Posted by chicagomedia.org on September 08, 2008 at 11:03:51:
Cover Story: Bob & Tom (WRXQ locally) Head To TV
Every morning since 1983, Bob Kevoian and Tom Griswold have signed on to their flagship station, WFBQ/Indianapolis, and delivered the wildly popular Bob & Tom Show, complete with topical comedy, celebrity guests, original songs and pre-produced bits. The morning show became syndicated in 1995, and is now on in more than 150 markets in 40 states. Over the years, Bob & Tom also have released more than 50 comedy albums and DVDs, and had their own special on Comedy Central. The duo recently renewed their long-term contract with Premiere Radio Networks, and furthermore, they have added a nightly television show to their repertoire. On August 21 it was announced that The Bob & Tom Show - the television version - will begin airing on WGN America starting November 3. The show will run Monday through Friday from midnight to 1 a.m. EST (11 p.m. Central and 9 p.m. Pacific), and each television program will showcase highlights from the morning radio show. With this new television deal in place, FMQB spoke to Bob & Tom about tackling a new frontier.
Tell us about your television show starting in November. How do you plan to adapt the radio show to the television format?
Bob: As far as I'm concerned, the main thing is radio and to continue to do a good radio show while just having cameras peek in on us. At the end of the day they'll take the best 42 minutes of the show and air it. My main concern is that it still is a radio show. That's what I love doing. For the most part it's like having a Web cam in there, but there will be seven of them. The main thing is to keep doing the same thing, but now we have a bunch of people who are voyeuristic radio listeners.
Tom: It'll be interesting. We're going to get a behind-the-scenes radio show on television. There have been a few before, and we're going to try it a little bit differently. We're going to have seven cameras in there, and it'll be in HD. It will primarily be composed of a lot of our interviews, because a lot of the stuff that we do is radio-centric. It's theater of the mind. Staring at two deejays while playing a heavily produced bit is not going to be all that exciting, so it'll primarily focus on our interview segments. The good news is we've got four hours to pull a one-hour show from. We're not going to have to change the radio show around and stop doing our production stuff. It'll be like anything else. We'll live and learn and see what works. For people who have never seen a radio show being produced, it will be fun.
Did your Comedy Central special lead to this idea of doing a TV show, or is this something you’ve wanted to do for a while?
Bob: We've always had a Web camera in the studio so people who sign up on our Web site can go and watch what the heck we do. For the visual element, we have so many guests, that's probably what we'll highlight the most. If we have a comedian on the air we'll highlight that, or if we have a band or some Hollywood personality, they'll probably make that the focus of the television show for that day.
Tom: I had always wanted to do a live stream of the show for years when I found out you can get so-called 'lipstick cameras.' Although now we're going with HD, but even the HD cameras are remarkably small. I always thought it would be fun, and we have a streaming thing on our Web site. But this will be a lot more sophisticated, and we will stream the radio show online with the new cameras as well, so our Web site will look really cool. You've probably watched enough radio to know that a lot of it is very uninteresting, so we're going to really focus on stuff that does have a visual component.
Have you had to alter your style recently because of the FCC tightening content restrictions? Will you be conscious of that even more now that you're on TV?
Bob: I think everyone had to change up a little bit, but we're not sure what the rules are. That's the whole thing about indecency. If they would write down what the rules really are instead of making them so vague, then everyone would follow them as written. But right now – what they consider the rule – you can look at it and go, "What does that mean?" We try to follow the guidelines, but again, we still don't know what they really are. As for the TV show, everywhere but the Pacific time zone we'll be on in safe harbor hours. So who knows? It's very confusing.
Tom: I think the rules for TV are probably even a bit laxer than radio. I can't imagine anything that would be problematic for our content on TV. If there was to be something, we obviously have the advantage of being able to edit it after the fact. The show will air in the evening and it will be taped in the morning, so if we felt something was in any way unacceptable, we would edit it. Obviously in radio we have the digital delay, and we've had to hit it probably three or four times in the last couple of years. It's typically when some guest utters an expletive of some sort. We try to keep our content interesting and, to some degree, I suppose some of it is kind of bawdy. But none of it would be in the category of indecent or obscene.
As guys based in Indianapolis, how are you able to make your humor appeal to different markets and regions where people may have different values and ways of life? What is it that gives the show such mass appeal?
Bob: The majority of Americans are tuned in somehow, be it the Internet or whatever, and they seek information everyday. People want to know what's going on as far as celebrities and the election. We talk about general things that would interest anyone no matter where they live. It's radio for everyone. We cover so many aspects of life that it grabs one person everyday somehow. We talk about our own lives, and we're just people who talk into a microphone but we still do the same things other people do. We're everyday people who happen to have a radio show.
Tom: We've been real lucky on the radio and have had a lot of success in several far flung places, including places we've never been. We talk mostly about national and international issues - things everybody can relate to. We've been lucky enough to have a lot of guests that pass through town, or we can get them on the phone. We've developed a rapport with so many comedians and other people that we can keep the show generic enough that it can appeal across the board. Also, we're kind of a diverse bunch. Bob is from Los Angeles. I grew up in Ohio and went to college in New York City. {Sports anchor] Chick is from Southern Ohio. [News Director] Kristi Lee is from Indiana. We've obviously got a whole crew of people from various spots.
You are on in practically every state in the country. Is there anywhere you would still like to grow the show?
Bob: Yes, we'd like to eventually cover all 50 states. I don't think we're on in Alaska and Hawaii. There are a handful of states where we're not on.
Tom: The footprint of WGN America is so huge that we're hoping this will open up a bunch of radio doors for us and get us on the air in more places. There's plenty of room to grow. We'd really like to get on a lot more places. The radio industry is changing so quickly and I think comedy-based Talk formats are really the way to go. Some music formats are going to fade out, but comic-based morning shows are going to stick around. We should be able to score some more cities because of that.
There are so many other sources where people get music now, does that give an advantage to the Talk format? Do you think Talk programming is what more stations will have to do to stay relevant with people?
Tom: A lot of people just want to have a voice in their ear. I don't know about you, but I get kind of musiced-out after a while. Music's great, but it's become so pervasive in our culture that I walk around the grocery store and all of a sudden I hear this great off-cut from the Allman Brothers, and I'm going, "I love that song, but do I really want to have it with my green beans right now?" We obviously have lots of choices in our lives. That may be a big thing in the future - people want to hear people talking. More music is great in part of the day, but there are lots of times people want to hear somebody talking about something, and not just sports.
After doing this for so long, how do you keep developing the show and making it successful?
Bob: Unlike many other shows, we don't sit down after a show and say, "What are we going to do tomorrow? Let's plan on doing this." We all prep separately, so when we gather the next morning in the studio, Tom has something, I have something, Kristi has something. It's all fresh to everybody. Even if it's a matter of taking your family out to dinner and talking about how slow the waiter was. It's fresh to us everyday. As we wake up, we find out what happened with everybody and we find out what happens in the news and we just b.s. about it. Of course we do some recorded stuff here and there, but for the most part we wake up in the morning and talk about the day's events. It's pretty simple. We've been doing it for so long that I know exactly what reaction I'll get if I tell Tom about this or if I tell Kristi about that. We know each other so well, we know what topics to bring up that will get a good laugh and obviously make our listeners laugh.
What is it that keeps you inspired? Is it still just as exciting to you as it was in the beginning?
Tom: Oh yeah. I get just as nervous, and if I'm not prepared I get really nervous. I like doing a lot of preparation, a lot of reading and really knowing what's happening. But every once in a while you get so busy that you go in there and you haven't read the paper yet, and it's a little bit scary. No matter how long you've been doing it, you have the opportunity to fall flat on your face. I used to be in the restaurant business and it's the same thing. You can have great meals for five years in a row, but if someone comes in and you give them a really terrible meal, you're in trouble. I literally still get nervous everyday. When I'm on the air, I'm really focused and trying to do a good job.
You are working on another CD for the U.S.O. as well.
Bob: Yes, we'll do a CD for the U.S.O., and we have another comedy CD coming out around Christmas time as well for our listeners. This is our fourth for the U.S.O. It's not the same as the listener one. It's completely different and it's not for sale. We print these up send them directly to the U.S.O. and they send them out to the troops. It's amazing how many times we get a "thank you" on the street or mail from soldiers who were overseas and said, "That was such a nice shot of home." It's a good feeling. We're certainly an anti-war program, but we're pro-soldier. They're not the ones who started the war. Somebody has to do something for them. A lot of people forget about them.
Having listeners all over the place, you must get gifts from people around the country. What's one of the oddest things a listener has ever sent you?
Bob: They didn't send it to me, they sent it to Chick. It was a tombstone. The guy worked in granite. His job is to make tombstones and monuments, and he actually sent a tombstone that had Chick's name on it. It was kind of eerie, and I would say that's probably one of the oddest things we received. It's still sitting between my desk and his. I don't think it was meant as a morbid thing. It was just a way of this guy showing off his art to us.
Tom: Yesterday we got a set of condoms shaped like dolphins. I'm not kidding. I forget if they're called Dolphin Condoms or Porpoise Condoms. They look like little dolphins!
(FMQB)