. Something's always wrong, it's always the government's fault. It's the minorities' fault, it's the government's fault, it's Obama's fault. We gotta do something about this, but we don't really WANT to do something about this. It was nonsense.

In that regard, Perry, it made me realize how screwed up radio is, because that passes now, even in our biggest cities now, that pases for big time radio. That same kind of garbage. That same kind of political hoohah. Which isn't really political hoohah -- it's mainly guys, I'm not talking about the small-market guys. It's like Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck, the only reason he's doing this schtick is that he couldn't do a morning zoo.

4. Sacramento, even in the old days with the old show, was always a strong market for you. What do you think the reason for that is?

Because they're stupid. (laughs) Because they're really stupid in the head. (more laughter) How will that go over in print?

No, here's the connection: I'm stupid and so are they.

5. One of the things that shows off your music background is that every song you play, you absolutely have to talk it up and hit the post, and it's something they don't do much anymore on Top 40 radio and music radio in general, especially with the new PPM; the consultants, after looking at the numbers, have all pretty much told all of the hosts to "shut up and play the music." Do you think there's a future for personality in music radio? Is there a future in music radio?

Yeah, I would think so. What I hear on the radio as far as music radio goes, these guys are all scared of their shadows. They don't want to offend anybody, they don't want anything that sets themselves apart. They want to sound as much like an iPod as they possibly can. Well, congratulations, you've taken the whole human element out of it. I mean, part of my thing with music radio, Perry, is that even when I was IN music radio I hated it because focus groups and research killed radio. You get a bunch of people in a room, listeners, and you feed them pizza and Coca-Cola. And then you say, "what do you hate about radio station KXXX?" And one person says, "well, I don't like the DJs talking." Boom. It's like a domino effect. I mean, it's a polarizing fact on a radio station.

What you gotta do is have the balls to say to the listeners, not to their face, but say, we're a personality radio station. If you want to hear nothing but music non-stop, go to the Internet, go to the iPod, go to any other radio station in town. It seems to me it would be wide open.

The radio station in New York, CBS-FM, now, granted, they're an Oldies station, but those disc jockeys, they get to talk whenever they want. And they get to say whatever they want. Now, they don't go on the air and go, "hey, CBS-FM, how much ejaculation do you think a whale has?" (ed. note: the interview was preceded by a discussion on whale penis) But they can go on the air and say "CBS-FM, that Lindsay Lohan, she's crazy, yeah! Here's Barbra Streisand on CBS-FM!" That's the formula that used to work for radio. I mean, what's the problem with some guy just coming on over an intro and just, just saying something stupid? You're making a human connection with people. Seems to me that they've taken -- one thing I noticed in the two years that I was gone from radio is that they've taken the human element out. It's like they're so afraid that a disc jockey might do something that offends or is different that they would just rather go vanilla. "Listen, if you tell a joke, someone might be offended. So, you know what's best? Don't tell a joke. And guess what we found out? People don't like to hear talk on the radio. So don't talk." Jesus, that's stupid.

6. How do you prepare for the show? What's your process?

Masturbate. Compulsively. It relaxes and centers me.

The real answer to that is that I prep all the time. I prep all the time. I'm always reading or watching TV or looking at the Internet and writing down notes and seeing things that I want to talk about. Because you can get so much out of so little. You know what I mean? it seems to me that the easiest thing to do is to relate to people on the radio, talk about your life.

I had a street fair lat week, a Labor Day street fair. A lot of people have street fairs. We had a street fair and they hired a porta-potty and someone had some sort of bowel explosion in there, and the thing had poop all over the place. Well, for most disc jockeys, I don't think that they would say, "oh, that's fodder for my show." But I thought it was. I mean, anything that happens to me, I write it down and talk about it. Someone's gotta be able to relate to it.

It's not a hard format to figure out, for all the other dummies out there in radio. It's really not hard. You know, sometimes you get guys on the radio who go, "Yeah, I talk about my life, hey, my wife is super." Well, listen, everybody's wife is super. What you want is the guy that'll get on the radio occasionally and say, "guess what, I would never DO this but I'd like to cut my wife's head off." I'm not advocating that anyone cut their wife's head off. What I'm saying is that it's so easy to be phony and listeners see through it. Listeners see right through it. They would rather hear something that makes them go "ooh" and turn their head like a dog a little bit, you know, like when a dog's interested, he turns his head that way. I mean, you'd rather hear something compelling, something that you can relate to. We got no problem in this country, Perry, getting on the radio and bitching about how screwed up we are as a country and all the problems we have and yada yada this and this guy's doing this and this guy's doing that. But it seems to me that the basic stuff of everyday life has been left out then. It's just gone.

7. What makes you laugh?

Farts.

Next question!

8. How do you think you've changed in the time between the old show and now?

I appreciate it more. I appreciate it a lot more.

I've been in radio so long -- I'm almost 52, I got my first full-time job when I was 13 -- I don't want to say I took it for granted, but I mentioned, when I left the old show I felt like I was out of the club. And when I was reading the (former Colts and Bucs coach) Tony Dungy book, the point of that book was, don't be afraid to be a man. And I don't mean that in a macho way. The whole point of that book is, don't be afraid to be a man and look at yourself in the mirror and say "what do I gotta do?" And he wrote something that resonated with me, and that was, sometimes you gotta take a couple of steps backwards, okay? He wrote specifically about when he was a coach, coming up as a coach, that he got offered jobs that he didn't take, and he did take some jobs that were wrong, but eventually he figured out that to be the person he wanted to be, he was gonna have to maybe go to a smaller city, to a smaller team, and start over. And that really resonated with me. The thought that I did a show on the radio and I lived my life on the radio and my wife was killed in a car wreck and I played all that out on the radio, and I got burned out and I didn't know what I was gonna do -- hold on a second. I read that book and it became clear to me. Because the only thing that was keeping me in that job, really, was the money. Because I was making ridiculous money. Othewrwise, I would have said, like, a year earlier, two years earlier, this is crazy, get me out of here. And I had to look at myself, like that book indicated, and say, what am I doing here? Am I doing this for money, or am I doing this to get myself together? Okay, I will take the two steps backwards. I will walk away from this job, and all this guaranteed money, and I'm not gonna be able to work in this industry for two years. But it's okay.

I mean, that's the impact that that book had on me, the fact that if you just look at yourself in the face, you look at yourself in the mirror and say, "I'm okay, I'm okay with it," and... it's the same thing, the same thing about coming to Sacramento. Same thing. Two steps backwards. Not that Sacra... and I say that with no offense to Sacramento. Sacramento is not the largest media market in the country. Let's face it, if you want to get noticed in the media, you don't necessarily go to Sacramento. But for me it was right, and I see this now... I used this philosophy in selecting what job I was going to take next.

9. Of what are you most proud?

My son.

10. Fill in the blank: I can't make it through the day without ____________.

...crystal meth.

What's the best advice you ever got?

Watch out for (producer) Carmichael Dave.

What's the worst advice you ever got?

Hire Carmichael Dave.

What do you think about Madden 11?

Ha, finally, a question I can really pontificate on! I love it. I love it 40 gallons' worth. If I was a whale, it would be a 40 gallon game.

I love it. It gets better every year.