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Nov. 15, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
28:29
Neil Boortz and Sean Hannity Remember When
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This is an iHeart podcast.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour.
Here's our toll-free telephone number.
If you want to be a part of the program, it's 800-941 Sean.
If you want to join us, so we had Matt Towery joining us in Washington, D.C. yesterday.
And by the way, we have part two of my interview with JD Vance.
We've gotten so much, so much feedback on him.
Linda, did you see all the social media pickup on it?
It was massive.
Oh, yeah.
People were very excited about that segment.
And Pam Bondi, we also had, and I spent time with RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz, and they'll join us tonight.
Really, really productive day.
I did other things that I can't talk about yet.
And as soon as I can, I will.
And important things.
And I'm actually headed back to D.C.
I have another trip planned for reasons that I can't disclose either.
Boy, I'm really sharing a lot with the audience today.
But anyway, so we had our friend Matt Towery in studio.
And I was a local radio host in Huntsville, Alabama.
And I got a call one day from Eric Seidel, better known as Sluggo on this program.
Still friends with him to this day, still friends with the owner of the radio station at the time when I worked in Huntsville.
As a matter of fact, I'm friends with everybody I've ever worked for.
It's crazy.
And anyway, and I go to Atlanta, I audition for two days, and I realize why I am auditioning because the star radio host in the market at the time for some, what, 30 years was a guy by the name of Neil Bortz.
And he had jump shipped from Seidel's station, the news monster, we called it back in the day, to what he referred to affectionately as the ex-wife to another station.
And I got hired over, you know, after the two-day audition.
Little did I know I was going up against a monster in the market, but it was originally not planned to be that.
So I told this whole story yesterday.
This is like old school, old-fashioned, hardcore, deep in the paint, you know, radio war days.
And I learned a lot from Neil.
And I have to give him credit because I'm better at, if, if I'm any good at talk radio, in part is because I would listen to Neil and I knew that my career was being threatened every day.
Long story short, he initially went over to the news station and was going up against Russia 12 to 3.
And then one day, my first day I'm going on vacation, I'm driving to Hartsfield Airport and I turn on Neil and I listen to him tell me, Sean, I know you're listening to this program.
And I'm like, how?
And how the hell does this man know I'm listening to his program?
And I was.
And I listened the whole way.
And he's like, well, your phone's about to ring and it's going to be Sluggo.
And Slugo is going to tell you to come back and not go on vacation because starting Monday morning, I was on 9 to noon at 8.45.
He was going to get a 15-minute jump on me.
I'm going back to my old time slot and I'm taking my audience back with me.
And I'm listening to this.
I then arrive at Hartsfield, all Sluggo, say, I'm coming back.
He didn't have to call me.
I called him.
He would not allow me to come back.
I didn't have, I had no power to fight him because I was, you know, still new, fresh to the market.
And it was the worst vacation of my life, worst week of my life.
And that began a series of radio wars.
And then one day I'm driving into work.
It's 6.15 in the morning.
And I tune into Neil's station just to see what they're talking about.
It's 6.15.
Not only was Neil there, he telegraphed his entire show and he had read every newspaper, knew every news story, and I was just driving to work.
I hadn't done any work yet.
I was never, ever late to work again.
I was there at five o'clock every day, and I would tune in and he would telegraph his show every day at 6.15.
I'd take notes, and if he was going to be talking about a topic, he didn't do many guests.
I did.
I'd find the guests that he would be talking about at the beginning of his show, and you had a choice.
You can hear the people directly, or you could listen to Neil talk about the people that were in my studio.
Anyway, so it was kind of a fun radio story.
The irony of all of this is we became really close friends.
Even, you know, I was only there four years, but he swears he ran me out of town to the Fox News channel.
Kind of a joke.
But we became really good friends.
We'd even talk to each other in breaks.
We had a very, both were very competitive, but we had respect.
I think we had respect for each other.
I certainly respected him.
And if I didn't learn that I had to work harder, I don't think I'd be here today.
And it's a pleasure to welcome back my dear friend Neil Bortz.
How are you?
I'm fine.
What part of that story is not true?
Well, no, it's all true.
It's all true.
I heard you were going.
How did you know I was listening on my way on vacation?
My first vacation ever since I had taken that job six months into that job.
Well, wait a minute.
We were in Atlanta and who wasn't listening to me?
Actually, that's not true.
If you go back and I have the history books, Arbitron used to do ratings in three-month intervals.
There were three books in a row, and I told this to Matt Towery yesterday, where between the two of us, we had 25% of the market in men 2554, which for those that don't understand ratings, that is a massive number in the key demographic.
And we both had, and it's almost impossible mathematically for it to work out this way.
We had nine months in a row.
We both had a 12 and a half share each.
But I think actually it was higher than that.
It could have been.
That's the number I remember.
I mean, I don't even know if I can go back and find those old books, but you did not know the story of that day that I tuned in and heard you at 6.15 in the morning.
What time did you get to work every day?
I never asked you that.
Well, I usually got there about 4 or 4.30 in the morning.
Okay.
So I realized I'm never going to be late again.
And the interesting thing was you had read every newspaper.
You were fully prepared to do your show at 6.15.
What the heck did you do for the next two hours?
Two and a half hours.
I spent that time bothering other people at the radio station.
Oh, I could tell stories.
They're so bad, the stories about you, and especially about Monica Kaufman, that if I told them in this day and age, I know you're dear friends with her, by the way.
Yeah, Monica and I get along just great.
You know, well, I messed with you a good deal too, you know.
Oh, yeah.
You and everybody in the market, you couldn't stand the fact that I was younger and prettier than you.
Well, listen, who isn't?
I'm the original radio.
At that radio station you're mentioning on my ID card that I wore around the neck, they didn't put a picture of me.
They put a picture of Homer Simpson.
That's absolutely, positively true.
By the way, I have a special guest to say hello to you, the guy that hired me to replace you after you took the money and ran to the other station, Sluggo, Eric Zeidela's with us.
Sluggo, why did you not let me return when I called you from Hartsfield Airport and Neil was moving from 12 to 3 back to his old time slot?
I was furious at you.
Well, I'm calling today to let you know you can go on vacation now.
Okay, I really appreciate it, Sluggo.
And oh, you two for a while, by the way, hated each other.
I think I had to bridge that gap, didn't I?
Well, no, wait a minute.
After I left, Neil, yeah, can't you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you.
Okay.
After I left, Sluggo sent a picture of you hammering nails into my coffin.
I remember that one.
The final nail in your car.
By the way, I did not approve of it.
And there was one rating book, and you had never been beaten.
And you're never going to admit it.
I beat you.
And you did win one demographic like 65 and older.
And so Sluggo, in his genius, and other people that we worked with at the time, decided to send you a gift package of like denture cream and depends and say, congratulations, you won the 65 plus demo.
Actually, I think that was Nancy's idea.
Probably.
Was it Nancy or your Sluggo?
No, it was probably Nancy's.
Okay, well, we'll put it off on poor Nancy's NTAC.
Now, this may sound inside baseball, but there's a lot of lessons to be learned here.
Sluggo, did I even tell you about the first day that I was listening to Neil at 6:15 with Scott Slade?
And I heard them, and I, it, it put panic in my heart at how prepared he was.
And I realized I got to work harder, man.
Who is the attorney you aced him on who's going to be coming into his show?
From the oh, no, that they, well, that's well, it was right after the OJ Simpson case, and Bob Shapiro, who's who to this day is still a dear friend of mine.
Um, I heard Neil telegraph that morning at 6:15 that he had Bob Shapiro on, and Neil rarely had guests on.
So, I looked at Eric Steger, who still works with me, and I said, What the hell?
Why, why does he have Neil?
Uh, Bob Shapiro, why didn't we book him?
And anyway, he said, You know what?
I think he's on 99X.
Let me call over.
He called over.
He was free at nine o'clock.
We got him before Neil did.
And then, when the hour was ending and he was supposed to go over to Neil's show, I said, Would you mind staying a little bit longer?
Neil, what happened from there when he finally got over to your place around 11?
I mean, we all became close and we all remain close.
Although, Bort says, You never know where this guy is.
He's got this big bus that he travels around in.
I've tried to convince you numerous times to go back on the air full time.
You won't listen to me.
How many years were you on talk radio?
How many years did you do talk radio?
Uh, 47.
Man, unbelievable.
Well, wait a minute.
247.
It was 37, 37 years.
Okay.
Now, I think it would be better told by Sluggo.
Sluggo, do you want to tell the world how cold-hearted Neil is and how he got his first radio job at Ring Radio?
I'm not going to go into that.
That's Neil's story to tell.
But I will tell you that I've always thought Neil had some of the best radio instincts of anybody I've ever worked with.
That's why you paid him a lot more money than you paid me.
You got me for like dirt cheap when you paid me and you hired me.
You were the diamond in the rough.
You know, looking at a bass of that, much like Moses.
And we plucked you out of the water and we gave you life.
Okay, I really can't complain.
All right, Neil, tell everybody how you started in talk radio because this is the coldest-hearted story of all time, but it's actually brilliant on the other hand.
Well, it may be cold-hearted, but somebody had to do it.
Uh, I was a big fan of a talk show host on what they called at that time Ring Radio.
And I would go, whenever he made a speech, I was there.
We would go to lunch together.
Then one time I'm sitting at home on Sunday and I hear on the news that evening that this particular talk show host, his name was Herb Elfman, that he committed suicide.
He shot himself dead right there.
And so I said, well, I wonder who's going to do the show tomorrow.
So I got a lawn chair and a thermos of coffee and I went and sat on the sidewalk outside the radio station, waited until everybody got there.
The station was only on the air during daytime.
And they said, what are you doing here?
And I said, oh, you haven't heard?
Herb's not going to come in today.
And so you basically jumped on the guy's grave and you got hired.
And 37 years later, you know, you were still a top-rated host and one of the most well-known personalities in Atlanta radio history.
And then you became nationally syndicated as well.
Yeah, I didn't jump on the grave.
I dug him up and jumped on him.
You did.
Come on, Slugo.
That is cold.
That is cold, cold, cold.
It is Neil's story to tell, not mine, but it is cold.
Oh, man.
So that's natural for me.
You know, we did other things to mess with you, too.
Did you know we used to feed you purposely stories so that you would talk about the same topics every day?
If there was a gun topic, a plane topic, what else, what other stories did we always want Neil to talk about?
Because the research showed that people got bored when he talked about his slugo.
There were a couple of other.
We found ways to get that information to you, or we'd have somebody call in and set you off, and then you'd go right down the predictable path.
Do you know we did that?
You also took some recordings of some uncomplimentary things I said about the owners of my new radio station.
And you sent them.
You can blame Slugo for that.
I had no role in that.
You keep trying to absolve yourself of responsibility for those.
I did not have any role in that part.
Slugo, you have to defend me here.
Well, I remember some of the acronyms for WSB that he developed.
Like We Suck and Blither and all that.
By the way, I'm still on the station, so I got to be nice here, but I think they'll find it amusing.
So boring.
But at the time, they were until you got there.
And then Greg Mosherry, I'll tell you what, we'll pick it up a couple more minutes on the other side.
If you guys have nothing to do, you're both retired, so I assume you have nothing to do.
And I mean that complimentary.
More with Neil Borts, more with Eric Seidel slugo on the other side, a little bit more of the radio war.
Then we'll hook the phones, 800-941 Sean is on number as we roll along.
So we're doing old radio war stories.
And when I'd only been a professional radio host for two years, I had started in, what, 87.
And I guess my first job was in 1990 in Huntsville, Alabama.
Then I'm Eric Seidel, who's with us, Slugo, we call him, hired me in Atlanta.
And I went up against this unbelievable giant in the market, Neil Bortz.
And I realized that if I didn't work hard, Neil Bortz was going to do to me what he did to so many others before me.
And that's run them the hell out of town.
And I was not going to let that happen, or at least fight my hardest to do so.
After about the first year, and Slugo, this is a story for you to tell.
And it taught me something about research.
And you brought me in your office one day and you sat me down.
Do you remember what you told me?
Because I remember what I told you.
Well, okay.
First of all, let me give this some perspective.
Neil worked for a company that was doing research every five seconds in the market.
They were constantly aware of what was going on in the market.
You and I were working for a company that didn't have those pockets as deep.
And we did our first major research about a year after you came to the radio station.
And before that research came in, we had been telling you, Sean, this is not New York.
You need to ease back on the callers.
We're in the deep south.
And you weren't listening.
And by that, just to give perspective, I grew up listening to the likes of Bob Grant, you know, one of the great pioneers of talk radio, but also geniuses like Barry Farber and Barry Gray.
Hey, get off my phone, you scumbag, you low life, you dirtbag.
Get off my phone.
That was not Farber's technique, but it certainly was Bob.
That was Bob Grant's for sure.
Bob Grant, you know, eventually got fired in part because he was so controversial.
But anyway, so you came in, and I'm, are you talking about after the research came in or before?
After the research came in, you didn't let me know you did research.
I figured out you did research, but you sat me down in your office.
Nancy Zentag was in the room.
Right.
And you leaned into me about this very issue that, you know, you grew up with one type of talk radio that you listened to.
Right.
And you now live in the South.
And the bottom line was people love my conservative positions.
It was the beginning of the rise of New Kingrich, but they didn't like stylistically that I was harsh on callers.
And that, you know, that you were perfect.
Politically, you were perfect for our demographic, for our target.
But you still had that edge of a New Yorker in you.
And I think I told, and you said, you've lost confidence in me.
And I said, no.
That's what I said.
Well, you do remember.
I did say that.
I said in that meeting, I looked at you and I said, you lost confidence in me.
No, and the fact is we had not.
And if anything, we just wanted to help improve you, develop you more.
And so the research, which you really weren't supposed to see until you stole it from somebody's office.
I was curious.
I didn't steal it.
I borrowed it.
There's a difference.
I returned it.
Okay.
Okay.
That's not stealing.
It's borrowing.
I didn't even say, as a matter of fact, it never left Arnie Kacinski's room because I read it, you know, one night overnight, and I didn't stop reading it till I read to the very last page.
And it was very, it was a thick book.
Yeah.
What, did you sit in his office and read it?
Yes, I did.
My God, you were squatting too.
You're bad.
Anyway, you had seen the one of the things that struck me really wrong was that the guy who analyzed the research said you should think about replacing Sean.
There was no way we were.
The words were, you may want to rethink Sean Hannity at some point.
Okay, okay.
Well, either way, you and I both are.
I remember.
Okay.
And you, but you read the transcripts of what people said to them, the verbatims.
The verbatims.
Said to them in the research.
And that, that rang a bell for you.
You finally, you.
No, that woke me up.
Yep.
That's what changed me on a dime.
I changed from that day moving forward.
Now, what I learned is they're called perceptual studies in radio.
Neil, you've read a ton of research over the years, or at least they've told you about it.
I'm sure you could care less.
You were going to do what you were going to do.
You were a legend.
I was not in that market, so I had to work harder.
And what I learned is the audience was dead on honest and the audience was right.
And I needed to read it in black and white and let it absorb it and let it hit me in the face hard.
It did, but you weren't saying it in a way that just screamed at me.
It screamed off the page.
Love is politics.
He needs to stop hanging up on people and telling them to shut up.
Right, right.
But, you know, it was the same thing.
We were just telling you, maybe a little more graphically, but the fact is, it affirmed and validated what we had been saying to you.
And you had to see that third-party validation to really wake up.
It was the audience that woke me up.
Neil, did you ever read research?
A lot of hosts can't handle it.
Well, a couple of things, Sean.
First of all, you listened to Bob Grant and the others.
I never listened to anybody else on talk radio.
I did listen to you when we were head-to-head competing.
Other than that, I was never a Limbaugh listener.
You know, I didn't want them to affect the way I did my job.
So I didn't listen to them.
I put that as a feather in my cap.
If I was in your head that much, that's a good thing.
You're the only one.
But then remember, you and I would go to news breaks at the same time.
We'd get on the phone and talk.
We did.
Sometimes I would just wait for you to break before I'd take my break.
And I've had my Eric Stinger monitoring when you went to a break.
Listen, we were having a great time.
But now what you haven't told, and I want you to tell this story too, is that when I moved full-time down to Florida, I had the best radio studio.
You did your shopping out there.
It was a great radio studio.
Oh, it was phenomenal.
And here's the beauty of it all.
Neil and I became best friends while we were still competitors.
I had deep respect for Neil.
Slugo and I have remained friends ever since I had to go to his house and say, is it okay if I take this opportunity and work at Fox News?
At that point, nobody knew what national cable news really was but for CNN.
And Eric was very supportive and said, if this is what you want to do, I support you.
You were great.
Not everybody was great, but you were great.
Well, I was jealous.
No, you were.
But you're full of crap because you went on the air and said, I drove Hannity out of town.
Oh, well, I mean, look at the ratings at that point.
The ratings at that point were fine.
I was still kicking ass until you guys got the Braves back.
Then it started to hurt.
Pearl white ass.
No, you weren't.
I was still doing well in the marketplaces, no doubt.
I will tell you, I'm very grateful to both of you for very different reasons.
And the fact that we've all been able to stay friends all these years.
There's one other little part of the story.
Did you know that Greg Mosheri was sending out tapes of my show to stations around the country to get me job offers to get me away from you?
That's standard procedure.
Yeah, yeah.
It was standard procedure.
Sean, let me tell you a little story.
The first time I ran into that technique, that tactic, I was working in Philadelphia at a CBS radio station, owned radio station, in news, and I got a call from a competing news director on another station who I've never met.
I've never met.
And he said, I've given your name to a former boss of mine in Atlanta.
He's looking for a news director.
And I said, Paul, we've never met.
Why would you do that?
And he said, and this caught me by surprise.
He said, I want your ass out of this market.
Wow.
That's pretty blunt.
I was shocked when Mosheri told me that.
I was absolutely shocked.
I want to say one last thing.
Now, this is the most interesting part about Neil to me.
And Slogo, tell me if I'm right or wrong here.
Neil is so dynamic on air.
And by the way, when you had Belinda and Royal, God rest his soul, he was such a nice guy.
And I don't think there was a better chemistry, although Linda's close.
He's crushing it for us.
And when you had that team around you and your ability to use that team to enhance the show and create a family atmosphere that everybody wanted to be a part of, it was very special for radio in my mind.
Well, it just came natural to all of us.
It really did.
Belinda and I are still very close.
I can tell you that her dog had an ACL surgery this morning.
That's how close we are.
Oh, my gosh.
That was a so I asked her how many ACLs does a dog have and she didn't know.
I don't know either.
Sluggo, you want to give it a shot?
You love dogs.
Oh, I do.
I do.
We've been since 1999, we've been rescuing golden retrievers.
And they're incredible.
Just incredible.
Well, I just want to say to both of you, I'm very grateful to both of you.
Sluggo, you took a chance on me.
You were patient with me.
I didn't know what I didn't know at the time.
I got a big, big wake-up call.
And ever since that day, I will periodically make sure that I read the audience's comments about me.
Not online, because online is not a real world.
You have people naked in their parents' basement, anonymous keyboard warriors.
They don't concern me.
But research projects look for real listeners.
They give you real honest feedback.
And if you listen to it, it will make you better at what you do.
When you go up against somebody as talented and gifted as Neil, and I think in the history of talk radio, one of the best talk show hosts ever, it's either you get better or you're done.
It's that simple.
You will not survive.
Well, Sean, I just thank God every day that I didn't have to make a living being a lawyer.
You remember what you said to me after 9-11?
What?
Remember a conversation we had?
And you had always said, I'm on the air for kicks and giggles.
I don't take myself seriously.
None of this is serious.
And you said, Hannity, you believe all this and you're more serious than I am.
And I said, you're right.
And then after 9-11, you don't remember what you said to me?
I don't.
You said to me, you were right.
I was wrong.
And you weren't saying it in a way that was negative at all.
You were saying, this is real.
This is serious.
And I am looking at my job entirely differently now.
Well, I mean, that woke up a lot of people.
I've always thought that a talk show host is first and foremost an entertainer.
And we're not there to change the world.
But then later on, after 9-11 and the various ethnic invasions we've had of this country, Minnesota, it occurs to me that there's just a lot more to it than fun and games.
There's very important information to be sent to the public out there.
Just try to do it in an entertaining way to keep them listening and hopefully make a difference along the line.
You know, now the difference I want to make is the water level in the hot tub when I'm sitting in it in the evening.
Oh, my gosh.
I will tell you this.
I'm going to end with this.
If it wasn't for talk radio, and then, of course, Rush took it to a whole new level, and we're all grateful to him for that, and we all miss him dearly.
If it wasn't for talk radio, we wouldn't have had an alternative point of view in this country.
If it wasn't for Fox News, we wouldn't have an alternative point of view in this country.
The fact that I've been blessed to do both in my life and career and have people like you make me better in different ways.
I'm just grateful to both of you.
You're both very good men, dear friends.
Bill Donovan in Alabama also gave me a shot.
They hired me over the phone there, and I had no experience doing radio full time.
I got lucky he hired me.
So I just want to say thanks to both of you.
And it's kind of fun to rehash some crazy radio days, man.
They were crazy.
Yeah, Sean, they were fun days, too.
The world was better off because you fell off that roof.
I fell off the roof, Neil.
Hit the ground and woke up a conservative.
It was all good.
Yeah, I know it.
All right.
God bless you both.
You're both amazing people and dear friends.
Neil Borts, Eric Slugo Seidel.
Thank you both.
I guess we're going to wrap things up for today.
Let not your heart be troubled.
Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News Channel, part two.
It's really interesting.
My interview with JD Vance, the vice president.
Also, while in D.C., I spent time with RFK Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz.
We'll get that in.
We have a lot on the nuttiness and insanity of the radical left.
They are cracking up and it's getting worse by the day.
And the news you'll never get from the mainstream media mob.
9 Eastern tonight.
Hannity Fox.
We'll see you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
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