Naked breasts.
Now that we have your attention . . .
Cliched? Of course it is. But that's the moneymaking formula of guy-talk radio, today's hottest FM talk format. WJFK (106.7) is one such station. On it and similar stations, you'll hear jokes and sports talk and conservative politics and gun talk and potty humor. And plenty of . . .
That's right. Naked breasts.
Last Wednesday, as NBC's "Today" show broadcast live from the Republican National Convention, a national TV audience got a full-frontal of . . . you get the drift . . . thanks to a New York guy-talk radio show.
As "Today" cameras in New York panned the usual gawkers gathered outside the Rockefeller Center studio, a young woman opened her shirt and flashed her bare breasts. Plastered to her stomach was a bumper sticker that read: WOW.
Which is what they were saying in the studios of New York's WNEW, home of afternoon bad boys Opie and Anthony.
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More than a year ago, Opie and Anthony (Gregg Hughes and Anthony Cumia) started a listener promotion: Whip 'em Out Wednesday, or "WOW" for short. The station printed bumper stickers--the one affixed to the aforementioned young lady's stomach--which men were encouraged to put on their cars. On Wednesdays, around the New York metro area, women who drive by said cars are encouraged to flash the occupants. Some actually do.
The promotion got bigger. Augmented, you might say, by lucre. Opie and Anthony offered $1,000 for public WOWs caught on film or tape, provided the WOWer bore Opie and Anthony paraphernalia. The "Today" whipper, known only as Suzy, copped a cool grand for her exhibitionism. It was the biggest WOW score thus far for WNEW: The edited tape was shown on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," and David Letterman joked about it with "Today" weatherman Al Roker.
Could WOW be another sign of the Apocalypse?
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"That's what they asked us on 'Extra' the other day," says Opie. "I think guys have wanted to see women's breasts for a long time now. It's just a pair of boobs."
Says Anthony: "One thing we've heard from guys is that we have helped their road rage. They say, 'On Wednesdays I look forward to my drive home, because I might get flashed.' "
Who knew? Perhaps these stunts help WNEW fulfill its FCC requirement to broadcast public-service programming.
Anthony quickly adds: "I say this on the radio every chance we get: We tell the guys not to harass the ladies and we tell the ladies they don't have to do it. We've been doing it for a while, and we've gotten no major complaints."
The WNEW jocks are hardly trailblazers among radio hosts trying to get women to take off their clothes. You can't watch Howard Stern's TV show on E! without seeing digitally obscured breasts. One of his routines is the free-breast-job bit: Women who want implants will come to Stern's studio and bare their breasts. Stern chooses a woman and pays for her surgery. Six months later, the woman returns and takes off her top again, displaying the results. Stern then evaluates what he paid for. (He does similar bits on his high-rated radio show.)
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On WJFK, Don Geronimo and Mike O'Meara's popular "Don and Mike" afternoon show runs various routines that involve women in the studio removing part or all of their clothing. Their lead-in host on the station, G. Gordon Liddy, just finished auditions for next year's "Stacked and Packed" calendar, a tradition that features heavily armed, heavily endowed--though clothed--women. (Okay, we admit it: "Stacked and Packed" is a funny idea.) The Sports Junkies follow Don and Mike and have had porno actresses as studio guests. And the formula works: WJFK is one of Washington's top-billing stations.
Share this articleShareCraving even further excess? You can find it on many radio station Web sites. Many have plenty of inoffensive links, but you can also find a handful of pathways to hard-core sex sites.
Which is a big difference between radio now and pre-Internet: Thanks to Web pages, radio is no longer just theater of the mind. Now, you can see everything and then some.
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So are these breast-baring stunts good or bad?
It depends on which argument you make: (1) the feminist argument--that the women are being exploited; (2) the post-feminist argument--that, by baring their breasts, the women are actually seizing power; or (3) the post-post-feminist argument--hey, I got a thousand bucks! Woo-hoo!
As The Listener refuses to wrestle with feminist semiotics (except in mud or Jell-O), let's consider what this means for radio.
Bad things. It signals laziness in a format that looks as though it's running out of ideas. Whipped out too often, it feels like desperation. Does it get ratings? Sure. As certainly as "ER" would get better ratings if all the actors were replaced by naked super-models. Of course, such trifles as narrative, character development and meaning would be lost. In radio, the hallmarks of good comedy are wit, cleverness and well-written shtick. But they are hard, and they take thought and imagination. On the other hand, what's an easy, guaranteed way of getting guys to tune in and laugh? By now you should know the answer.
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Some talk hosts still do well-developed bits; some of Don Imus's celebrity impersonations come to mind. But naked vulgarity--usage intended--is the creeping rule. Since commercial radio is all about getting ratings, no one's taking his foot off the gas.
Opie and Anthony acknowledge as much.
"I take much more pleasure in riffing on something in the news," says Opie. "But no one cares, really. You get a girl to flash on the 'Today' show and, boom! It's huge news."
Punch It Out!
This week's Punchie, suggested by a reader and wholeheartedly endorsed by The Listener, goes to the Mobil Speed Pass commercial. Ninety-nine times out of 100, kids on commercials are not cute, they are annoying. This kid--"Dad, do we need gas now? Dad, do we need gas now? Dad, do we need gas now?"--may be the Most Annoying Child on Radio. Good luck with the career, kid.
Log on to www.washingtonpost.com/ liveonline today at 1 p.m. to talk about radio with The Listener. And don't be naked.
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