For the last decade, citizens of Chicago have come to know Mancow Muller as the scrappy morning drive host of “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse,” a loud mix of libido and religion, libertarian politics and celebrity interviews, call-ins and rants.
To his fans, it all makes sense somehow that he advocates free speech but has cleaned up his act, can put “Jesus” and “dirty joke” in the same sentence, and bitterly denounces both the FCC and Howard Stern.
It’s still too early to tell what the rest of America will make of Muller, whose newly syndicated show is slowly being rolled out on Talk Radio Network and will be carried by more than a dozen of the nation’s top 30 markets by the time Stern leaves the airwaves for satellite Jan. 1.
“It’s a show you grow into,” said Don Martin, general manager of XTRA Sports 570 in Los Angeles, a sports-talk station that has been airing “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse” for the last month. “You can’t get it the first, second or third time. It takes you a good week of listening.”
His backers are banking on Mancow to be the next Stern – cleaner and, perhaps, even bigger – as more FM stations turn from music to talk.
“After Howard Stern goes away Jan. 1, you’re going to see Mancow in over half of the top 30 markets,” said Mark Masters, chief executive of TRN-FM, a division of Talk Radio Network that is syndicating the show.
Masters said the search for an heir to Stern has been tricky. Muller was the only one whose ratings beat Stern in the top 10 markets on a sustained basis but who was safe enough to please advertisers.
“We spent five years looking for FM hosts who weren’t audio voyeurism events artists,” he said.
Still, as ad salesmen for the Chicago-based WKQX-FM know, Muller’s image as a “shock jock” lingers.
Last August, station owner Emmis Communications paid the U.S. government $300,000 to settle not only $42,000 in Federal Communications Commission fines based on complaints against Muller but also to clear the record and pave the way for license renewal. (As indecency fines went last year, it was relatively small. Media giant Viacom agreed to pay $3.5 million to erase proposed indecency fines, including some against Stern and the “Opie &Anthony” show.)
Emmis further agreed to ban crude and graphic sex-related references.
Though Muller’s show may be “FCC safe” now, it still has the power to provoke.
On a recent morning, listeners of XTRA 570 heard Muller – and sidekicks, skits, interviews, callers and ads for cheap suits – race by at 100 mph in 15 directions. One sidekick placed a prank call to a sex shop. Later, Muller engaged actor and fellow believer Stephen Baldwin in a conversation about why the word “Christian” offends people. “We know the truth,” Muller told Baldwin. “People are offended because they know it’s the truth.”
Erich Muller (“Mancow” came from a mythical character he played as a theater major at Central Missouri State University) is often described as a showman, raised by his salesman father to appreciate old-time radio. He uses politics, sports, religion and pop culture as elements of entertainment, presented in a stream-of-consciousness format.
Muller has been known to rant – at President Bush, at the FCC, at the Sept. 11 terrorists and at Stern.
His rants come from his personal passions, Muller said, and stem from feelings he’s working to get under control.
David E. Smith, the Chicago clean-airwaves advocate who filed more than 70 FCC complaints about “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse,” said Muller is “definitely improving.” Smith, who works for the Illinois Family Institute, a nonprofit Christian advocacy organization, said he recently quit monitoring Muller’s show.
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