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Feb. 10, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
32:21
Worst To First - February 10th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
All right, news roundup, information overload hour.
Play that one more time, Jason, because that is the voice, one of the most recognizable voices in the country.
One of the most talented and gifted broadcasters I've ever had the pleasure and privilege of knowing the voice of the Sean Hannity show, and that's Scott Shannon.
Listen again.
Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
And the great news about my friend Scott Shannon, a legendary radio personality.
By the way, he still has the number one morning show in New York City on CBS-FM, where they play the oldies.
And he has one of the best radio stories of all time in history.
And they've now created a documentary on it.
And it's phenomenal.
It's called Worst to First, The True Story of Z100 in New York.
They were in last place, and he drove them right to first place and built what has been copied again and again and again to this day, Morning Zoo Radio.
And it's just a phenomenal success story, an amazing journey that he's been on.
And he and I got to be friends many, many years ago.
When I first came to New York, I met him, what, 25, 26 years ago.
And I was like, you know, I like, hey, I had stars in my eyes.
I was like, starstruck.
That's Scott Shannon.
And then he started voicing this program.
And I couldn't have been more honored to have him.
He's been a friend for many, many decades now.
And one of the most gifted, talented broadcasters of all time.
Mr. Scott Shannon, sir, how are you?
Coast to coast, border to border.
Sean Hannity is on right now.
Now, there's a funny story behind this.
And that is, now, you usually wait till you first wake up in the morning where your voice is at its deepest.
And if we need liners, you usually cut it like at 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the morning.
Is that true?
Yeah, I like to cut them early before I started yakking, and I still have that morning voice, you know.
Sean Hannity is on right now.
Sean Shannon is on.
If only I had the one is when you got me doing the countdown all the time.
King watches 35 days till election day.
Oh, my God.
Now you got those poor people in Afghanistan.
I wish you'd just get them out of there so I can quick count.
I know, it's awful.
We give you these countdowns all the time.
I hate to tell you, another one's coming till the midterm elections.
But I'm only going to do the 100-day countdown this time.
Do you remember the last time we actually saw each other in person because of COVID?
Well, do you mean when I went to your house late at night and knocked on the door and you came out with a shotgun?
This is terrible.
This is a great story.
I'm watching television.
I'm trying to fall asleep.
It's 11 o'clock at night, and I live in a very quiet little village.
And all of a sudden, that ring doorbell goes off.
And there's nobody walking around where I live at night.
It's very quiet and safe.
All of a sudden, I look at the screen, and there's a pack, a pack of people.
I brought about eight.
Well, they all wanted to meet you.
So I happened to be at somebody that lives in your neighborhood's house for dinner.
And they said, you know, your buddy Scott Shannon lives across the street.
I said, what?
Let's go wake his ass up.
I said, let's go wake his ass up.
I don't care if he has to get up at 2 a.m. to do his morning show.
Who cares?
All right.
I got to talk about this documentary, and I got to talk about your life, and I got to talk about your career.
Tell me your story.
I fell in love with radio because of music first.
I grew up, my father was an Army brat.
I was an Army brat.
My father was in the service, and we traveled around.
So anybody that's listening that's ever been a service brat knows that you don't have very many friends because you're moving all the time.
I mean, I went to something like 18 different schools.
Wow.
And you don't have any friends.
And I had kind of a rough childhood.
My father was Army sergeant and at times, most of the time, not too nice to me.
And so I kind of like, I lived in the basement.
I had my own little room down there.
I stacked up the Army foot lockers down there.
And I fell in love with rock and roll music.
I grew up in the, you know, in the mid-60s.
And I fell in love with the music.
And then I found out, you know, about top 40 radio.
And I said, oh, my God.
I could listen to my favorite songs because I couldn't.
I had a paper route, and I'd buy like two 45s every Saturday.
I'd pedal my stupid swin on down to the record store, and I'd buy 245s.
But I didn't have all the songs.
I could record them off the radio.
And then I found out you could go down downtown Indianapolis and stand in front of the radio station.
The call letters were WIFE.
And you can watch the disc jockey work.
So I'd catch a ride with my mom when she was going downtown to shop on the circle.
And she dropped me off in front of the radio station.
I'd just stand there and stare at the DJ.
And I watched him take the 45s and put the headphones on.
And I could see him answer the phone.
I'm imagining he's talking to some women, some young ladies calling in.
I don't know, but I guess that I was right.
That was a great draw.
Go ahead.
I got it.
That's what I want to do.
And, you know, like a dummy, I dropped out of high school.
I was only a semester away from graduation.
I guess I felt I didn't need a graduation.
I don't need to go to college.
I know what I want to do.
So I set out to seek fame and fortune.
Well, fame anyway, or at least get a job on this radio.
And as I did that, I didn't realize I didn't have any experience.
In my head, I did because I would talk along with the DJs.
And I really couldn't get a job.
And finally, when I somehow gravitated into a smaller town, back then you could walk into the radio station and say, hi, can I look around?
And that's how I got started.
And my first real job was in Mobile, Alabama.
I went from Mobile to Memphis to Nashville to Atlanta to Washington, D.C., to Tampa, Florida.
And then I went to the major leagues in New York.
The number one radio market in the country.
Okay.
Now, one quick question.
Then we're going to go from worst to first.
Now, did this happen to you?
Because I have old tapes of my original shows, and I cannot listen to it.
It's so bad.
It is God-awful.
I had played it once for my son, and he said, Dad, that is humiliating.
That is embarrassing.
How did you get on the radio, Dad?
Exactly.
Same thing.
But you always start out when you start.
And I thought Stern captured this in his movie Private Parts when you go, it's now hazy, hot, and humid.
82 degrees, Chancellor 8 afternoon thunderstorms.
Right now, 7982 in the city of blank, blank, blank on www.
And we all think, we all try to play radio person when we're not a radio person.
Did you start like that?
I love that slogan.
Fake it till you make it.
I walked into the radio station one day and I was real, you know, I puffed my chest up.
I went and I said, Yeah, I need a job here.
I'm a disc jockey.
Well, you got a tape with you?
No, I left all my tapes at home.
I left in a hurry.
I wanted to get on the road and get out here and see what's going on.
And he said, Well, I'll put you in the production room.
And I go, and I would go, hi, everybody.
It's Scott Jack.
And I was imitating a disc jockey that I listened to when I was a kid, Jay Reynolds.
And he was kind of what you call a puker.
And that means, it's W, it's WIBC.
W-I.
You know, they kind of like sounded like they're getting ready to throw up.
That's how it's funny.
All right.
So now you make it to the big leagues.
You arrive in the greatest, well, it was once the greatest city in the world, and that is New York City.
It used to be, not anymore.
And now you get to Z100.
You're on the radio station that is in last place.
How did you get it to number one?
Well, I took the job, and I'd never really lived in New York.
I had been there a couple of times, and I just kind of was cocky because we were so successful.
I had a great time in Tampa.
I was lucky enough to work for a company that hired me and said, you know what, we trust you.
Do what you need to do.
And it's amazing if somebody hires you and tells you to do a job and they leave you alone.
It's amazing what can be accomplished.
Because, you know, if you hire properly, you can trust the person.
And they just said, what do you want to do?
And I said, I got an idea for a morning show.
And I was lucky enough to, there was a guy already there.
And he thought I was going to fire him and take over his shift.
And I said, no, I've never done this before.
I'd never had done mornings before Tampa.
And I just said, I want to be a morning guy instead of a nighttime guy or an afternoon guy.
And I've never done it before.
So I worked with him, and we came up with this idea to have a lot of funny skits, parody songs, a lot of people on the air from the Tampa area.
And it just was cool.
And everybody seemed to catch on to it.
And within six months, we had the highest ratings in the country right there in Tampa Bay.
That's amazing.
I was with Cleveland Wheeler at the time.
And then when this guy from Cleveland bought a radio station in New York, at first I didn't even return their calls because I was so happy in Tampa Bay.
And I just met a young lady that I was fond of named Trish.
Mm-hmm.
That you're still married to today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then I just didn't want to do like a New York station.
I wanted to do a really hard-hitting, I called it Radio by 2x4.
You just kind of pounded it.
I wanted to match the beat of the city.
And that's what we did.
We got a bunch of young people who had never worked in New York before.
Most stations had a staff of about 110.
We had 21 people.
And in 74 days, we were very lucky.
By the grace of God, we went to number one in New York.
And then suddenly, what was so weird, other stations around the country would fly people in to listen and copy that morning show.
Billboard Magazine did an article and they said there were probably 300 stations around the world doing the Morning Zoo format.
Quick break, right back.
More with Scott Shannon.
His documentary, you can get it everywhere online.
Worst to first, the true story of Z100, radio legend that he is.
More with Scott on the other side.
And your calls, 800-941-Sean, our number, as we continue.
All right, we have the legendary broadcast of the voice of this radio program, Scott Shannon, with us.
He's got a new documentary out.
You've got to see this.
You can download it on Apple, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, pretty much everywhere, and on cable on-demand as well.
And it is called Worst to First.
It's a feature-length documentary that you don't want to not see.
It's great.
If you love radio, you're going to love this documentary.
You know what's amazing?
At the time, remember, Top 40 was kind of beginning to decline.
And then as time went on, then iconic, you know, 50,000-watt AM blowtorches were giving way to these FM stations where it sounded better, the music sounded better.
And you were able to create this environment.
And it's called Morning Zoo Radio, and there's, you know, many incarnate, many variations of it.
And I know you probably don't think a lot about it, but I mean, that creation in many ways revived radio at the time, just like I would argue Rush revived the AM band with talk radio.
Well, the thing about it is we didn't have any money to do marketing.
And one of the guy named Gary Fisher, who's a great sales manager, later the general manager of the station, stated it when he was being interviewed for the movie that we're talking about.
He said, you know, this was really the first viral campaign I'd ever seen.
And it was just so strange because we sounded so different because we were Z100.
Everybody else was WNBC, WABC, and they had all these big voices.
And we just sounded like a station that came out of, you know, the ether.
And it was just crazy.
And all of a sudden, people, we asked people to make up their own bumper stickers.
We don't have money for that.
We were in Secaucus, New Jersey, and no station in New Jersey had ever been successful before in New York.
And everybody thought it was jinxed.
You had to be in New York City.
And we weren't.
We weren't.
Stay right there.
If you don't mind, I'd like to hold you over a little bit.
This is a phenomenal broadcasting story.
This is history in the making.
Our good friend Scott Shannon, the voice of this radio program, the Sean Hannity Show, creating Morning Zoo Radio.
They came out with an incredible documentary.
I was just watching it the other night.
It's phenomenal.
And if you love radio, and I still love radio, it is one of the best radio stories of all time.
It's called Worst to First, the true story of Z100 New York.
And, you know, when you go online, you can find it at Apple, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft.
It's pretty much everywhere on cable platforms.
You can get it on Comcast, Spectrum, Charter Cox, Frontier.
And even, by the way, for our trucker friends in Canada, you can get it there at Apple iTunes.
Quick break, we'll come back.
More with Scott Shannon.
Worst to First, a full-length feature documentary portraying against all odds inspirational success story.
But in the meantime, I got to remind you, we're now in the middle of the worst inflation we've had in 40 years.
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One of the best ways you can do it, if you haven't done it yet, is refinance your mortgage.
And that's where our friends at AmericanFinancing.net come in.
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That's how much money we're talking about here.
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It's AmericanFinancing.net.
More with Scott Shannon next.
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The real truth about the politics of D.C. He's your watchdog on Big Brother.
Every day, Hannity is on right now.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour.
That voice you just heard is our friend Scott Shannon.
He's got a brand new, full-length feature documentary.
It's called Worst to First: The True Story of Z100, New York.
He is the creator of Morning Zoo Radio.
He still has the number one morning show in New York City to this day.
Now he's on CBS-FM where they play oldies, and he's just on top of his game.
He's never lost a beat.
How many years now, total, have you been in radio?
Long time.
I'm on my 34th year, so I'm giving my age away.
By the way, I'm really not number one.
I kind of share the top of the ratings with a guy named Elvis Duran, who's also featured in this documentary, Worst to First, because of the fact he does the show that I started back in 1983.
And that's what's so cool about this whole thing that we put together.
It takes you from the beginning of this radio station and shows you what was going on in New York back in the 80s.
We have a guy to set it up by the name of Geraldo Rivera.
He's in the movie.
Elvis is in the movie.
Joe Piscopo, Debbie Gibson, Taylor Dane, John Von Jovi, Joan Jett, Nile Rogers from Sheikh, and all these people were involved with the radio station early on.
Well, let me ask you about that.
You met all of these stars in the beginning of their career, and to get on your show was the biggest deal, the biggest lift that they could ever get.
And at the time, you'd be getting tapes in the mail every day from this band or this performer.
You know, you'd have, I remember going into your office, you were still getting tapes from artists from all over the place.
I don't know how you sort through them.
You know, did you know, would you know right away whether or not somebody was going to be a star?
Could you tell?
Or could you tell there's no way they're going to make it?
We actually didn't.
We didn't start every one of those people, but we were certainly some of them we did.
Debbie Gibson, we were one of the first two stations in the world to play her songs.
And she was so young.
She was like 15 years old at the time.
Joan Jett would bring her songs by.
Madonna was, we were very early in her career and very close with John Bon Jovi.
He did concerts for us from time to time.
And it was just such a, you had to be on that station.
And to go from where we started, where we had to send our music director into New York City from Secaucus every Wednesday to buy records because the record companies didn't even think enough of us to service us.
They didn't know who we were.
And then all of a sudden, they were beating down our door when the ratings came out.
74 days after we signed on, we were the number one station in the country.
You know, the amazing thing is, though, to this day, you remain friends.
And you can talk about who you're friends with, but all of these people give you all of this credit for really catapulting, maybe is a better word, their careers, because when they got on your show, on your station, on your playlist, all of a sudden their career was at one level, and it was like a rocket ship straight to the top.
That was usually the case.
That's a little strong, but we did help a lot of careers.
There's a new band from England that came over, and they didn't even want to come to New Jersey.
They were living their life because they were already big in England.
And we started playing their first song, and we talked them into coming over.
And Duran Duran came back five more times, did a free concert for us.
We had a school spirit contest.
And, you know, I've got, unfortunately for me, I'm trying to be healthy and live a good life.
I got involved with them some nightlife times.
almost killed me with those guys but i mean today you want me to go into those stories or you want to avoid those stories We're not going over there.
We're not going over there today.
You know, you forget one thing.
Our careers are kind of similar because I remember when I was working at another station, the WPLJ after Z1, in between Z100 and CBS-FM, where I work now.
The manager of WABC was a dear friend of mine, Mitch Dolan.
And he was telling me, I've got this new kid coming in.
He's going to be on Fox.
I don't know how good he is.
We're going to put him on at 10 o'clock at night.
It was 11, but you're close.
Yes.
When I got hired at Fox, I did 11 to 2 in the morning, and I loved it.
I did that for a year, and then I got moved to afternoons.
He said, would you listen to this guy?
And so I said, well, I go to bed early.
He said, well, I'll tape it for you.
I'll give you a tape.
I think he's got some potential.
And that was a guy named Sean Annity.
And I heard him.
I said, holy crap, you need to get him in prime time.
And it wasn't long before you moved out to afternoons, and the rest is history.
It was one year later.
But I remember, and this is now kind of deeply personal for me because, and by the way, you were right.
I mean, Elvis Duran is phenomenal.
And I know you're a good friend.
The amazing thing is a lot of people in TV, they all hate each other.
A lot of people in radio hate each other.
I don't hate people in this business.
It's kind of, it's a very small group of people, and we share one big passion, which is a microphone.
So I've never felt my success is contingent on somebody else's failure.
I still don't believe that on radio or TV.
And it's just, I focus on the product every day.
But I digress a little bit here.
And, you know, I used to go over and sit in your office for hours.
And we'd just shoot the Adam Schiff, and we'd have a great time.
I got to tell you something.
Before you sat in my office, another guy used to come in there.
That is?
Right.
Really?
Yeah, you know why?
Because him and I had the love for music.
And he would come in there, sometimes even, because the golden microphone started at WABC also.
It was a real golden microphone.
Maybe Sacramento, but I mean, he came in and just would ask me, what's the hot music?
He loved music.
I'm not kidding you.
I went to his apartment one time with his brother, and he played Barry White on the single best sound system.
You know, Rush, if he got into a phone, he knew everything about it.
If he got into computers, he knew everything about it.
He loved music, and this is when he still had his hearing.
And Barry White, you know, can't get enough of your love, baby, that song.
I don't know what the title is.
And that's good enough.
And everybody knows his song.
And he's saying, now listen to this.
Now listen to that.
And he's picking out, you know, precision.
And I'm like, it sounds great, Rush.
Can I have another drink?
Let me go into your cigar bar one more time.
He's got every cigar in the book.
When he came into my office, because I'm like a, I don't know, musicologist.
I've got like a hundred different books about some of the most obscure artists you've ever heard of and a trivia expert on that and that kind of stuff.
He would come in and ask me questions about different artists.
And, you know, oh, I didn't know that.
That's great.
Pull that song out, will you?
And he was so much, he was, that was his life before he got into talk radio.
He was a radio top, like me, a top 40 DJ.
It's almost a year.
We're almost coming up on a year since we lost him, and I still can't believe it.
I really can't.
Because he's had such an impact on my life, obviously.
Oh, yeah, I remember that you used to fill in for him all the time.
I filled in for him.
The first day I'm filling in for him, the golden EIB mic fell down, crashed on the table, and I'm like, I'm leaning down, my neck bent all the way over, and I finished the monologue before I could pick it up and fix it.
That's a true story.
I was sweating profusely, scared to death.
Rush comes back from vacation and goes, John Hannity dented the golden EIB mic.
I mean, which was typical of him, right?
Well, thank you so much for giving me some time to talk about this movie.
It's close to my heart.
I mean, it's just, we built this station in New York, and it's still thriving and still one of the most famous brands in radio, Z100.
And it dropped.
Let me ask you this question.
What is it about the lore of radio that is so intimate?
Because I do radio and TV.
The more intimate medium is radio.
It's a heart medium.
Explain what you think it is.
Well, the thing that drove me to it is I've always been very shy, and especially when I was a kid, I just didn't have any friends and kind of, I was my own friend.
That was it.
But I saw these pictures.
I'd buy Billboard magazine down at this record store that I would go to.
And I saw these pictures of a little control room and a guy by himself with a microphone and headphones.
But he's talking to, you know, hundreds or thousands of people.
I think it was some guy in Montana, the first picture.
And I would cut these out and put them in a little scrapbook and say, someday I want to do that because it's so cool.
You can sit in that room and no one's going to look at you.
You can talk to them.
And that was the thrill for me.
And I could express my love for music on that microphone.
And it was just so, I don't know.
It gave me everything I wanted.
Yeah.
Well, it's an amazing story.
It's an amazing documentary.
It is well deserved.
I'm proud to be able to call you a friend, first of all.
I'm grateful for your friendship and advice, which you've given me over the years.
Sometimes it was welcome and sometimes it wasn't.
No, there are a couple of calls that went like this.
Hannity, it's Shannon.
You didn't reintroduce the guest.
I don't know who you're talking to.
I need to know.
Is that true or false?
All right.
That's enough.
I got to go.
Thank you, buddy.
Love you.
Anyway, love you too.
Worst to first, feature-the-length documentary portraying what is an against-all-odds inspirational story.
A man that helped create, that created Morning Zoo Radio.
The true story of Z100.
You can get it on Apple, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft.
On cable, you can get it on Comcast, Spectrum, Charter, Cox, Frontier, DirecTV.
And in Canada, you can get it there too as well on Apple, iTunes.
Now that we have all these Canadian truckers listening to us, thankfully.
We love you, Scott.
Thank you, man.
The fact is that we're in a situation now where you should have peace of mind.
I know food prices are up, and we're working to bring them down.
As I said, I grew up in a family where the price at the pump went up, you fill it.
And I understand.
But these things are necessities.
We're working to bring down prices where they're not totally what families, in fact, have to pay now.
I'm going to work like the devil to bring gas prices down, which I'm going to work in to make sure that we keep strengthening the supply chains and bringing the cost of energy and everything else and the goods that come to America down.
All right, let's hit our busy phones.
Rod is in New Jersey.
Rod, how are you?
Glad you called.
We only have about a minute and a half.
It's all yours, though.
Hey, Sean, how are you?
It's a privilege and an honor to speak to you finally.
I wanted to call and talk about that bill that Pleepy Joe's passing here about the crackpipe and the needles and the bomb.
I recovered myself, and it took a while, but the way I did it is I went and just did it cold turkey by myself because I went in and out of these institutions they have in the state.
And basically, what they do is like people get arrested.
These drug dealers get arrested and say that they're users and they go to rehab.
And then you find more contacts in rehab.
And it's not working.
They need a new plan on helping addicts in the state because I've lost so many friends.
I've lost a family member over it.
It's insanity.
And this state, and it's everywhere.
You can get it anywhere.
And I lost everything.
I lost my marriage over it.
And I finally recovered.
You know, I've been clean now probably 10 years.
I'm back on my feet.
I got a car again.
I'm doing everything.
My kids are back in my life.
And it took a while, but the way they're doing it is not going to work.
I could see it.
You need to want to do it to be clean.
You know what I mean?
I have too many people that I know that have been through addiction of one kind or another.
And at the end of the day, it's got to come from the person.
At the end of the day, you've got to hit that rock bottom, wherever it is for you, and then say, I've got to change my life.
And for a lot of people, I know it's the beginning of their spiritual journey.
They're reaching up towards God because they know they can't help themselves.
I'm glad you've made it.
You're speaking a lot of truth.
And for anybody that has an addiction problem, deal with it.
Get on your knees, let it humble you, and hopefully you can change.
God bless you, my friend.
Great story.
That's all the time we have, though, for today.
We're loaded up tonight, Hannity, Nine Eastern on the Fox News channel.
Ted Cruz, Dr. Oz, Adam Corolla.
We have Joe Concha, Pete Hagseth.
And did you see Sarah Carter with the Truckers last night in Ottawa?
She'll join us.
And Leo, Nine Eastern, Fox News, Hannity on the Fox News Channel.
We'll see you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
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