All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 10, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
32:21
Worst To First - February 10th, Hour 3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
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 Z 100 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, twenty-five, twenty-six years ago.
And I was like, you know, I like that 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 uh 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 you and if we need liners, you usually cut it like at three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning.
Is that true?
Yeah, I 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.
Shannon is on.
The most fun is when you got me doing the countdown all the time.
T-minus 35 days till election day.
Oh, my God.
And now you get now you got those four people in Afghanistan.
I wish you'd just get them out of there so I could quit 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 uh but I'm only gonna do the hundred-day countdown this time.
Uh, do you remember the last time we actually saw each other in person because of COVID?
Well, do you mean when I when I went to your house late at night and knocked on the door and you came out with a shotgun?
This is this is terrible.
This is a great story.
I'm watching television, I'm trying to fall asleep.
It's eleven o'clock at night, and I live in a very quiet little village, and all of a sudden that ring doorbell goes off, and I I 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 uh the screen and there's a a pack, a pack of people.
I brought about eight well, they all wanted to meet you.
So I happen to be at somebody uh somebody that lives in your neighborhood's house for dinner, and they said, you know, your buddy Scott Shannon lives across the street.
He 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 gotta talk about this documentary, and I gotta talk about your life, and I gotta 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 uh anybody that's listening that's ever that's 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 it was you don't have any friends, and and I had kind of a uh a rough childhood.
My father was uh uh uh army sergeant and and at times most of the time not too nice to me.
And uh it's also I kind of like I lived in the basement.
I had my own little room down there.
I just stacked up the Army footlockers down there, and I fell in love w with with rock and roll music.
I grew up in the you know in the mid sixties, and I fell in the love with the music and then I found out, you know, about top forty radio.
And I said, Oh my god, I could listen to my favorite songs 'cause I couldn't I had a I had a paper out and I buy like two forty fives every Saturday I'd peddle on pedal my stupid swin on down to the record store and I buy two forty-fives.
And 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 and stand in front of the radio station.
The call letters were W I F E 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 uh he she dropped me off in front of the radio station, I 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.
Um 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 that was a great draw.
Go ahead.
I got it.
That's what I want to do.
And uh, you know, like a dummy, I dropped out of high school.
Uh I I was only a semester away from graduation.
I guess I I felt I didn't need a uh 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 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 didn't I really couldn't get a job, and finally when uh when I somehow gravitated into a smaller town, didn't back then you could walk into the radio station and say, Hi, can I look around?
And that's how I got started, and I my first real job was in Mobile, Alabama.
I went from Mobile to Memphis to Nashville to Atlanta to Washington DC 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 gonna go from worst to first.
Now, did this happen to you?
Because I couldn't I have old tapes of my original shows and I cannot listen to it.
It's so bad.
It is god awful.
It is I had played it once for my son, and he said, Dad, that is humiliating.
How did you get on the radio, Dad?
Exactly.
Same thing.
And so but you always start out when you start and and I thought Stern captured this in his movie Private Parts when you go, Oh, it's now hazy hot and humid.
Uh eighty-two degrees, chance of late afternoon thunderstorms.
Right now, 7982 in the city of bling blang blang on W W W. And we all think we we all try to play radio person when we're not a radio person.
Did you start like that?
I I I love that slogan, fake it till you make it.
And I walked into the radio station one day and I was real uh, you know, I'd puffed my chest up.
I went and I said, Yeah, I need a job here on a disc jockey.
Well, you got a tape with you.
Uh 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, uh put you in the production room, and I go, and I would go, uh hi everybody, it's Scott Chad.
And I thought uh and I was imitating uh disc jockey that I listened to when I was a kid, Jay Reynolds.
Yeah.
And and he was he was kind of what you call a puker, and that means it's W it's W I B C W I you know, they kinda like sounding like they're getting ready to throw up.
All right, so now you make it to the big leagues.
You arrive in the greatest, well was once the greatest city in the world, uh, and that is New York City.
It used to be, not anymore.
Um and now you get to Z one hundred.
You're on the radio station that is in last place.
How did you get it to number one?
Well, I uh I took the job and I'd never really lived in New York.
I had been there a couple of times and I just kinda was cocky because we were so successful.
I had a great a great time in Tampa.
I was lucky enough to work for uh 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 uh tells you to do a job and they leave you alone.
It's amazing what can be accomplished.
Because you know, if you hi hire properly, you can trust the person.
And uh 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 uh there was a guy already there, and he thought I was gonna fire him and take over his shift.
And I said, No, I've never done this before.
And I I 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 uh I've never done it before.
So I worked with him and we came up with this idea to uh the have you know a lot of fuddy skits, parody songs, a lot of people on the air from the Tampa area, and uh it just was cool and and everybody seemed to catch on to it, and within six months we had the highest ratings in the country.
Right there right there in Tampa Bay and and uh the I was with Cleveland Wheeler at the time.
And then when this guy from Cleveland bought a radio station in New York, they tried they at first I didn't even return their calls because I was so happy in Tampa Bay, and I had just met a uh a young lady that I c was fond of named Trish.
And you're still married to today.
Yeah, yeah.
And then uh and I just didn't want to do like a New York station.
I wanted to do an a a really hard hitting I called it radio by two by four.
You just kinda pounded it, you know.
You you just came you I wanted to match the beat of the city.
And and that's what we did.
We had a bunch of young people who had never worked in New York before, you know, most stations had a staff of about a hundred and ten.
We had twenty-one people, and in seventy-four 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, uh other stations around the country would fly people in to listen and copy that morning show.
Uh Billboard magazine did uh an article and they said there were probably three hundred 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 Z one hundred radio legend that he is.
Uh more with Scott on the other side in your calls eight hundred-nine four one Sean, our number as we continue.
All right, we have the legendary broadcaster the voice of this radio program, Scott Shannon with us.
He's got a new documentary out.
You've gotta 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 gonna love this documentary.
You know what's amazing.
At the time, remember Top Forty was kind of beginning to decline.
And then as as time went on, then iconic, you know, fifty thousand watt AM blowtorches were giving way to these FM stations where where it sounded better, the music sounded better, and you were able to create this this environment.
And it's called Morning Zoo Radio, and there's you know, many incarnate many variations of it.
And I 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 the the thing about it is we didn't have any money to do marketing, and w uh one of the uh uh a guy named Gary Fisher who was a great sales manager and later the general manager of the station, uh stated it and 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 Z one hundred, and everybody else was W N B C W A B C and they had all these big voices, and we just sounded like a a station that came out of you know, the ether is in and it was just crazy.
And all of a sudden people we asked people to uh to make up their own bumper stickers.
We don't have money for that.
We uh we were in Secaucus, New Jersey, and no station in New Jersey had ever been successful before in New York.
And the thing everybody thought it was jinxed.
You had to be in New York City, and we weren't.
We were stay stay right there.
I'm gonna if you don't mind, I'd like to hold you over a little bit.
Um this is a phenomenal broadcasting story.
This is history in the making.
Uh our good friend Scott Shannon, the voice of this radio program, uh, the Sean Hannity show, greeting Morning Zoo Radio.
Uh they came out with an incredible documentary.
Uh 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 Z 100 New York.
Um and you know, when you go online, you can find it at Apple, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, it's pretty much everywhere.
On on cable platforms, you can get 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.
Uh quick break, we'll come back more with Scott Shannon, Worst to First, a full-length feature documentary portraying uh against all odds inspirational success story.
Uh, but in the meantime, I gotta remind you we're now in the middle of the worst inflation we've had in forty years.
Numbers today were worse than last month, and they were bad.
So saving money's gotta be top of mind for everybody.
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 American Financing.net come in.
And we're talking about saving hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every month.
Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars every over the course of your loan.
That's how much money we're talking about here.
Do it before interest rates go up.
Do it.
They're gonna have four of them this year.
Now you have mortgage consultants standing by, they'll give you a free, no obligation whatsoever, mortgage review.
You have nothing to lose here except saving a ton of money.
Call now 866-615-9200-866-615-9200 on the web.
It's American Financing.net.
More with Scott Shannon next.
American Financing, NMLS 18234, NMLS Consumer Access dot organize the Hannity
uncovers the real truth about the politics of DC.
He's your watchdog on Big Brother.
Every day, Hannity is on right now.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
That voice you just heard is our friend Scott Shannon.
He's got a brand new full-length featured documentary.
It's called Worst to First, the true story of Z 100, New York.
Uh he is the creator of Morning Zoo Radio.
He still has the number one morning show in New York City to this day on now.
He's on CBS FM where they play oldies, and he's just uh on top of his game.
He's never lost a beat.
How many years now total have you been in radio?
Long time.
I get it I'm the I'm on my 34th year, so uh I'm giving my age away.
By the way, uh 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 first, because of the fact he does the show that I started back in nineteen eighty three, and that's what's so cool about this this whole thing that we put together.
It takes you from uh the beginning of this radio station and shows you what was going on in New York back in the eighties.
That's and we we have uh 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, Tabor Dane, John Bon Jovi, Joan Jett, Niall Rogers from Sheik, and all these people uh were involved with the radio station early on.
And well, let me ask you about that.
You met 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 you'd be getting tapes in the mail every day from this band or this performer.
Uh uh you know, uh you you you'd have I I remember going into your office, you were still getting tapes from artists from from all over the place.
Right.
I don't know I don't know how you sort through them.
You know, did you know w would you know right away whether or not somebody was gonna be a star?
Could you tell, or could you tell there's no way they're gonna make it?
We actually didn't we didn't start every one of those people, but we were certainly some of them we did.
Uh 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 fifteen years old at the time.
Um that the Joan Jett would bring her songs by.
Uh Madonna was uh we were very early in her career and very close with John Bon Jovi.
He d 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, seventy-four days after we signed on, we were the number one station in the country.
You know, the amazing thing is though, um to this day you remain friends, and uh you you can talk about who you're friends with, but um all of these people give you all of this credit uh 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 their career was at one level and it was like a rocket ship straight to the top.
That was usually the case.
It it's a little that's a little uh strong, but you know, we did help a lot of careers.
There's a new band from England that came over, and uh and they they didn't even want to come to New Jersey.
They were living their lives because they were already big in England, and uh, we started playing their first song, and uh 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 nightlif times here, almost killed me with those guys.
But I mean you want me to go into those stories, or you want to avoid those.
We're not going over there.
We're not going over there today.
You know, you forg you forget one thing.
Our our careers are c kind of similar because I remember when I was working at another station, uh the WPLJ after Z one, in between Z one hundred and C B S FM where I work now.
Uh the manager of WABC was a dear friend of mine, Mitch Dolan, and he was telling me, I got this new kid coming in.
He's gonna be on Fox.
I don't know how good he is.
We're gonna put him on at ten o'clock at night.
There's eleven, but they're you're close, yes.
When I got hired at Fox, I did eleven to two in the morning and I loved it.
And 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, and I'll give you a tape.
I think he's got some potential.
And that was a guy named Sean Hannity, and I heard him.
I said, Holy crap, you need to get him in you know, prime time, and and then that was it was uh it wasn't long before you moved up to afternoons on the rest is history.
That was one it was one year later.
But I remember, and this is now kind of deeply personal for me because uh and by the way, you were right.
I mean, Elvis Duran is phenomenal, and I know you're good for 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 in this business.
It's kinda it's a very small group of people, and we share one big passion, which is a microphone.
So I've never I I've never felt my success is is contingent on somebody else's failure.
I I still don't believe that on radio or TV, and it's just uh i I focus on the product every day.
But I digress a little bit here, and you know, w I used to go over and sit in your office for hours.
And we would just sit we just shoot the the Adam Schiff and we'd have a great time.
And I I gotta tell you something.
Before you sat in my office, another guy used to come in there.
Right is really Yeah, you know why? 'Cause him and I had the the love for music and and he would come in there sometimes even because he the you know the golden microphone started at WABC also.
It was a real golden microphone.
But I mean it he he came in and just he would ask me what's the what's a hot new he would I 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 a song, and he's saying, Now listen to this.
Now listen to that.
And he's he's picking out, you know, precision, and I'm like, it sounds great, Rush.
Uh, can I have another drink?
Uh let me go into your cigar bar one more time.
But he's got every cigar in the book.
And he came when he came into my office, because I'm I'm like a uh I don't know, musicologist.
I I've got like a hundred different books about some of the most obscure artists you've ever heard of, and uh a trivia expert on that and that kind of stuff.
He would come in and ask me questions about different artists.
And you know, and he were you know, oh I didn't know that.
That's great.
Pull that song out, will you?
And he he was so much he was that was his life before he got into talk radio.
He was a uh 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 used to fill in for him all the time.
I filled in for him the first day I'm filling in for him, uh, the golden EIB mic fell down, crashed on the on the table, and I'm like, I I'm uh 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 the uh about this this movie.
It's it's uh it's close to my heart.
I mean, it's just we built this station in New York and it's still uh thriving and still one of the most famous brands in radio, Z one hundred.
And uh it dropped.
Well let me ask you this question.
What is what 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 the thing that drove me to it is I uh I've always been very shy.
And especially when I was a kid, uh I I I just didn't have any friends and kind of my had my I was my own friend, that was it.
And uh and it but I I saw these pictures.
I'd I buy Bloomboard 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 a uh some guy in Montana uh the 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 gonna look at you, you can talk to them.
And that's that's was the thrill for me, and I could express my love for music on that microphone.
And 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.
Uh I'm proud to be able to call you a friend first of all.
I'm grateful for your friendship and advice uh which you've given me over the years.
Uh it is sometimes it was welcome and sometimes it wasn't.
No, there by 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 gotta go.
Thank you, buddy.
Love you.
Anyway, love you too.
Worst of first, feature length uh documentary portraying what is an against all odds inspirational story, a man that helped create that created Morning Zoo Radio, um the true story of Z 100.
Uh, you can get it on Apple, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, uh on cable, you can get it on Comcast Spectrum, Charter Cox, Frontier, DirecTV, and uh 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.
Uh we love you, Scott.
Thank you, man.
The fact is that we're in a situation now where uh you know you should have peace of mind.
I know food prices are up and we're working to bring them down.
I said I grew up in a family where the price that the pump went up, you're filling, and I understand.
But these things are necessities.
We're working to bring down prices where they're not totally what families in fact uh have to pay now.
I'm gonna work like the devil to bring gas prices down, which I'm gonna work in to make sure that we keep strengthening the supply chains and bring 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 Joycey.
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 it's a privilege and and an honor to speak to you finally.
Uh I wanted to call and talk about that that bill that uh Pleepy Joe's passing here about uh the crack pipe and the needles and and the bomb.
I recovered myself and it took a while, but uh the way I did it is I went and just did it called Turkey by myself because I went in and out of these institutions they have in in the state and basically what they do is like uh people get arrested, these drug dealers get arrested and say that they're users and they go to rehab and then you get you find more contacts in in rehab and it's it's it's not working.
It's they they need they need a new plan on helping addicts in in the state because it's I've lost so many friends.
I've lost a family member over it.
It's it's it's in 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 rec you know, I've been clean now probably ten years.
I've you know, I'm back on my feet, I got a car again, I'm I'm doing everything.
I'm my kids are back in my life, and it's you know, it it took a while, but what what the way they're doing it is not gonna work.
I could see it.
You you need you need to wanna 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 gotta come from the person.
At the end of the day, you you gotta hit that rock bottom wherever it is for you, and then say, I've gotta change my life.
And yeah, for a lot of people I know it's the beginning of uh their spiritual journey.
They're they're reaching up towards God 'cause they know they can't help themselves.
Uh, 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.
It get on your knees, let it humble you, and 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 9 Eastern on the Fox News Channel.
Ted Cruz, Dr. Oz, Adam Corolla.
We have Joe Concha, Pete Heggseth, and did you see Sarah Carter with the Truckers last night in in Ottawa?
She'll join us.
And Leo, 9 Eastern Fox News, Hannity on the Fox News Channel.
Uh, we'll see you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
▲
Export Selection