FMQB INTERVIEW - SENTENCE SERVED! OPIE AND ANTHONY ARE BACK

The following interview comes to us courtesy of FMQB:

Sentence Served! Opie & Anthony Are Back!

For those of you that forgot - Pause. Rewind. Replay. Warm the O&A memory chip. On August 15, 2002, two contestants in a Sex For Sam contest being run by the WNEW/New York City afternoon drive personalities were arrested after allegedly having sex in New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Sex for Sam was an Infinity management approved contest where contestants would allegedly have sex in public places around Manhattan in an effort to score enough points to win a trip to the Sam Adams Brewery in Boston. The police arrested the couple and charged them with public lewdness. Comedian Paul Mercurio was also arrested and charged with acting in concert, as he was nearby, giving the "play by play" to O&A's national audience via cell phone. For the record, sex in the church was good for 25 points and the couple also gained a "two point conversion" for allegedly having "balloon knot sex."

Outrage ensued and the FCC complaints rolled in. It wasn't long before a statement sent by Infinity to the press announcing the show's cancellation was released, apparently prior to O&A learning of their fate. The FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture against Infinity, fining the company the maximum amount of $357,500 ($27,500 per affiliate), for "apparently willfully and repeatedly broadcasting indecent material during the afternoon of August 15, 2002, in connection with the Opie & Anthony show."

Opie & Anthony have had a lot on their minds as they sat on the broadcast sidelines over the 2+ years since their cancellation. "We never got fired," Opie reminds me. In waiting for their contract with Infinity to expire, they sought new opportunities for their talents, deciding on XM Satellite Radio as the vehicle for their return. Though one would expect the duo to have spent a good portion of their two sideline years stewing over the events that led to the cancellation - they didn't. "I have nothing bad to say about Mel Karmazin," says Opie. "I truly believe to this day that he did not want to get rid of us. I think there was a whole corporate political thing that he got caught up in. He understood our show. He understood what it meant to the company, and he knew how to sell it and knew how to - in a way - control it. The guy gave us a great break. I have nothing bad to say about him, nothing."

Karmazin and Infinity gave O&A the chance of a lifetime with a drive time slot in New York City and syndication to other markets. They were on the verge of becoming another crown jewel of the Infinity broadcast empire, despite wrangling within the company over what to do with them. Howard Stern was allegedly vocal behind-the-scenes about not wanting O&A on in morning drive, thus their afternoon drive slot. Former WXRK PD Steve Kingston demanded record labels keep artists off of O&A's show and on K-Rock with then-afternoon driver Cane. So even as O&A were building their fan base nationally, the tension within their own company was building.

"I never understood that, because Anthony and I were just all about entertaining our listeners and having a lot of fun, and then people just took it so personally," reflects Opie. "You're making a good living, why don't you just relax? If you're supposed to be this great personality, why don't you fight back instead of behind- the-scenes whining and crying to the bosses and running to Mel Karmazin? To me there's a little vendetta there that may come out as we move forward."

"We're not obsessed with anybody or anything," adds Anthony. "We understood the game we were playing so some people play on a little more of an even field than others get to play on. We were shut down and gagged in some instances as to what we could talk about as far as personalities went in the company that we worked for. And, it's going to be nice not to have that problem."

With O&A's XM channel requiring an extra cost to gain access to it, industry insiders are calling their channel the HBO of satellite radio. They are stepping into uncharted waters for as high-profile personalities moving fully to satellite radio. "It's gotten to the point where you can't do an entertaining show on regular radio," says Anthony. "It can't be done. If you even get close to the edge, management is hammering you. So you've just got to sit there and be boring. I can't listen to regular radio."

"A lot of people might think Anthony's saying that because we got kicked off regular radio," says Opie. "We were saying this way before we got fired, about how boring it was getting out there in general."

"Edgy these days seems to be saying you're being edgy and the FCC is listening to you," zings Anthony with the one-liner. "And you're doing nothing," comes the punch line from Opie.

Starting October 4, XM listeners will be able to hear O&A as they return to the broadcast airwaves, though fans might want to watch out for a little something on Friday, October 1, the day their Infinity servitude is done. "I thought it would be cool to just pop on the air at midnight, the second our contract is up," says Anthony.

Mike Bacon and I met up with O&A while they were in Philadelphia. We dropped by their hotel on a Saturday morning while they were in town for some promotional appearances at retail outlets and at Dave & Busters, all to promote their upcoming XM move. In this exclusive interview, O&A come clean and lay it all on the line about why they chose XM, what content to expect on their new broadcast playground and they show their focus on developing, promoting and launching their new channel of 24/7 "uncut & uncensored" O&A.

By Michael Parrish

Interview text:

Parrish: Let's start by talking about the promo tour and what you guys are doing now by going out and hawking XM at various locations.

Anthony: Hawking our wares. (laughs) We get in the wagon with the snake oil... What we're doing now is letting people know we're back and where we're going to be broadcasting from - XM. It's important that the listeners we had while we were on broadcast radio know where they can catch us now.

Parrish: Yesterday you were at retail stores.

Anthony: Yeah, that was pretty much to get-to-know the people who are going to be selling XM. Get to know the retailers and shake some hands. That helps out if you get a guy who works at a Best Buy or Circuit City that doesn't give a shit which company is better or what has better programming. When a customer comes in and asks for satellite radio, he's just going to flip and coin. If we go in there and shake some hands and hook up and tell him that Opie & Anthony is original programming and is available on XM, I think he'll be more apt to tell the next guy who comes in to try XM.

Parrish: So, you're relying on retail clerks selling you guys and XM to customers.

Anthony: At the beginning. We're chomping at the bit to get back on [the air], because the best way that we've always had at selling our show is doing the show. We have to be doing the show, and when somebody that hears it wants to hear it again, they'll hook themselves up with XM. It's the same way it works with a broadcast radio.

Opie: Then we'll stir some shit up. We'll get our names in the paper again and it'll say Opie & Anthony of XM Satellite Radio, and the audience will build once again. That's what we had to do at WNEW. That station was so awful when we got there that no one had the station on a preset. Anthony and I had to really mix it up and get our names out there by getting press and stuff, and slowly but surely the show built. People put WNEW back on their preset and then it became word of mouth, and the next thing you know we're No. 1 in many, many markets all across the country. We're pretty much starting on that same level again, which is kind of exciting.

Bacon: Spread the virus.

Opie: Exactly. Our listeners are trained to help us out at this point; it's unbelievable what they do. They have been trading bits all over the world. We get e-mail from people in the craziest places that never had the show on, like "I'm your biggest fan," and you read the e-mail and they're from Alabama. We were nowhere near Alabama, but they found our shit on line and then wanted more and more, and started downloading it like crazy.

Parrish: It's amazing when appearances you guys have done over the last couple of years - showing up at Norton gigs - that the videos of those show up on-line.

Anthony: The people have been great. Two years, man. We've been off the air two years and these people are still there.

Parrish: Your message board is still very active.

Opie: We set this up nice before we got fired. Anthony and I were fully aware that one day we were going to get fired. We knew because we were just doing what we wanted to do, a real edgy show. I hate to use the word "shocking," because it was a lot more than that. So we set it up. We told our listeners: "Look man, we're not going to be here some day." So they started up the Web sites and started this whole network of fan sites and things like that, so when we did get fired it never went away because they took the ball and ran with it from that point on.

Parrish: Talk about what the show is going to be like when you guys come back. Define "uncut and uncensored" - the tagline that is on the XM Web site.

Anthony: A lot of people have been asking: Now that you have no FCC restrictions over your head, what's the show going to be like? Opie and I have spoken about this, and we don't see the show really changing much. We see us now being able to do the show that we wanted to do without worrying about getting fired right after the show is over, or wondering if three or four-months down the road they were going to get that FCC complaint. This now gives us the forum to do the show we want to do, but it's not much different than the show we've been doing. We know it got us where we were, and we'd be stupid to change that. The good thing about not having the FCC restrictions is that if we ever want to really go crazy, it's available to us. We've got that weapon in our back pockets.

Opie: But, most of the fun was working around some of the language and coming up with clever words and stuff. It's simple as this: "Balloon knot" is funny, saying "asshole" is not funny. It's so simplistic, but we're all about funny so why would we stop saying balloon knot to say asshole? I don't know, but there may be an occasion that we just need to let someone have it, and that's going to be a lot of fun. Way before Sex For Sam, our show was slowly but surely being eroded by the powers that be. It was all stuff that was well within the FCC guidelines, but people started to get a little nervous - advertisers, upper management, other radio personalities in the company, so they took away so much crap that the FCC would never have had a problem with us. That's the stuff we truly want back more than anything.

Anthony: Yeah, it's not just going to be about going on and saying, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

Parrish: Looking forward to the show, it's going to be 6-10am live for East Coast time, and then you're just going to rerun that from 7-11am Pacific?

Opie: Anthony and I wanted a new challenge. We always wanted to do morning radio, but we were kind of shut out from doing morning radio because the company had Howard Stern and they just didn't want us to compete with him on any level. We want the change of lifestyle and to try out morning radio. The cool thing about having our own channel is that as soon as the show is over, they're going to rerun it, and they're going to rerun it a total of three times during the day. Basically, XM's strategy is to have our show in morning drive and afternoon drive for the East coast and the West coast. It also works out well for us because, say there's an event that we want to broadcast from that's in the afternoon, we can do the show live in the afternoon. It opens up some possibilities that were completely unavailable and unrealistic in broadcast radio. We're going to reinvent a lot of things.
They want us in mornings because they want their best show in mornings and to be proud of it and be the benchmark for XM. But, we might decide in the summer that we want to do afternoon radio for a while and we can do that. If we go on the road and do some road shows, since we have our own channel, we can broadcast the whole thing on XM. How cool would that be? The possibilities are truly endless. Let's say Norton goes to Sacramento and does a club date or something, we can cut a deal with XM to broadcast his comedy show live on XM. It's going to be a lot of fun to program the whole channel.

Parrish: That's one of the things I wanted to ask about - programming beyond just your show. You guys get on and do your four-hour show and you don't even have to stop at four hours, just stop whenever you want. But like you said, you could broadcast a Norton gig or even build a show about the music you like this week.

Anthony: Exactly. It's something that's going to evolve as we're on the air and we see what we want to do. That's a great example because we were talking about that too.

Opie: Yeah, I want to go back to my roots a little bit. I was a music jock for a while. How cool, me just hanging out segueing songs, and this is what's in my iPod, or whatever. I don't have to follow any stupid format and can get as crazy as I want.

Anthony: It's pretty cool when you realize that a lot of the boundaries of standard broadcast radio aren't there any more. Not just FCC regulations, but things like the ability to go on and do a show at 11pm if I want to spin some tunes. When you finally realize something like that you go, "Oh! I can do that? Wow!! Holy shit!" You just never think of those things in broadcast radio, and with satellite it opens up those possibilities. As we're on the air, the longer we're on the air, I'm sure we're going to figure out other really cool things to do with the channel.

Bacon: It's like having your own radio station.

Anthony: It pretty much amounts to our own radio station.

Opie: It's so exciting. That's why when we decided if we should go back to broadcast radio or satellite, it was a no-brainer.

Parrish: Obviously that's why a terrestrial broadcast company like Citadel that was courting you guys pretty hard and wanted you guys lost out. But what made the coin flip go to XM over Sirius?

Opie: We had some good relationships with Sirius, and it's kind of exciting. They have their nerve center right in New York, but when it came down to it, we did our research. We know more about these two companies than most of the guys on Wall Street. It came down to XM is in a better position to give us what we want. They have more subscribers. Their technology is way ahead of Sirius. They seem to get it a little bit more.

Anthony: Yeah, they seem to be a little more open to what we do. I think it's something a little more than just the head start they got in the launch of their programming, because they just seem to be really running away with it. There's a dedication in there. When you go to D.C. and hang out with these people, they're really into what's going on and right on top of things. They just seem to have that edge over Sirius.

Parrish: Was there a temptation to try traditional radio and sign with Citadel?

Anthony: We discussed everything. Every offer that came across the table, we would sit down and have serious discussions about it. It wasn't worth it for us to go back to broadcast radio. When we went through the pros and the cons, it didn't work out. To sit there in a studio and try to do our show with what we knew was going to happen, the GM and a PD over our shoulders the whole time, picking every word apart. I'm sure a line of guys on dump buttons just dumping out of everything we say. Every event or spontaneous event that we'd want to pull off, which was a big part of our show, would have to be scrutinized by lawyers and upper management. How could we possibly do a show in that environment? It couldn't have been done.

Opie: It was all the exposure we had. Simple as this, we would have a bulls-eye on our head.

Anthony: A bulls-eye immediately. The second we did anything a little edgy, they would be all over us.

Opie: We made a name for ourselves at first because we were so under the radar. We were in such an underdog position that we were able to get away with, at times, murder. Anthony and I understood exactly what we could and couldn't get away with. Now, going back with all the exposure we had, forget it man, the bulls-eye on our head is not worth it.

Parrish: It's still there. The Concerned Women for America made a statement already: "If O&A and their new bosses don't understand that broadcasting via satellite radio is radio communication, they not only need a lesson in decency, they need remedial reading too." Their point is that you're still on a radio, albeit satellite radio, and the FCC can still come after you.

Opie: Yeah, but we're not doing satellite radio so we can shove it up the FCC.

Anthony: I think there are other things more important for women to be concerned about.

Opie: When it comes down to it, people have to understand, you have to tell XM they want to hear us. The argument with commercial radio was: "Look, I turned on the radio in my car; I didn't know this filth was on the radio and I had my kids in the backseat and my arms went numb and I couldn't reach the knob."

Parrish: Oh, I get it, but that bulls-eye is still going to be out there.

Opie: But that argument is over. People have to go to XM and say I will pay the $2 a month to listen to Opie & Anthony.

Parrish: Do you have access to your old archives from Infinity, or is that their property?

Anthony: That's another up-in-the-air negotiable. That's a legal thing.

Opie: I guess technically they own all the stuff we did at 'NEW, but that's fine. Anthony and I don't really need all that stuff anyway.

Anthony: A lot of that stuff is out there now on the Web. You go to eBay and you'll see tons of CDs, thousands of hours worth, box sets that people are selling. You can go to many Web sites on-line and download all the material that we were doing over the three or so years that we were at 'NEW. It's all there. It's made a lot of people fans throughout the country and around the world, so it's serving its purpose even now.

Opie: Yeah, it's been traded so much that the stuff is pretty burnt out anyway, so that's fine. We'll just start over; that's the excitement of this whole thing.

Parrish: So where does this become profitable for XM? Are there a certain amount of subscriptions you guys need to reach?

Anthony: They have that figured out upstairs somewhere. It's one of those things.

Parrish: You don't have that hanging over your head?

Anthony: No.

Parrish: Will you have commercials?

Opie: We can have commercials. Just enough so we can take a breather and do what we have to do, and they'll make a little extra money off it - that's fine, whatever.

Bacon: Will you do live reads?

Opie: Yeah, we'll possibly do live reads.

Parrish: With no ratings, how will you measure success?

Opie: Satellite radio is all about subs. That's all they talk about: subs, subs, subs. Pre-sale for our show has been really hot so far. Early on they're extremely happy and ecstatic. The cool thing is that we don't have Arbitron hanging over our heads. I don't know if Anthony obsessed like I did, but I obsessed so bad over Arbitron, and to know that is out of the game is going to help me tremendously to sleep at night.

Anthony: The best thing is, and it sounds idealistic, the best way to measure success is good shows, which is pretty much what it should be. If we're doing good shows, people are going to come on board, and that's it. Not having to worry about Arbitron numbers is great.

Parrish: What's the first show going to be like when you first open the mic? You obviously say you're happy to be back on the air. But then do you go into politics? Do you go into what happened with the FCC? What do you start talking about?

Anthony: There are 10,000 things we can talk about when that happens. It's going to be so hard to keep in control and keep focused and actually stick to some subject manner in a linear fashion and not just have diarrhea and want to talk about two years.

Opie: Anthony is well prepared for the comeback; I'm well prepared for the comeback. But for us to sit down with an outline like, okay, we're going to start the first break by saying how we got fucked by the FCC and Viacom and how Howard Stern's a dick, blah, blah. And then we'll move onto a little political break so we look balanced, and then we'll take a sports break here. We think about it all the time, but in the end we're just going to turn on the mics and it's just going to flow. That's why we've been successful. We're celebrating ten years together now. . We have this chemistry. I can look at Anthony and know what he's thinking. He knows where I want to go and I know where he wants to go; we set each other up beautifully.

Anthony: We've never written down what we're going to talk about on any given day.

Opie: You've just got to be well prepared for the radio show. Have confidence, turn on the mics, and just go. That's what's going to happen on that first day.

Parrish: Will you be able to sleep the night before?

Anthony: No.

Opie: I don't think we'll take a vacation day for at least six straight months.

Anthony: Yeah, I had enough time off.

Opie: It's going to be overwhelming. It was funny, sometimes when we were at 'NEW, it was like pulling teeth some days. Any radio personality knows that. Some days you just don't have shit in the can and you're not feeling up to it...

Anthony: Nothing to work with.

Opie: That pressure sucks sometimes. But to know we have a pile of shit that we can go to anytime is going to be cool.

Parrish: How important is it for XM - and Sirius - to continue to draw people like yourselves to the medium?

Anthony: This is the next step. We're the first really high-profile show that has crossed over to satellite. The circumstances that put us in that position are original. I think it's going to be harder to draw any real high-profile names over to satellite at this point. But breaking the ice like this is a great thing for satellite radio.

Opie: If we're successful, I think the floodgates will open.

Parrish: How ironic that you guys could be setting the model for Howard Stern to go through this.

Anthony: He's ripping us off, Robin.

Opie: For the first time, Howard can't say that we're ripping him off.

Anthony: As satellite radio grows and becomes easier to get, a lot more people are going to step up and seriously consider satellite as an option to terrestrial radio, as far as working for radio goes.

Opie: XM is not going to go away. People have to start realizing that. Commercial radio has to figure out how to compete.

Parrish: Who is selling your show? Is it the sales staff at XM? Have you met and talked with them to clue them in on what you guys are about?

Opie: They're already fans. There's a guy who is in charge of selling our show, Dee Scott. He listened to us in Boston. He was on the other side of our beatings. We beat him up pretty good. Not him personally, but the station he was working at. He gets it. He understands the power of the show and is extremely excited to sell it.

Bacon: Is television an option for the future?

Opie: There's definite talk to do some kind of TV version of our show. We've been talking about it for years, and as much as Howard thinks everyone's ripping him off, the fact is Anthony and I know we do our thing and if we do a TV show, we want to make sure that people will tune in and go, "Okay, this is an Opie & Anthony show."

Anthony: More than just lipstick cams in the corner of the studio and doing interviews with strippers. We're definitely looking.

Parrish: Any last thoughts?

Opie: Chomping at the bit to get back on.

Anthony: The revolution begins October 4! Look out!

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