Morning glory

Off the air a year ago, Preston & Steve now have one of the top rated shows in Philly

By Joe Student / Philly EDGE Editor

Preston Elliot is looking for a monster truck.

   The ‘Preston’ of the early morning “Preston & Steve Show” on Philly rock radio station WMMR-FM (93.3), Elliot is using the army-sized mass of Delaware Valley listeners who begin each day by tuning into the show as a search engine.

    He says he knows one of the show’s listeners, “Jason,” has the type of earth-shaking, piston-popping, metal-crunching vehicle that Elliot seeks.

   “Anyone who knows him, please ask him to get in touch with us, we need his truck,” Elliot says with a knowing tone that alludes to impending future chaos conjured up courtesy of the minds of the morning team comprised of Elliot, Steve Morrison, Casey Foster, Kathy Romano and Nick McIlwain.

    As the show goes to a commercial break, the entire crew exhales slightly and then relaxes, save Foster who through the show's 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. time slot never seems to stop moving, constantly signaling with his hands, leafing through a black three-ring binder or punching up sound bites while positioned directly behind Elliot.

    Morrison, tucked away in the furthest corner of the studio, stands throughout the show. He steps out for a few brief moments during the break. McIlwain and Romano, each within an arms length of each other, check laptops for traffic and email respectively. Elliot uses his arms to raise his entire body weight off a high-backed stool and then plops himself back down deeper into the seat.

    Behind the scenes assistant to the producer Marissa Magnatta and “Intern Joe” answer phones and run props and info into the room. Soon, the entire group methodically begins its plans for the next segment.

   Within minutes, Jason calls.

   He - like thousands of other people in and around Philadelphia - was listening.

   In late January, results posted for the fall Arbitron ratings book revealed that the "Preston & Steve Show" topped the all-persons 18-to-34 category, the first time in more than a decade that an WMMR morning show had beaten perennial radio titan Howard Stern. “Preston & Steve” was also a close second to Stern in the 25-to-54 demographic.

   With Stern now only broadcasting his show via satellite radio –programming not measured in Arbitron rankings – and many other Philly morning shows in disarray or in early stages of development, the ’MMR morning team feels it is accumulating new listeners daily.

   Existing listeners like Jason, others who turn out at promotions and appearances held by the show and those who call the show’s “Converted Listener Line” have made the “Preston & Steve Show” a white-hot radio success story, one that would have been hard to have envisioned at this time last year.

    On February 24, 2005, the “Preston & Steve Show” and Y100–FM (100.3) were being taken off the air as a result of a decision that the station’s parent company Radio One had made to “flip” the channel to a hip-hop/R&B format; it is now known as “The Beat” WPHI-FM.

    “We were shocked. People think that we knew. We didn’t know. We were on the air that morning thinking we were coming in the next day,” Romano said. “All the other jocks knew the night before. At 9 o’clock someone called us and said ‘Look here’s the deal, (the flip) is what’s happening.’”

   Fortunately for the “Preston & Steve Show,” there was already interest from other stations.

   “At this point last year, we were planning to make the jump…While Preston and Steve were very open about their (pending) career plans, people at Radio One made their plans (in secret),” Foster said.

   After a court decision ruled that the “Preston & Steve” switch to WMMR was not in violation of a non-compete clause, the show debuted on WMMR less than two months after Y-100 was shuttered.

    Foster, Elliot and Morrison all indicated that the transition for all of the members of the morning team has been eased by the support that Greater Media, the WMMR parent company, has given the show. They also point to that support as a key reason of the ratings success.

   “(At Y-100) we did not have anywhere near the resource that we have now,” Morrison said. “To grow you need to go outside the realm of the station to get people to pick up on your show. To do that, you need budget. That’s the biggest difference.”

   “We had a great staff at Y-100, we loved the product, the music… It had a cool, hip feel to it. But it was difficult to reach a larger group," Elliot said. “One of the cool things about ’MMR is to see the loyalty of their listeners. These people would not change their station (and not listen to WMMR) no matter what. When we came over, we had the opportunity to have a whole new group of people listen to (our) show. The big question was ‘Are they gonna like us or not?’ Lucky for us, they’ve liked what they’ve heard so far.”

   What listeners have heard are bits - such as the Haunted Whore Ride, the Spanksgiving Day Parade and Science Day - that the show has done both before and after coming to ’MMR last May.

   Those edgy bits, the chemistry between the crew and the promotional support and creative freedom of one of Philadelphia’s most established radio stations are some reasons the team believes the ratings of Preston and Steve Show have soared, much like their latest "Vag Experiment" – a balloon-assisted inflatable doll which two weeks ago floated through the skies over the city and across the Delaware River into New Jersey.

    Ideas like the “Experiment” are often created during the nightly 7:30 p.m. conference call between the show’s personalities.

   “The ideas come from every one of us,” McIlwain said of the phone dialogue that helps set the show’s agenda for the next day and days forward. “It’s really about opening your eyes and your ears and seeing what is out there.  We use newspapers, TV, life experiences… whatever might be something that people can relate to.”

    Those topics can be anything from current news to the seemingly mundane.

   “We were sitting in our office and a discussion started right outside our door about taco shells -you know soft versus hard- and about taco night," Morrison said. “And how a lot of people have taco night and how when you make tacos at home you can eat like 15 of them… Everyone started to acknowledge it and, you know, you could look at a list of topics and never think that (tacos) would be a home run and get listeners talking.”

    “But it did,” Elliot interjected. “It turned into this great debate.”

    And nothing, not even personal topics, are off-limits.

   “Anything and everything is possible fodder,” Foster said. “Our lives are pretty much open books. It used to be that I tended to stay away from the sexual topics because my mom and dad listen… and now even though I’m married, and am allowed to have sex, technically, I still stay away from the topic because my in-laws listen.”

    On this morning, Magnatta is called into the studio to discuss her tongue piercing and whether or not it gives her any special skills.

   “Whore,” Romano called her with a playful grin.

    Elliot and Morrison’s approach however is inclusive, Magnatta says, making her relatively comfortable with what might be an uncomfortable line of questioning for some women. It, she supposes is one of the reasons the show has substantial female listeners as well as males.

   “It used to be that phone calls were 15-to-1 guy to girl,” Magnatta, who worked with “Preston & Steve” predecessors the Philly Guys, said. “Now it’s 50-50ish… There’s always a balance. With four guys someone will always side with Kathy.”

    Throughout the show the quintet communicate with each other in an unspoken language using glances, gestures and gyrations that make for well-paced radio dialogue with a very natural, conversational feel.

    The interrelation of the five on-air members of the team is the intangible that each person brings up in separate interviews as the key to the show’s success: chemistry.

   “We all actually do get along off the air too,” Romano said “Our overall chemistry is why we have our show the way it is.”

   “We spend so much time with each other. We are so far beyond just being coworkers, it’s not even funny,” Foster said. “We can speak our minds, be as honest as we need to be, whether it’s good or bad. We truly are a family.”

   Unlike some families, this one doesn’t appear to be dysfunctional, and its positive dynamic has taken years to take shape.

   Elliot, a St. Louis native and Morrison, a New Yorker have been working together for years.

   “I was working doing afternoons at WDRE when I first came to Philadelphia in ’95 or ’96. And Steve was doing appearances, but he wasn’t a jock,” Elliot said.

  “I did live cut-ins from a club called the Riverdeck in Manayunk,” Morrison said of the duo’s beginnings. “I was the on-site goofy guy. I would talk about how wonderful the place is, do some comedy stuff, and Preston was the guy at DRE I’d  throw it back to.”

  “That went on for months, but I had never met him in person… And it was just a great chemistry and rapport,” Elliot said. “I would say things and he’d bounce right off them and that’s where I first learned how quick of a wit that he had… the chemistry was noticeable even then.”

  After his time at DRE, Elliot worked at Y-100, where he met local boy Foster. The Cardinal O’Hara grad, began working with Preston in 1997 during his afternoon shift at Y-100 while also assisting the “Barsky Show,” which was then the station’s morning program.

  “When they got rid of Barsky, I thought ‘Man, that sucks,’ a door just slammed shut right on me,” Foster said. “Little did I know that when they announced Preston and Marilyn to be the new hosts…that opened another door.”

   Foster refers to Marilyn Russell, who hosted with Elliot, before Morrison and his comedic voice impressions of Bono, Tony Danza, an airline pilot and others, joined them on-air in 1998. Russell eventually left the show, but the current lineup was already forming.

   Meanwhile, Foster became the center of “Jackass”-style stunts thought up by the team that have included being shot with thousands of paintballs, being covered in firecrackers and being dragged, pants-down across ice by a Zamboni.

   “We had a water ski rope and we had him attached to one of the Zambonis and they dragged him bare ass around the ice. Steve said it was because they had instituted the new ‘Brown Line Rule,’” Elliot cackled.

    The Levittown-raised Romano came on-board Y-100 in November of 2003 after Preston and Steve had noticed her while she was doing traffic for NBC-10 TV. She serves a similar role on the show and adds a female’s perspective.

    “She’s a guy’s girl,” Elliot said. “We couldn’t ask for a better, stronger female voice.”

   “And she’s the only attractive one out of all of us,” Morrison added.

   Never a shrinking violet, Romano lets the guys know when she’s offended.

    “I don’t think I ever get uncomfortable. I get disgusted and I tell them about it, that’s how I deal with it,” she said.

    McIlwain, another local product, joined the crew as an assistant producer in September of 2004 after working for Pierre Robert at WMMR. In addition to overseeing the show’s much-visited Web site (www.prestonandsteve.com) and helping develop the program’s podcast, McIlwain brings an additional, intelligent voice.

   “He’s very bright,” Morrison said of McIlwain. “He fills in gaps that we have and really helps flesh out the show.”

   “I think having the capability to do the podcast worldwide and to get visuals online really expands how we can interact with listeners.” 

   As a result of that interaction, listeners trust them.

   “They seem like regular people,” Ryan, a listener attending the show’s “Painfully Single” mixer at Reed’s in Blue Bell says of the crew. “They don’t act like they’re different than anybody else.”

    Yet by many accounts the crew’s interaction with fans is exceptional, from interacting at promotions to fan participation in, and sometimes on, the show.

   ’MMR radio personality Robert, whose industry veteran status gives him considerable clout on the topic, speaks to this fan connection.

    “I have to stress, there’s not a morning show anywhere that will let people come in and observe like these guys do. ’MMR has always had an open–door policy. We have a sign in the lobby that says ‘Ask to see the DJ,’ but morning shows never did that ever, never, ever, ever… every time I come in here there are people in here. That’s very special and unique,” Robert, whose afternoon shift follows the morning show, says.

    “Sixty-nine, missionary, cowgirl, doggie,” Elliot shouts to the crowd at the “Painfully Single” mixer.

    The sequenced sexual positions are instructions in a break-the-balloon game being played by just-met couples on stage. The 400-plus people in attendance loudly parrot the positions back to Elliot, much to the delight of the nearby Morrison.

     In addition to events like this, all of the 'MMR morning team says they make an effort to interact with fans.

     “I don’t know how you could be in this business and not want to meet the people that listen to your show,” Elliot says.

     “Doesn’t make any sense,” adds Morrison.

    “There are radio personalities that are like that and I think they have their head wedged so far up their ass that they don’t hear the listeners,” Elliot says.

    “There’s an impression out there that if you project a star quality that people will buy into it,” Morrison says dismissively. “We’re on the radio. We’re not Tom Hanks.”

    “We’re one step above the guy that operates the rides at Great Adventure,” Elliot says.

      Despite the duo's self-effacing humility, everyone associated with the show understands that now that it is officially a top-rated program, it is a target.

    In addition to Sirius and XM still actively recruiting subscribers for satellite radio, internet stations continue to pop up and commercial radio stations search for personalities who can lure listeners to their frequencies. The Inquirer reports that WRDW-FM (96.5) is bringing Tim “Chio” Acosta who worked previously at WIOQ-FM (102.1) back to mornings soon.

    Ironically enough, on some mornings, another competitor sings on the show.

    The voice of David Lee Roth, the current host of the syndicated morning show at FREE-FM (94.1 WYSP) can be heard on recordings he made while with Van Halen, which are featured on the ’MMR playlist.

    Regardless of the new competition, the departure of Stern or the switch to ’MMR, the members of the show feel they haven’t changed their style. And they aren’t about to now.

    “Look, (next book) we may not be No. 1, but we can’t let that define the show… We have to reach out to the audience - and listen to them - to keep them,” Morrison said.

   The support of the audience manifests itself in unusual ways – sometimes women request that Preston and Steve autograph their breasts, Philly institutions like Bassett’s Ice Cream offer to name a flavor after the show and listeners with monster trucks lend them out – still, the connection seems palpable.

  “I’ve seen enough in this industry to know what we have is very rare with each other and with the audience,” Elliot said. “We don’t want to do anything to screw it up.”

  Helping maintain the connection with the audience is that the show, as a result of  contributions of the Delaware Valley natives McIlwain, Foster and Romano and decade-plus area converts Morrison and Elliot, has become unmistakably Philly.

  “(Philly) is a very passionate city,” McIlwain said. “Whether it’s sports teams, or personalities, this city loves things that are Philly. This is a city that wants to embrace things, and we’ve been very fortunate to become something it has embraced.”