Jean Pearce, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005

Story Continues Below

  That man, talk radio insiders say, is likely to be Chicago FM radio’s Erich “Mancow” Muller.

Mancow is best known nationally for his highly-rated gig each morning on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” cable show.

But in Chicago and the talk radio world, Mancow is already legendary.

Mancow claims the title as the #1 talker in the nation’s number three market as his “Mancow's Morning Madhouse” show airs each morning on FM powerhouse station WKQX.

Mancow also trounces Stern there when they go head-to-head. In the key demo of males 18 to 39, Mancow clobbered Stern in the summer Arbitron ratings, beating him by more than three full shares.

Seeing the opportunity to fill Stern’s void, one of the country’s largest radio syndicators, Talk Radio Network, has signed Mancow to a multi-year syndication agreement.

TRN distributes some of the country's hottest talk shows, and has a client base that includes Laura Ingraham and Michael Savage.

Talk Radio Network, says Mancow, “has the proven track record to attract younger demos to the radio and keep them there by discussing topics such as music, movies, pop culture, terrorism, personal freedoms and anything else that people are talking about ….”

Mancow denies he is a “shock jock” of the Stern mold.

A self-described “conservative libertarian,” Muller has somehow managed to successfully straddle two totally different worlds that rarely collide: FM talk and conservative talk radio found on the AM dial.

“I am not a shock jock,” Mancow tells Talkers magazine in a recent interview. “People who say that have never heard my show.”

“We do subjects,” he insists, “We do subjects that matter.”

Cover Story

This month, Muller graced the cover of Talkers Magazine, the leading trade publication of the talk radio industry.

“Mancow makes his move,” the headline reads. The cover featured Muller holding a picture of Stern with an “X” across Stern’s face.

“I see him being huge,” Talkers publisher and industry guru Michael Harrison told NewsMax. “I see him being the standard of the next level of lifestyle and young-adult oriented talk show hosts.”

Talk Radio Network touts Mancow as FCC-lite. That might be defined as lots of fun, a little raunch, but no FCC fines that so bedeviled Stern’s show and infuriated his affiliates.

For sure Mancow sowed his oats in his younger days on radio -- earning him his legendary status.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton tied up Los Angeles International Airport, delaying arrivals and departures by an hour while he got a $200 haircut aboard Air Force One.

The incident so angered Muller he pulled a similar stunt on the Oakland Bay Bridge while working for San Francisco’s Bay Area’s KSOL-FM.

Muller and a sidekick stalled traffic for over an hour after two vans from the station came to a halt around 8:15 a.m. in the bridge’s westbound lanes. Muller told listeners he had stopped to get a haircut.

“It was a political statement against Bill Clinton,” Muller explained to Talkers. It also helped ratings. “And people say, well, isn’t that what made you? No. No you’re going to listen [to that] once. And then you’ll go find a show that’s compelling and talks to you.”

It was not long after that Muller announced he was leaving the Bay Area to take a job that paid five times as much with Chicago’s WRCX-FM (103.5).

“He’s evolved over the years,” said Harrison. “He was, at one time, I guess, what you would consider to be a shock jock. He hasn’t done that in years. He has been doing issues, news stories, politics but he doesn’t do it exclusively. I see him being huge. I see him being the standard of the next level of lifestyle and young-adult oriented talk show hosts.”

Muller, too, characterizes his shock jock phase -- both the dirty skits and the publicity stunts -- as something he did 10 years ago, and what he does now to build a bond with his audience as what keeps him on the air.

Muller hopes not just to make it big in syndication, but also to break the radio mold.

“My hope is we get away from ‘I’m left!’ and ‘I’m right!” and this cookie cutter type of radio,” Muller told Talkers. “I think that more people with unique opinions are going to be celebrated. And as we move into an era with more choices, the people with truly unique points of view are going to score big.”

Editor's note: