Chicago’s Live Wire in L.A.

Jonathon Brandmeier--longtime top morning-drive broadcaster in Chicago among adults 25 to 54 years old--made his debut here last week talking about the pair of Pamela Anderson Lee sex videotapes.

A video with husband Tommy Lee of rock band Motley Crue had previously been released on the Internet, and now there were reports of another involving the former “Baywatch” actress and Poison’s Bret Michaels. Brandmeier hadn’t seen the Tommy Lee tape, but he was playing back the audio portion on the air.

“Tracey, are you there?” he calls out gleefully to Tracey Miller, who does news and chitchat on his noon to 3 p.m. “Radio Showgram,” which follows Howard Stern on CBS-owned KLSX-FM (97.1). “If it looks like it sounds, I would imagine it’s pretty hot.”

With the news out of Washington, it turned out to be quite a fodder-filled, sex-lies-and-tapes week. Although he also brought in a wide range of other items, by the end of the week he was opening the show playing a snippet of the previous night’s “Nightline.” Ted Koppel had begun his ABC program about the allegations of sex between the president and a former White House intern by saying: “It may . . . ultimately come down to the question of whether oral sex does or does not constitute adultery.”

After the broadcast, you catch an amiable Brandmeier at the old Fox Studios in east Hollywood, tuned to his own program. Much like Stern, Brandmeier is on tape delay here. He does the show from 9 a.m. to noon from the studio, but it is heard live only in Chicago on CBS’ WCKG-FM.

Brandmeier--41, married and the father of two young daughters--was a comedian and band drummer out of Fond du Lac, Wis. He hesitates to define his show: “I couldn’t describe it. It’s fun. It’s not political, it’s not vicious, it’s not arrogant, it’s just me having a good time. You could say it’s just me trying to amuse myself. . . . I’m like a frat boy,” he adds. “I like to jump around and have fun.”

Boy, does he jump. One minute he’s banging his desk or any other nearby object with a rolled-up movie poster; next, he’s pulling framed photos of himself and celebrities out of a cabinet; then he’s jumping up and down on the couch. “I’m more hyper off the air,” he says.

But it’s also his tone on air. “They call me the hyper rooster; I’m a gnat,” he says, and mimics himself: “Oh, that’s interesting. Wait a minute. Hey, forget about that. We got Zsa Zsa [Gabor] on the phone. Hey, hold on a minute. Here’s Billy Crystal. . . .”

On his show last week, he phoned Joey Bishop. “Did I wake you up?” No, Bishop was watching TV. When Bishop asked what kind of a name Brandmeier is, the radio host said, “It’s a German name,” adding that he’s “half-German, half Lebanese.”

Is Brandmeier a citizen, Bishop wondered? “Yeah,” Brandmeier replied, joking, with a dash of political incorrectness. “Just made it Friday. Married someone I met at El Pollo Loco.”

He phoned Gabor three times at home to invite her to his Super Bowl party. She hung up on him. He played tapes--the real Gennifer Flowers and Bill Clinton, as well as a parody take. He had radio legend Casey Kasem in studio phoning Charlton Heston, but Heston was not at home. He had a humorous tape of a “conversation” between Katharine Hepburn and Mike Tyson.

Asked how a listener differentiates between the real and the fake, he replies, “Here’s the deal. I [won’t] dumb it down for people. We know that Katie Hepburn is not going to get on the phone with Mike Tyson, who’s also fake.”

One of these days, when his new studio is completed, he promises to have live music performances.

Well--live in Chicago. “It was almost a deal-breaker,” Brandmeier says of the tape delay on KLSX. “The night before [signing], I talked to Mel [Karmazin, CBS Station Group chairman]. I said for me to really work a city, to get into it, I need to talk to [listeners]. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Stern’s not live after [6 a.m.], Jay Leno’s not live, Letterman’s not live.’ ” To get around this glitch, KLSX does promos during the Stern show asking listeners to phone Brandmeier right then, and Brandmeier makes liberal use of local phone books to talk to people at home.

Brandmeier, who started in radio at 15 as a disc jockey on weekends, began making his mark in Milwaukee in 1980 when he was chosen as one of the five top radio talents in the country--coincidentally with Stern. Brandmeier landed in Phoenix, where he doubled his salary and tripled the station’s ratings. By 1983 he was where he wanted to be--Chicago--and a year later was at the top of the morning game at WLUP-FM.

Growing tired of morning drive, he opted to do an afternoon show beginning in 1993 and to do it from Los Angeles, where several of his brothers live. However, in 1995, after WLUP’s morning show dropped to 17th in the ratings, he moved back to Chicago and brought the ratings up again. After WLUP was sold this summer, Brandmeier moved to Los Angeles, expecting to broadcast mornings on Chancellor-owned KYSR-FM (98.7), while simulcasting on a Chancellor station in Chicago.

But they couldn’t come to terms on restructuring Brandmeier’s contract, and CBS moved in. Which suited Bob Moore, KLSX’s vice president and general manager. Moore had tried to hire Brandmeier in 1994 as he was planning to take KLSX from classic rock to talk.

Brandmeier won’t discuss salary, but he reportedly had been earning $2.8 million a year at his last job. Whatever his take today, for Brandmeier, it all adds up to what a radio executive once told him: “It’s high school with money, man. Get in there and have some fun.”

Story Man: When veteran Los Angeles radio host Roger Barkley died of pancreatic cancer Dec. 21 at 61, he knew that his compilation of homespun essays and stories, ranging from his boyhood in Iowa to a major broadcast career, would become a book. And that it would be published by his good friend Tina Marie Ito, editor of the quarterly La Canada Flintridge Magazine, where much of his work had appeared.

The book--”The Story Man’s First Writes”--will be available in March.

Barkley writes gently of having to take away his 92-year-old father’s driving privileges. He tells of a test of wills with a dog named Damien, who liked to chew on his sofa. And he writes about some of the whimsical characters from his 25-year run on Los Angeles radio with Al Lohman--Ted J. Baloney, W. Eva Schneider Baloney, Judge Roy Bean--but stays true to his determination not to discuss the reasons behind the team’s breakup in 1986.

He does, however, reflect on being fired from KABC-AM (790).

“Once upon a 1954,” he writes, “there was this 17-year-old lad, full of dreams and wonderment who went off to Minneapolis on a hot June day to begin the schooling that would prepare him for a career in broadcasting. . . .

“Today is Sept. 13, 1996. Today that lad, now 60, after finishing his umpteenth thousandth radio show, was invited into the boss’ office to be Terminated! . . . Dismissed Early from a Career! And Sent Home.

“Actually it took three bosses--a female and two guys--about five minutes to do the deed. . . . It breaks my heart to have it end. Thirty-five successful years in this town--the last six [at KABC] being the payoff prize for all that went before.”

“First Writes”--also containing photos of Barkley with celebrities, an introduction by actor Tim Conway and drawings by Barkley’s daughter Angela--can be purchased by check for $26.55 (including tax and handling) from Domadeti Enterprises; c/o Tina Marie Ito; P.O. Box 1033; La Canada Flintridge, CA 91012. Information: (818) 790-4223.