Talk radio recently lost the popular Atlanta-based team of Larry Wachs and Eric Von Haessler, know collectively as The Regular Guys, when employer Clear Channel instituted a "zero tolerance" policy on violating FCC standards. And, in turn, Atlanta listeners lost regular exposure to Mr. Skin on their airwaves, as he was a staple of the Regular Guy's show.
What happened was: The Regular Guys, in a bid to mock the current crackdown on rule-bending, featured porn star Devinn Lane (Picture: - ) for an on-air interview that was to be explicit, but played backwards so as to be indecipherable. Unfortunately, as the bit was being recorded, a microphone was left on and explicit language went out over a commercial.
Zero tolerance left no room for forgiveness, and the Regular Guys are no more. Sort of a replay of what happened in Los Angeles, where the team started their show. Now, in the aftermath of the Atlanta incident, Eric has left the partnership for new opportunities and Larry Wachs is at home "experimenting" while he awaits his next broadcasting assignment. I caught up with Larry recently and here's what he had to say about the formtion of the show, the current state of radio and the scientific method.
Tell us about the genesis of The Regular Guys.
I met Eric in a comedy club in Rochester, New York, in '89 and he just kind of hung out on the show I was doing there. Then we decided to get him more involved in the show. We both kind of fell out of radio for a couple of years and then we had an opportunity to do a talk show in Los Angeles, and I wanted to do it with Eric. The person hiring said okay. That's where we really started the current era that we're in...and where we got dumped from.
Did you do stand-up comedy before radio?
I wasn't. Eric did for a while.
How did you get to Los Angeles?
It was really something we always wanted to do, talk radio. It's so much more lucrative and satisfying from a creative standpoint. And we just decided to give it a go. We wanted to try to do it right. We wanted to listen to people and hear what they were talking about. And we did. We became pretty successful.
So what happened to the show in L.A.?
Management wasn't consistent about what we could and couldn't do. It came and went. One day they'd be happy about what we did, the next day, they'd just be incensed. We couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason for it. I don't think there really was. I think the General Manager was doing a lot of cocaine. He would get mad for any number of reasons, not just sexual topics. It was difficult to conduct show under those circumstances. It was erratic and inconsistent.
Was there any one reason why you left?
It got to be a ridiculous situation. We tried to ignore it for as long as we could and then one day the shit just hit and the fan and we blew up. We had enough. We had heard a few weeks before that were either going to be fired or moved anyway, so we figured, "Let's just get 'em." It was a preemptive strike. I guess we did it right. Voicing our dislike for management on air makes for a terrible life and career.
You've always featured porn stars on the air. Talk about that.
Our last show in LA featured a porn star, the lovely Stacy Valentine. And our last show here in Atlanta featured a porn star, Devinn Lane. It seems to be a pattern. But a nice little pattern.
We don't take ugly porn stars. If we take an ugly one on,you can rest assured that we will not get from fired from that show. If we're going to get fired, it has to be with a queen, a goddess ... and she has to have huge, huge boobs. That's the way it usually works out.
If we're having a girl like that on, there's a good chance we will not be back the next day. If we have an ugly porn chick on, we're safe. But a beautiful goddess? A good chance we'll be looking for another market.
And then Atlanta got to meet The Regular Guys.
There was a gradual learning curve when moved to Atlanta. It's different than LA. We figured out what the culture was locally and how to best match up our abilities with that. At the same time, audiences get used to you too. We had never been in the south. It's different. Mainly because it's more religious here. It's a whole different cultural shift from a city where there aren't so many religious people -- who mainly find themselves in southern California.
How was the Atlanta show immediately different?
We didn't have a lot of porn chicks on the show in Atlanta. We really didn't. Devinn Lane was one of...well, we'd have one on every three or four months. It just wasn't that big of a topic. We really just reached the limit of interest with the porn star/stripper thing. There's not that much in it. People in radio think they have to do that, but it gets really boring. I'm not bored with sex, but I get bored not only with talking about it, but by having to dance around the subject and say what I have to say without freaking people out. There's not as much humor in it without running afoul of authorities or your family members. So, in Atlanta, we ended up being more news-oriented and, you know, there are always personal dramas and all sorts of other topics and guests. So, it became less and less about sex topics. I guess less than 10-percent of the shows in Atlanta dealt with sexual themes.
So what happened on that last show in Atlanta?
Devinn Lane was on the show, a microphone was accidentally left open and explicit language went out over the air. We were suspended, and then management decided that they just couldn't, politically, bring us back. They felt they couldn't risk it, and they let us go. They canceled the show, but we're still employed and getting paid technically.
Let's talk about Clear Channel and "Zero Tolerance."
Well, the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident (Picture: 1 - 2) gave a lot of political opportunists or provided a lot of opportunity to attack this vexing problem of bad words. I think that was one of the inciting incidents.
Radio and TV has gotten more broad with language recently. I think that the authorities just became lax in enforcing the standards. The rules were always there. There were always people willing to enforce them. But it wasn't seen as much of a problem. It was kind of like, "Yeah, whatever." The fines for violating the standards, until recently, weren't as onerous. Radio has bad PR. From what you hear, it seems like it's much worse than television...but that's virtually impossible. Television has pictures that go along with it too. And there are so many channels.
Morning radio shows like Howard Stern's are just a minority of morning shows much less day parts, so I think if you quantify strictly what is good and what is bad and then count 'em up on each side, you'll find more incidents on television. Movies too.
Everybody talks about broadcasting, but let's look at all media. It's far more likely to find some sort of incident on the Internet or in movies than you are to find something in radio and TV combined.
People don't seem to be as worked up over movies because they're under the influence of a fiction, a lie, an outright ridiculous justification, which is that the public owns the airwaves and they're limited. They are not owned by the public and they are not limited. It's an artificial way for the government to take control and have a monopoly over broadcasting.
What's your philosophy on "walking that fine line"?
I don't feel hamstrung by the rules of broadcasting. Some people will complain of that...I don't thing it's a good thing what's happening now. I don't think the laws are fair, I don't think they're right, I don't think they're constitutional, but they're there and I don't think it's that difficult to adhere to them.
Like I said, the thing with the show happened from a pure accident. It wasn't an intentional thing. Previous to that, we had no fines for content and very few complaints.
We talked about some things on-air that were fairly heavy and adult, but we got ratings and things never got dirty. It was not a dirty show. It was a discussion show. It was a comedy show with points of view and drama and all that. It was a talk show. I have no fear of going back because I know I won't do anything to get fined. If it does happen, oh well. They'll pay it and we'll move on. It's very easy to be creative and keep your show the way it is.
I don't believe for a second people who say, "My show would be better without these rules." No it wouldn't. You're just looking for an excuse, a crutch. Words like "fuck" or "shit" don't get ratings. They don't enlighten or amuse anybody. They're purely limited to shock value.
Overall it's a negative. People like euphemisms. They like hearing things bleeped. It sounds more naughty and more exciting. Everybody knows what you're talking about, but the funnier and more clever you can describe something, the better off you are. If I went to satellite radio-which is on of the things I'm considering-I would not gratuitously do anything I couldn't do on broadcast. That includes the use of proper language. I might slip once in a while, but that's okay.
My philosophy, if I went to satellite where everything's supposedly unfettered, is that I still have an audience to deal with and they have their limitations too. There's only a hard-core group of people who can tolerate constant filth and sexual topics. I mean, do you really want to hear about a guy taking a shit on a girl's chest? It might be funny once, but after a while it's like how is this entertaining anyone?
I wrote porn reviews for Hustler Erotic Video Guide for a while and after a while it was a challenge. It got to the point where I had to leave out all the sexual content in a porn review just to have a clever, new, readable review. And that's in a porn review, for God's sake.
What does the future hold for The Regular Guys?
I don't know. I'm not going to sweat it. I've been through this for most of my life now and I know what's going to happen exactly.
I'm going to get a job. I'll be working again. And I have the luxury of getting paid this time while I sit around and wait for that magic day. And that's what it'll be. It will be out of my control. It already is at this point.
Somebody's going to call and say, "It's time for you to go to work." And that will be that and I'll move on. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy free money. It's going to happen.
In the meantime, some people say they're experimenting with drugs. That's just a highfalutin way of saying, "I'm an addict." They're not doing any experiments. The scientific method dictates that if you get the same results consistently every time out, you're not experimenting anymore. You've come to a conclusion and it's time to write up a paper and send it to the Nobel people. But I'm truly experimenting right now.
Let's hear a bit more about these experiments.
I'm trying different combos. I'm trying now to see how many days in a row I can go. How many hours in a row the human body can sustain. You know, little experiments. This is true science. I haven't come to any conclusions and I haven't formed a hypothesis, but that's the beauty of experimentation.
Real experimentation as opposed to those posers or addicts. Timothy Leary was a fraud, by the way. He told people, "I'm a doctor and I'm experimenting." Well he never got back to us with his findings. Dumbass. When he died, did he leave any papers?
So far my experiments have been very good. And you know what? They've been so good, I'm keeping the findings all to myself. Why should I share this information with anybody? Go out and find your own shit. Just say maybe to drugs.
Well, I will reveal one of my experiments. I'm trying to calibrate the exact ratio at different levels of ingestion the ratio of "think I'm funny" to "actual funny." Basically, I'm just enjoying myself. I want to see if I can handle retirement.
A lot people work and save and sweat and toil for a long time, and think, "One day I'm going to have that money saved up and I'm just going to be able to say goodbye and relax and do whatever I want to the rest of my life."
After a week, they want to get back to work. So they need jobs and hobbies. What I'm doing now is, again, experimenting. I want to see if I can fill all the days ahead with good, constructive projects and chores. If I can do that, then I know that I can successfully retire one day. If I can't, then I know I'll be doing radio for the rest of my life ... just like Paul Harvey.
What happened was: The Regular Guys, in a bid to mock the current crackdown on rule-bending, featured porn star Devinn Lane (Picture: - ) for an on-air interview that was to be explicit, but played backwards so as to be indecipherable. Unfortunately, as the bit was being recorded, a microphone was left on and explicit language went out over a commercial.
Zero tolerance left no room for forgiveness, and the Regular Guys are no more. Sort of a replay of what happened in Los Angeles, where the team started their show. Now, in the aftermath of the Atlanta incident, Eric has left the partnership for new opportunities and Larry Wachs is at home "experimenting" while he awaits his next broadcasting assignment. I caught up with Larry recently and here's what he had to say about the formtion of the show, the current state of radio and the scientific method.
Tell us about the genesis of The Regular Guys.
I met Eric in a comedy club in Rochester, New York, in '89 and he just kind of hung out on the show I was doing there. Then we decided to get him more involved in the show. We both kind of fell out of radio for a couple of years and then we had an opportunity to do a talk show in Los Angeles, and I wanted to do it with Eric. The person hiring said okay. That's where we really started the current era that we're in...and where we got dumped from.
Did you do stand-up comedy before radio?
I wasn't. Eric did for a while.
How did you get to Los Angeles?
It was really something we always wanted to do, talk radio. It's so much more lucrative and satisfying from a creative standpoint. And we just decided to give it a go. We wanted to try to do it right. We wanted to listen to people and hear what they were talking about. And we did. We became pretty successful.
So what happened to the show in L.A.?
Management wasn't consistent about what we could and couldn't do. It came and went. One day they'd be happy about what we did, the next day, they'd just be incensed. We couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason for it. I don't think there really was. I think the General Manager was doing a lot of cocaine. He would get mad for any number of reasons, not just sexual topics. It was difficult to conduct show under those circumstances. It was erratic and inconsistent.
Was there any one reason why you left?
It got to be a ridiculous situation. We tried to ignore it for as long as we could and then one day the shit just hit and the fan and we blew up. We had enough. We had heard a few weeks before that were either going to be fired or moved anyway, so we figured, "Let's just get 'em." It was a preemptive strike. I guess we did it right. Voicing our dislike for management on air makes for a terrible life and career.
You've always featured porn stars on the air. Talk about that.
Our last show in LA featured a porn star, the lovely Stacy Valentine. And our last show here in Atlanta featured a porn star, Devinn Lane. It seems to be a pattern. But a nice little pattern.
We don't take ugly porn stars. If we take an ugly one on,you can rest assured that we will not get from fired from that show. If we're going to get fired, it has to be with a queen, a goddess ... and she has to have huge, huge boobs. That's the way it usually works out.
If we're having a girl like that on, there's a good chance we will not be back the next day. If we have an ugly porn chick on, we're safe. But a beautiful goddess? A good chance we'll be looking for another market.
And then Atlanta got to meet The Regular Guys.
There was a gradual learning curve when moved to Atlanta. It's different than LA. We figured out what the culture was locally and how to best match up our abilities with that. At the same time, audiences get used to you too. We had never been in the south. It's different. Mainly because it's more religious here. It's a whole different cultural shift from a city where there aren't so many religious people -- who mainly find themselves in southern California.
How was the Atlanta show immediately different?
We didn't have a lot of porn chicks on the show in Atlanta. We really didn't. Devinn Lane was one of...well, we'd have one on every three or four months. It just wasn't that big of a topic. We really just reached the limit of interest with the porn star/stripper thing. There's not that much in it. People in radio think they have to do that, but it gets really boring. I'm not bored with sex, but I get bored not only with talking about it, but by having to dance around the subject and say what I have to say without freaking people out. There's not as much humor in it without running afoul of authorities or your family members. So, in Atlanta, we ended up being more news-oriented and, you know, there are always personal dramas and all sorts of other topics and guests. So, it became less and less about sex topics. I guess less than 10-percent of the shows in Atlanta dealt with sexual themes.
So what happened on that last show in Atlanta?
Devinn Lane was on the show, a microphone was accidentally left open and explicit language went out over the air. We were suspended, and then management decided that they just couldn't, politically, bring us back. They felt they couldn't risk it, and they let us go. They canceled the show, but we're still employed and getting paid technically.
Let's talk about Clear Channel and "Zero Tolerance."
Well, the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident (Picture: 1 - 2) gave a lot of political opportunists or provided a lot of opportunity to attack this vexing problem of bad words. I think that was one of the inciting incidents.
Radio and TV has gotten more broad with language recently. I think that the authorities just became lax in enforcing the standards. The rules were always there. There were always people willing to enforce them. But it wasn't seen as much of a problem. It was kind of like, "Yeah, whatever." The fines for violating the standards, until recently, weren't as onerous. Radio has bad PR. From what you hear, it seems like it's much worse than television...but that's virtually impossible. Television has pictures that go along with it too. And there are so many channels.
Morning radio shows like Howard Stern's are just a minority of morning shows much less day parts, so I think if you quantify strictly what is good and what is bad and then count 'em up on each side, you'll find more incidents on television. Movies too.
Everybody talks about broadcasting, but let's look at all media. It's far more likely to find some sort of incident on the Internet or in movies than you are to find something in radio and TV combined.
People don't seem to be as worked up over movies because they're under the influence of a fiction, a lie, an outright ridiculous justification, which is that the public owns the airwaves and they're limited. They are not owned by the public and they are not limited. It's an artificial way for the government to take control and have a monopoly over broadcasting.
What's your philosophy on "walking that fine line"?
I don't feel hamstrung by the rules of broadcasting. Some people will complain of that...I don't thing it's a good thing what's happening now. I don't think the laws are fair, I don't think they're right, I don't think they're constitutional, but they're there and I don't think it's that difficult to adhere to them.
Like I said, the thing with the show happened from a pure accident. It wasn't an intentional thing. Previous to that, we had no fines for content and very few complaints.
We talked about some things on-air that were fairly heavy and adult, but we got ratings and things never got dirty. It was not a dirty show. It was a discussion show. It was a comedy show with points of view and drama and all that. It was a talk show. I have no fear of going back because I know I won't do anything to get fined. If it does happen, oh well. They'll pay it and we'll move on. It's very easy to be creative and keep your show the way it is.
I don't believe for a second people who say, "My show would be better without these rules." No it wouldn't. You're just looking for an excuse, a crutch. Words like "fuck" or "shit" don't get ratings. They don't enlighten or amuse anybody. They're purely limited to shock value.
Overall it's a negative. People like euphemisms. They like hearing things bleeped. It sounds more naughty and more exciting. Everybody knows what you're talking about, but the funnier and more clever you can describe something, the better off you are. If I went to satellite radio-which is on of the things I'm considering-I would not gratuitously do anything I couldn't do on broadcast. That includes the use of proper language. I might slip once in a while, but that's okay.
My philosophy, if I went to satellite where everything's supposedly unfettered, is that I still have an audience to deal with and they have their limitations too. There's only a hard-core group of people who can tolerate constant filth and sexual topics. I mean, do you really want to hear about a guy taking a shit on a girl's chest? It might be funny once, but after a while it's like how is this entertaining anyone?
I wrote porn reviews for Hustler Erotic Video Guide for a while and after a while it was a challenge. It got to the point where I had to leave out all the sexual content in a porn review just to have a clever, new, readable review. And that's in a porn review, for God's sake.
What does the future hold for The Regular Guys?
I don't know. I'm not going to sweat it. I've been through this for most of my life now and I know what's going to happen exactly.
I'm going to get a job. I'll be working again. And I have the luxury of getting paid this time while I sit around and wait for that magic day. And that's what it'll be. It will be out of my control. It already is at this point.
Somebody's going to call and say, "It's time for you to go to work." And that will be that and I'll move on. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy free money. It's going to happen.
In the meantime, some people say they're experimenting with drugs. That's just a highfalutin way of saying, "I'm an addict." They're not doing any experiments. The scientific method dictates that if you get the same results consistently every time out, you're not experimenting anymore. You've come to a conclusion and it's time to write up a paper and send it to the Nobel people. But I'm truly experimenting right now.
Let's hear a bit more about these experiments.
I'm trying different combos. I'm trying now to see how many days in a row I can go. How many hours in a row the human body can sustain. You know, little experiments. This is true science. I haven't come to any conclusions and I haven't formed a hypothesis, but that's the beauty of experimentation.
Real experimentation as opposed to those posers or addicts. Timothy Leary was a fraud, by the way. He told people, "I'm a doctor and I'm experimenting." Well he never got back to us with his findings. Dumbass. When he died, did he leave any papers?
So far my experiments have been very good. And you know what? They've been so good, I'm keeping the findings all to myself. Why should I share this information with anybody? Go out and find your own shit. Just say maybe to drugs.
Well, I will reveal one of my experiments. I'm trying to calibrate the exact ratio at different levels of ingestion the ratio of "think I'm funny" to "actual funny." Basically, I'm just enjoying myself. I want to see if I can handle retirement.
A lot people work and save and sweat and toil for a long time, and think, "One day I'm going to have that money saved up and I'm just going to be able to say goodbye and relax and do whatever I want to the rest of my life."
After a week, they want to get back to work. So they need jobs and hobbies. What I'm doing now is, again, experimenting. I want to see if I can fill all the days ahead with good, constructive projects and chores. If I can do that, then I know that I can successfully retire one day. If I can't, then I know I'll be doing radio for the rest of my life ... just like Paul Harvey.
