Girl Talk

The morning chatter traffic jam is going to get even more congested soon.

Two of the last stations still featuring music programming in the a.m. hours are giving up and joining the talking-heads crowd. Both KYSR-FM (Star 98.7) and KLYY-FM (107.1--known as Y107) are bringing in morning teams to join a Los Angeles field that already includes, among otherwise music-oriented stations, Mark and Brian on KLOS-FM (95.5), Kevin and Bean on KROQ-FM (106.7), Rick Dees on KIIS-FM (102.7) and Big Boy on KPWR-FM (105.9).

Plans for Y107’s changes are still being finalized, but in the case of Star, the chatter is already heating up, with the trio of Jamie White, Frank Kramer and Frosty Stillwell being imported from Denver--where they are No. 1 in their time slot--to start here Feb. 16.

A reputation for outrageousness and explicitness precedes them, with an incident last summer--in which they laughed and joked about a man dying after an epileptic seizure while fishing with his young children--drawing particular concern in some quarters.

The morning after the July 7 death of Brian Formby, Stillwell joked during the team’s show on KALC-FM that the children--ages 6 and 4--only needed some lettuce to make a “seizure salad,” drawing laughter from White and Kramer.

Angered members of the Formby family called for the three to be fired, but they were only suspended for two days, with both management and the jocks making on-air apologies, while station owner Chancellor Media (which also owns Star) aired a 15-minute program about epilepsy on KALC and its four other Denver stations. The Formby family, which owns two prominent Denver-area car dealerships, said it was not enough and said it would sue Chancellor unless it was paid $500,000. An out-of-court settlement was reached.

The incident has left many in the radio world wary of the team.

“I’ve been in radio 25 years and everyone in the business I discuss this with agrees that what they did was the single worst thing they’ve ever heard of,” says one radio programming consultant who, though having no connection to Star or KALC, asked that his name not be used in this story. “And now these guys are being rewarded with a show in L.A.”

The deejays feel that is an overreaction.

“That [incident] was very atypical of us,” says Kramer. “It was a bad judgment call and we’ve learned our lesson, and that’s not what the show was about. It was a slip, and to concentrate on that and to say that that’s what we’re about, that’s wrong.”

White echoes that. “When you do off-the-cuff humor, you can make a mistake, and we certainly made a large mistake and we paid for it, literally,” she says. “Hopefully it’s water under the bridge. It should be by now.”

Denver observers say that in the Mile High City, where the team’s show will continue as a simulcast from Star, the incident has faded.

“The story kind of died,” says Michael O’Keefe, who covered some of the fallout for the Rocky Mountain News. “To be honest, these guys are not even the worst [most offensive morning team] in Denver.”

But they still offer plenty to raise some eyebrows--which, says Star program director Angela Perelli, is precisely why they’re being brought here, where Chancellor hopes they can make some headway in a very tough market.

“It’s a different direction for us,” Perelli says, noting the station’s music-intensive, adult female-oriented approach. “But we’re very excited. We rank about 16th in the morning ratings but go up to eighth or seventh in mid-days and afternoons. And Arbitron [the ratings company] shows that 60% of your morning audience recycles to the next day-part. So if we could have a morning show that performed at the level we achieve at other times, it would take us up several notches in the ratings.”

But is this the way to accomplish that? On first blush, the team’s tone seems incompatible with Star’s fairly civilized manner. White, in particular, is known for frank, sex-heavy patter, often dealing with (in minute, personal detail) her own exploits and those of her friends.

And the very fact that she’s a woman not only makes her unusual in this male-heavy morning market, but also, both she and Perelli say, gives her an instant bond with Star’s core listenership--a demographic similar to one her trio has been so successful with in Denver.

“They’re geared for women and that’s what we’re going for,” says White. “I think you have to give women more credit than thinking, ‘Oh, they don’t want to hear about sex.’ If you feel that way, you have no idea how women talk at the bar. It cracks me up that people don’t give women more credit for being open-minded.”

Laughing Matter: You don’t even have to own a radio to know that the airwaves have been filled with jabs and jibes about the current White House falderal. But some, of course, stand out from the crowd.

Stephanie Miller of KABC-AM (790) must be thanking the heavens hourly for this occurrence. It’s the kind of situation she was born to spoof; she hasn’t had anything this meaty to work with since the O.J. Simpson trial, back when she was at KFI-AM (640). The connection was not lost on her; she was particularly on target last week with a saucy telephone conversation with Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark, who’s turned into quite the witty commentator herself. And Miller’s “news” bits, including placing the Clintons in remakes of “Three’s Company” and “All in the Family,” were quite clever.

And pledge drive at KCRW-FM (89.9) didn’t stop satirist Harry Shearer from his usual incomparable work Sunday. In one bit, Shearer, utilizing his voice talents, had Ted Koppel moderating a “town meeting” panel of Larry King and Rush Limbaugh, skewering the media’s rampant self-analysis in the course of this story.

The final word on that latter topic, though, may have come Saturday from Scott Simon, host of National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition,” who told of driving home in Washington, braving the gantlet of media gathered outside Lewinsky’s Watergate apartment. As he did so, Simon reported, he rolled down the window and shouted, “Jackals! Scum! Colleagues!”