I hope you enjoy the following excerpt from my upcoming book due this fall. www.daveprattbook.com Please pre-order now and help the American Cancer Society! And please tell your friends!
I would like to thank my publisher, Linda Radke at Five Star Publications for allowing me to share this excerpt with you at this time. But most of all, I want to thank you. I am blessed to have the most loyal listeners in radio. My family is truly blessed and grateful to have your friendship.
On July 7, 2003, we launched Dave Pratt in the Morning on KMLE.
Our phone lines exploded. Listener after listener called in disbelief. Many thought we were playing a one-day joke. The reaction was outrageous. A crowd almost immediately started gathering outside of the radio station and within thirty minutes Channel 12 and Fox 10 had their cameras in our studio for live cut-ins on their morning shows. Channel 5, Channel 3, and Channel 15 all called and recorded interviews. The Arizona Republic got on the line, wanting to do a front-page, full-color feature story, followed shortly by The Tribune. Radio industry magazines like Billboard, Radio and Records, and Album Network called, requesting interviews when we got off the air. The morning was turning into a full-blown frenzy.
From the time my alarm sounded that morning, it was 16 hours, nonstop. I was brain fried when I finally arrived home at 8 p.m. My wife met me at the door and said: “Honey, wait until you see this.” I walked into my home office and my e-mail inbox screen showed over 8,000 messages. It took me forever just to scroll down. The subject lines were full of emotion and read everything from “you suck” and “traitor” to “welcome” and “we love you!” Listeners were incredibly surprised that I had joined a country station. In fact, to hundreds of thousands of listeners, July 7, 2003, will go down as a day of shock. As word leaked out that “Pratt went country,” you could almost hear radios changing stations to KMLE Country 108 to see if it was actually true.
Due to my reputation, some KMLE listeners were irate. In their opinion, a rowdy, foul-mouthed, controversial rock jock was now doing the morning show on their station. Other listeners were screaming happy and thanking us for saving KMLE. Keep in mind that before my arrival, KMLE was at its lowest point in years.
Many KMLE listeners, and most air staff members, felt like my coming on board would be the change needed to bring the station back. We received call after call from longtime KMLE listeners saying: “Hey, Phoenix finally has a good morning show on a country station. We’ve been waiting!” We also received story after story about how some listeners had grown up with me on rock but turned to country as their life progressed. Now, we were together again. By the end of that first week, nearly 19,000 e-mails had poured in. The response was overwhelming and the number of listeners who shared their support was staggering.
The other type of reaction was very emotional. Many rock lovers felt that I had alienated them. They could not understand that my life had changed over twenty-two years. They could not understand why I wanted to leave rock and host the morning show on a country station. They took my exit from rock as a personal snub, like my transfer to country radio was some type of assault on rock music, but it was never intended in that manner. They were truly convinced the reason I did rock radio for more than two decades was due to a personal love for rock music. What they didn’t understand is that my loyalty was never to the music . . . my loyalty was to them. I have always been much more loyal to my listeners than any type of music or radio format. I have mentioned this many times over my career, but some people only hear what they want to hear. For years, my only promise has been that I would never leave Arizona. I have kept my word. I have never left.
Ironically, many of those early detractors are some of my most loyal KMLE listeners today. I’m a little bit country, and I’m a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, but trying to please everybody is a sure way to become mired in mediocrity. Some people wouldn’t be happy if Baskin Robbins had a thousand flavors. Everybody is different and everybody has different tastes in what they want in a radio show. On KMLE, I decided to just be myself and let the chips fall where they may. And what if the longest running and most succesful rock show in the history of Arizona actually won in country radio? How funny would that be?
For a period of a few weeks after I debuted on KMLE, I received every type of bitter reaction you could imagine, even physical threats from some listeners who felt I had turned my back on rock. At the same time, some country listeners were just as brutal. They wanted me to know that I was not welcome in country. It got pretty nasty, but I held my temper knowing that given enough time, our show would change their mind. They just needed to get to know the real me as opposed to my rock reputation. I just needed to be myself and have patience.
That afternoon, I was walking out of a restaurant and my eye was drawn to a copy of The Arizona Republic in one of those coin-operated, metal newspaper machines. Yep, there was my big, ugly mug staring back at me in full color. At that particular moment I was relaxing and not really thinking about radio, so the sight of myself on the front page of the newspaper caught me off guard. I thought: Is this really that big of a deal? Am I really on the front page in full color just for changing radio formats?” It was the same day that Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy for Governor of California, and the same day Lakers’ star Kobe Bryant went to court on rape charges. But that day, in Arizona, my move to country was the bigger story. I just laughed and shook my head. From that point on, I knew this camel was going to be one hell of a ride.
