a tale still told by an idiot

Again, I’m not timely, but I’m thinking.

Until last month, San Diego’s #1 morning show was The Mikey Show on Rock 105.3. They were all talk, comedy bits, and a cast of varying size. The cast as of December 17 was officially 5 people, in actuality 6, but it had been as large as 7 people as of 6 months prior.

On December 17, things were business as usual. I didn’t listen on the 18th; a podcast had my attention. However, I noticed a tweet (I follow them, the tweets are usually interesting if not downright funny) from Mikey saying he had “a heavy heart, but God works in mysterious ways,” or some such. I thought he had a death in the family, or something equally tragic.

Noon-ish, I started to head home; the lunchtime DJ came on and had the cast of the show sans Mikey with her, and Eddie (the show’s producer and sports guy) spent a minute being cryptic, and asked everyone to tune in at 7am Monday for an announcement. The fans of the show went nuts with speculation as to what happened; Facebook, twitter, the fan site (yes, there was a fan site. Still is, as a matter of fact). It was fairly obvious there was no Mikey; none save for a few knew why, and those few weren’t talking.

On Monday, we got half of the story. According to everyone not named Mikey, they were all offered contracts; Mikey didn’t like his. He consulted with (Mikey’s story) all of them or (the others say) one or two of them, and the cast expressed desire to stay with Clear Channel. Mikey then put out feelers and got an offer from another station, not just for him, but the whole cast. The problem was, no other cast member was aware that he was negotiating with another station for them. When he came back with that offer (that was simply supposed to be a negotiation tool, according to Mikey), Clear Channel withdrew their offer, informed him that the rest of the cast had signed new contracts, and that his last day was Thursday the 17th. That hour was a weird one; they couldn’t get too specific about things, for contractual and legal reasons I’m sure. They then resumed playing music, and there was no more morning show until January 4.

Mikey, having regained control of his show’s site and put a blog on it, has been rather tight-lipped about everything. He does claim he was upset and tried to call the whole cast and no one returned his calls that whole weekend. Two people deny he ever tried to call them; two confirm it. Whatever, small quibbles. He also confirms that he was negotiating for the whole cast, and that he didn’t communicate well with them on that front, and he owned up to his mistakes there.

So January 4 rolled around, the show went on without Mikey (now it’s called “The Show”). They tell everyone that they can’t really talk about what happened, though over the course of their shows there are occasional snipes at him. You can tell when they do it, because someone usually asks, “…too soon?” and everyone giggles a little bit. In an interesting turn, they did pick up a new lead for the show, someone named Costa, after a week of being back on the air.

But there’s no Mikey. Rumors start flying; Mikey says he has a new station, don’t worry, everything’s coming together. He wouldn’t say anything else until the 12th, when he announced that he was going to FM 94.9.

Now here’s where everything gets interesting.

94.9, KBZT, claims they’re “All about the music.” It’s their tagline. They’re also not under the umbrella of any of the big media names like Clear Channel and Cumulus, and call themselves “independent.” They do play more local rock bands and other “indy” music mixed with standard rock fare. They do reggae on Sunday mornings. They claim their DJs know their product better than most others. The station has a fiercely loyal fan base for most of these reasons. And those fans don’t like or want Mikey.

The dislike is understandable. The station is going to give everyone 4 hours of talk now, even though they’re “All About the Music.” In one radio spot I happened to catch this week, Mikey was on 94/9 advertising his show and how excited he was to be going there, how he liked the fact that they were about San Diego… “and after 10am, it’ll be all about the music.” This didn’t endear him to the people.

It’s not like the fans’ dislike of Mikey in particular is unfounded, either. He’s made some comments about the station, and the fans of the station, before. I’ve personally heard him say on the air that “Indie rock is indie for a reason.” He’s also made fun of the listeners, how they all have goatees, wear black and listen to the station at Starbucks because they’re so smug because they think they’re Indy Rock fans. So yeah, he’s not liked. The station’s fan page at Facebook is getting a lot of negative heat now; it seems most of the positive comments are coming from fans of Mikey himself.

But is there something to what Mikey said? A lot of what we’re seeing now are snide comments like “So when can we request some Nickelback?” and “Can we play American Pie?” — which tends to play right into the stereotype Mikey used to put forth, before he found himself employed by the station he riffed on and catering to the same fans he held in such disdain in the recent past.

So for the summary: A radio station in a top-20 market broke up the highest ranked morning show in said market. Host leaves, rest of cast remains, Host gets a new job, fans of new station don’t want said host there, new host will start sometime next week…

…and in San Diego, I believe the drama might rival that of the current Late-Night wars on TV.