Radio personality Tom Griswold slept on a rented bed in an apartment with no furniture and with stacks of unpacked boxes when he first moved to Indianapolis 20 years ago. He said he had "literally no dough," no checking account, little more than a job at WFBQ-FM and would wait frantically for a paycheck each week.
"The Bob and Tom Show" is now one of the nation's most popular syndicated radio shows with more than 125 affiliates in 38 states. The show's Web site receives about 72 million hits per week, and the stars reportedly earn seven figures each. But for co-host Griswold all success meant was that he could finally afford a dog.
Griswold said he didn't know how long the job would last but it allowed him to get a Golden Retriever and settle down.
"If I got fired, at least I knew I could keep (the dog) alive for awhile," he said.
Griswold as well as his fellow on-air personalities Bob Kevoian, Kristi Lee and Chick McGee stand atop the airwaves in Indianapolis. Their mix of comedy, songs, news and innuendo has been No. 1 in the city for the past 11 years, with more than 4.5 million listeners tuning in nationwide each morning, according to Arbitron ratings. The operations haven't changed much, though, and the group shares messy offices, communicates with dry erase boards and keeps a relaxed but intimate work environment.
"Bob and Tom" broadcasts out of a nondescript one-story office building surrounded by radio towers on the north side of Indianapolis - far from the 86-story "Friggemall Tower" they tout on their Web site. Space is tight and WFBQ shares its facilities with several other stations including X103 and WNDE-AM.
Counter tops inside the studio are cluttered with CDs, books (ranging in topic from spiritual enlightenment to "redneck haikus") and various other oddities sent in by publicity departments. A giant foam banana and a breast-shaped mug sit atop Kevoian's desk. A leg-shaped lamp stands in one corner. Personal assistant Joni Downing said one of her challenges is trying to make the office G-rated for when Griswold's kids come in before school every morning.
"Bob and Tom's" original studio, a room roughly 10 feet by 10 feet in size, with several mikes and an old reel-to-reel recorder currently sits unused. They made their Indianapolis debut on March 7, 1983. The two had already worked together for several years at an AM station in Petosky, Mich., when WFBQ's management discovered a tape of the duo's antics at a Florida seminar.
In Indianapolis the two were joined by a number of personalities. The current line-up came into being in the late 1980s. Lee, who worked on the show during its early years, joined full time in 1988 and McGee joined in 1987 after being let go from his job at a station located in the same building.
The show gained notoriety in the mid-1980s for its risqu? gags and innuendo. A boycott by a group calling itself Decency in Broadcasting only made the show more popular.
Much of the controversy has since subsided, and in the years since Bob and Tom have never backed down. Currently their most requested song is "Cameltoe," a parody of the Beach Boys' "Kokomo," which deals with a woman's nether regions. But Griswold said that shock value means little if the material isn't funny.
"If it's just shocking, you can't get away with it," he said.
The walls at the station are lined with pictures of people who have been on the show: Paul McCartney, Three Doors Down and John Mellencamp, who once co-hosted the program for four days. One of Griswold's personal favorites was The Allman Brothers band.
"That was probably when I was the most nervous because I had liked their work for years and years," he said. "But Gregg (Allman) turned out to be a really nice guy. I'm sure he'd never been up at 7 a.m. unless he was up from the previous night. I was standing next to him at the urinal and he said 'Man, you get up early for this.' I told him it was the nature of the job, and he said, 'It's really got to cut down on your time to boogie.'"
In order to be up in time for the 5 a.m. broadcast, the four say they usually get to bed by 9 p.m. Griswold, who usually wakes around 3 a.m., looks haggard and rubs his eyes. He was up late watching "Survivor" with his kids.
"Probably the biggest misconception is that we're in here smoking pot and drinking beer at six in the morning," he said. "There are certainly tougher jobs, but it's not easy being awake and alert and alive and funny at 5 a.m."
Kevoian was away covering the PGA Masters last week, and WFBQ's Gunner was sitting in for him. On Friday morning the topic of conversation was the controversy over Augusta National Golf Club's refusal to admit women.
"I couldn't care less about them," said Lee, the only woman in the studio. "I say let the little boys have their fun."
Guest comedian Craig Shoemaker jumped in.
"They're trying to join a club that costs $200,000 to join," he said. "I don't feel sorry for them. I've lived in the locker room for 15 years."
The group has a good rapport with its guests, which also include comedian Costaki Economopoulos. If it weren't for the headphones or the microphones in front of them, they would be no different than a group of friends cracking jokes over coffee.
Inside the studio they are surrounded by racks of old tapes, some covered in dust. The wall above them features yellow signs listing all their affiliates from Albuquerque to Youngstown; their biggest markets include Detroit, St. Louis and Cincinnati. Syndication has had a few drawbacks, mostly in that the show has lost some of its local flavor. The program does feature local segments every hour, but for the most part the group refrains from mentioning Indianapolis.
"It's been kind of a double-edged sword," said network coordinator Drew Carey. "Making it so non-specific alienated some of the Indianapolis audience that's been listening for 20 years."
"Obviously you lose your ability to dwell on local issues, but if you spend three hours talking about Indiana, 120 other stations aren't going to care," Griswold said. "That hasn't proved to be a big hurdle. We do well on stations from California to Maine."
Producers tape the show every day, and copies of every episode are kept at an off-site vault. Griswold rarely goes back and listens to them, but he does recall his early days in radio with some fondness.
"There are a lot of things I miss about the old days, like when they would let dogs into the station," he said. "Working at a small city AM station, we would do contests and the same people would win every day. It'd be like caller seven, 'hello, Bill,' caller eight 'hello, Bill.'"
And he has little sympathy for those who had no faith in the radio show in 1983.
"I take great delight in the misfortune of the pricks that left early on," he said. "And I hope they're still living in squalor for not backing us up."
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