How Philadelphia put Howard Stern on the path to stardom

"HELLO, Philadelphia. Welcome to your worst nightmare."

With those seven words, Howard Stern began in earnest his inexorable march toward becoming the multimedia phenomenon we know (and love and love to hate) today. They were spoken 25 years ago tomorrow, Aug. 18, 1986, when the groundbreaking satirist-entertainer debuted on WYSP-FM (94.1).

By the time Stern began simulcasting his New York-based morning drive-time radio show here, he had already been a hit in Washington and New York. And thanks to regular appearances on NBC's "Late Night with David Letterman," Stern had some national currency. But it can be argued that WYSP launched the rocket ship Stern subsequently rode to celestial heights as the self-proclaimed "King of All Media."

"Philadelphia was really the testing ground for the rest of the country," said veteran radio-industry analyst Tom Taylor, news editor of Radio-Info.com. "It proved [Stern] had universal appeal and that you don't have to talk about local things if you're Howard Stern."

Interestingly enough, Stern's arrival on our airwaves in the summer of '86 wasn't exclusively about ratings. According to Andy Bloom, WYSP's program director back then, his station was suffering from a bigger-picture problem: irrelevance.

As the 1970s slipped into the '80s, WMMR-FM (93.3) ruled the FM rock-radio realm, as it had since its 1968 founding. 'YSP had begun playing rock 'n' roll in 1973 and had proved to be a tenacious competitor. However, all that changed in 1982, when a Long Island, N.Y., rock jock named John DeBella came to WMMR to host what was dubbed "The Morning Zoo."

Armed with schtick such as Wednesday "Hump Days" and "Hawaiian Shirt Gonzo Friday," DeBella, who declined to be interviewed for this story, quickly established the "Zoo" as this region's most popular morning program behind the all-news format of KYW-AM (1060).

By the time Bloom arrived from the Midwest as WYSP program director in May 1985, his station was foundering.

"Whatever [WMMR] did was golden; whatever we did was wrong," remembered Bloom, now operations manager for WYSP, as well as sister CBS-owned outlets WIP-AM (610) and WPHT-AM (1210).

"We could have tossed $100 bills off the top of City Hall and the headline in the Daily News would have been: ' 'YSP kills listener in freak paper-cut accident - 'MMR on hand to save the day,' " said Bloom.1

In November 1985, Bloom and his boss, WYSP general manager Ken Stevens, were on the train to New York to powwow with Mel Karmazin, then the CEO of Infinity Broadcasting, corporate parent of WYSP and New York's WXRK-FM, where Stern was doing the morning show.

At the time, 'YSP's morning drive-time competition for DeBella was the long-forgotten Scruff Connors, whom Stevens and Bloom had imported from Toronto as part of a switch to a young-male-skewing, hard-rock format.

The pair were not especially eager to see Karmazin, considering their station's poor ratings and advertising revenue. During the ride, Bloom made a reference to Stevens' move as an FM-rock radio programmer in Milwaukee, when he started simulcasting Chicago's morning-drive titan, Steve Dahl (the guy behind the infamous 1979 "Disco Demolition" mini-riot at Comiskey Park).

Simulcasting Stern on 'YSP in the morning "might get the station back on the map," Bloom suggested. "We gotta do something that makes people go, 'Wow!' "

Stevens' response, recalled Bloom, was to warn him not to mention the idea to Karmazin. But the young radio programmer ignored that advice later when Stern walked past Karmazin's office and was invited in to meet the men who ran Infinity's Philly outpost.

"Being Howard, the first thing he said was, 'Have you heard the show? What do you think of it?' " said Bloom. "I said something to the effect that, 'I haven't heard much, because I can't hear you down in Philadelphia.' "

What Bloom said next truly changed the course of broadcasting history. "I heard you compared to Steve Dahl," Bloom told Stern. "If you're anything like Steve Dahl, we'd love to have you on in Philly."

Stern's reaction was immediate, Bloom recalled. "He said, 'Steve Dahl!? That m----------- ripped me off! He ripped me off!' "

The next moment, Bloom insisted, "is frozen in time like a snapshot in my head. It was almost an out-of-body experience. I said, 'Well, maybe you can do what Dahl never could do.' Stern said, 'What?' and I said, 'Maybe you could be No. 1 in mornings in two markets at the same time.' "

Bloom described Stevens' burying his head in his hands during this exchange. But he also remembered looking at Stern - whose New York-based agent, Don Buchwald, didn't respond to multiple requests for an interview with Stern for this story - and believing he actually saw "a lightbulb go off over his head. The way he lit up, I believe it all came together for Howard at that moment."

Bloom is quick to deflect any suggestion that he is primarily responsible for Stern's subsequent success. But as far as Bloom knows, he was the first to suggest syndication to the DJ.

For the next nine months, negotiations involving what Stevens and Bloom dubbed "Project X" were conducted among Stevens, Karmazin and Buchwald. In late July 1986, just before leaving on a two-week vacation, Stern appeared on the Letterman show and mentioned that "our empire is expanding."

When Bloom heard that, he "poured a big drink and slugged it down. Then I lay down in my bed and just stared. I didn't move."

Stern's pending debut on WYSP sparked little heat and lots of skepticism, recalled Scott Segelbaum - then the station's promotions director, now producer of the Classic Rock Art Show, a traveling rock-collectibles event. He said that one local tourism official insisted that the New Yorker would bomb here "because he doesn't know the names of streets."

That the naysayers were wrong about Stern is a matter of record. From Philadelphia, Stern went on to enjoy a nationwide network of more than two dozen stations, including KSLX-FM in Los Angeles. Bloom was program director there when Stern was signed in the early '90s.

He also created the "shock jock" template imitated, but never duplicated, by an army of wannabes including such syndicated hosts as Doug "The Greaseman" Tracht and the duos of Opie (Hughes) & Anthony (Cumia) and Bob (Kevian) & Tom (Griswold).

Stern's national reach created a market for his best-selling autobiography, 1993's Private Parts, and the 1997 film of the same name. And it made it possible for him to sign with Sirius in a deal reportedly worth as much as $500 million. Stern has been on Sirius Satellite Radio since 2006.

So can Philly legitimately claim a stake in Stern's unprecedented success? Was Aug. 18, 1986, a pivotal moment for Howard Stern? Radio-industry observer Tom Taylor isn't sure. But had the controversial radio comic failed here, Taylor reasoned, "he probably wouldn't have gone on to Los Angeles," the market that established Stern as a truly national superstar.

Bloom is certain Stern would have reached the top of the multimedia heap with or without his station's help.

"This man's career was destined to be [spectacular]. He was destined for something greater" than being a New York radio personality, Bloom insisted. "He is such an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime talent. This man's career was not just going to be on a radio show in New York.

"I was just lucky my career intersected with the shooting star that is Howard Stern."