JAT Entertainment

Touch that dial! Here's a sampling of just some of the
hottest radio personalities making (air)waves in the
Detroit market.

JIM MCFARLIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Making
Waves

e know that everybody on Detroit
radio talks. But what are De-
troiters talking about when it
comes to their radios? Here's a
baker's half-dozen (that's seven, we think)
of the broadcast acts currently generating
some of the hottest buzz on our airwaves.

DREW AND MIKE, 6-10 a.m. weekdays,
WRIF-FM (101.1):
Drew Lane and Mike Clark had the col-
lective chutzpah to literally reinvent their
morning show three years ago, and De-
troit radio still hasn't recovered from the
change. "They came in one day and said,
`We're tired of playing the (music) format
... we want to do something different," re-
calls WRIF general manager Tom Ben-
der. "I said, 'What do you want to do?' They
said, 'Talk."
And much to the delight of their huge,

Motor City Madman Ted Nugent: WWBR builds an image around the "Nuge."

male-dominated audience, they haven't
shut up yet. Drew and Mike can be caus-
tic, challenging, callow and comical — usu-
ally all in the same breath — and deem
no topic too outrageous to bounce off their
newswoman and resident foil, Trudi
Daniels. They're Howard Stern without
the glitter— or the gutter— and the most
successful teammates in this city since Isi-
ah and Laimbeer.

84

Drew Lane and Mike Clark love to talk.

TED NUGENT, 6-10 a.m. Mondays-Fri-
days, WWBR-FM (102.7):
If his frequent, ferociously funny sub-
stitute-host stints on local stations and
snappy political repartee as one of Rush
Limbaugh's few recurring on-air guests
didn't give it away, yes, legendary rock-
er Nugent has long considered hosting his
own daily radio show at some point in his
career.
When veteran programmer Joe
Bevilaqua caught wind of that high note,
he pursued the Motor City Madman with
a passion and convinced a reluctant own-
ership to build their image around the
Nuge, even changing the station's iden-
tity (it used to be "Z-Rock," WDZR-FM) to

'The Bear," WWBR, to rash in on Nugent's
well-known wildlife pursuits.
"I can't think of anybody else you could
put on the air in Detroit and get this kind
of instant reaction," Bevilaqua crows.
Since Terrible Ted's debut last Dec. 2 (he
currently commutes each morning from
his Jackson home), he's been in head-to-
head-to-head competition with WRIF's
Drew and Mike in the fiercest inter-for-
mat radio
io competition in years. Great

AND THE BREAK-
FAST CLUB, 5:30-10 a.m. Mondays-Sat-
urdays, 9 a.m.-noon Sundays, WNIC-FM
(100
Actually, not that many "experts" in the
Actually,
radio industry tend to talk about I larper.
But they should. He's seemingly been a
prominent personality on Detroit airwaves
since the first transistor (anybody here re-
member St. James and Harper?), and he
has carefully developed a feminine mys-
tique that makes his morning show (and
WNIC in general, since he also serves as
the station's program director) consistently
dominant among the 25-to-54 year-old