John Salley is still holding court

John Salley learned an important lesson this spring -- one he apparently didn’t pick up running with the Detroit Piston Bad Boys of the late 1980s: Don’t be too nice.

In May, the former NBA star was supposed to launch “The John Salley Block Party,” KKBT-FM (100.3) the Beat’s new morning show that airs from 5:30 to 10 a.m., with a celebrity golf tournament in Tarzana. The event was centered around comedian Steve Harvey, whom Salley was replacing.

Salley was supposed to talk with his predecessor, an on-air passing of the baton of sorts, but in the first-day, out-of-the-studio chaos, the interview never materialized. Instead, Salley settled for crooner Babyface. Salley knows he should have made it happen, impose his will the way he did on the basketball court.

“It was a rough, rough morning,” said Salley, his 6-foot, 11-inch frame slumping slightly as he recalled that day on a recent morning. The former athlete sat in KKBT-FM’s Miracle Mile offices, sipping bottled water after finishing his show.

“What I learned was not to let anyone put me in an uncomfortable situation again. The deal is, I’m a nice guy, but when your name is on the title of it ... nobody can protect it better than you.”

The 41-year-old Salley isn’t quite a franchise name or face, but he has become one of a small fraternity of elite athletes who have made the transition from the arena to the airwaves of multiple mediums. In addition to his morning show, where he and cohost Ananda Lewis are billed as “Mr. & Mrs. Radio,” Salley is into his fourth year as one of the hosts on Fox Sports Network’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period.” And if you don’t know him from those shows, you might remember his stint as a Los Angeles Laker, where he acquired one of his four NBA championship rings -- won with three three different teams, a feat only one other player in NBA history (Robert Horry) has ever accomplished.

But unlike the sporting world, where seasons have distinct beginnings and endings, a career in big-market radio and national television is ongoing, and it’s certainly not time to pop open the champagne bottles just yet. As Salley candidly admits, he’s still learning on the job, especially about radio.

“He is getting into his groove,” said Pia James, associate producer for the Beat’s morning show, which mixes Salley’s street-smart humor that plays freely with race and stereotypes along with urban and hip-hop music. “He’s getting more comfortable with the clock, and he understands now that radio is the theater of the mind.”

The morning show’s rating have fallen from its heyday with Harvey, who for a time was the top-rated English-language drive-time show in Los Angeles before his numbers went into a considerable decline. Barely six months into his new radio gig, Salley has broadened the morning show’s audience -- younger, more women and almost half are Latino, somewhat surprising for a station whose parent company is Radio One Inc., a Washington D.C.-area based media company that targets primarily African Americans. Still, Salley’s show has been hovering around 2% of the audience share, putting him in the top 20 for drive-time shows but behind main competitors such as Big Boy at KPWR-FM (105.9).

“He had some big shoes to fill in Steve Harvey, who was a comedian and television star, but John has the ability to make people laugh too, and he’s been getting better and has done fairly well, especially for a guy that really hasn’t done radio before,” said Jerry Boulding, urban/urban AC editor for AllAccess.com, an online journal of the radio industry.

Producers are hoping Salley’s name recognition, quick wit and easygoing manner will help bolster the show’s new audience, and perhaps even recapture parts of its previous one. Other observers think Salley still has his work cut out for him in one of the toughest radio markets in the country.

“L.A. is a tough place to be on the radio. You can go to Disneyland or the beach. You don’t need it in the same way you do in a cold-weather climate,” said Kevin Fleming, editor of the Urban Buzz, a Web-based publication that covers urban radio and music. “John has an excellent co-host in Ananda, he’s got good producers, all he needs to do is to just be the jockey and ride. It’s going to be interesting to see how the show develops.”

Group effort

Salley’s show is billed as a block party, and for a marketing campaign that’s actually not far off the atmosphere inside the station’s 19th-floor Wilshire Boulevard studios. With the recent hire of comedian Bobby Holiday, there’s usually about half a dozen people in the room at any one time and often many more, especially when guests and their entourages arrive. Whether it’s a commercial break or on-air, a playful mood and tough-talking banter pervade the crowded room as hosts, guests and technical staff energetically interact.

One recent morning, the soft-spoken Corey Maggette, a bright light on the now-hot but long-suffering Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, sat in with Salley and rapidly discovered why the retired NBA host earned a reputation as a team funnyman wherever he went.

“So, how does it feel to be on the JV team to the Lakers?” said Salley, who as a player once pulled down Magic Johnson’s shorts during practice.

When Maggette, who was there to promote a charitable event at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, hesitated for a moment. Salley quickly interjected: “My producer just looked at me like, ‘That’s why we don’t hire Negroes in bunches.’ ”

Later in the interview, Maggette predicted that the Clippers could win 50 games this season -- a claim that was pounced upon by a regular visitor to the show, comedian J. Anthony Brown, better known as “Bitterman.”

“Yeah, that’s without white-women troubles,” said Brown, an obvious reference to Los Angeles Laker star Kobe Bryant’s legal troubles.

Along with racial issues, politics, celebrity news and gossip provide steady fodder for the show. Halle Berry and George Bush have been targets, but so has Salley himself. About a week after he took over the show, Salley was sued by a woman with whom he admitted having had an extramarital affair. Salley decided to go public on his show.

“I wanted to cut this thing off at the pass,” he said. “I should have never been in that situation, and I apologized to my wife and anybody else I may have hurt.”

As a boy growing up in Brooklyn, Salley remembers straining to stay up until 2 a.m. when a disc jockey known as “Mr. Magic” at a small station in New Jersey would play the latest songs.

He mused about the changing role of radio.

“People don’t have the time to sit and read the paper over a danish in the morning,” he said. “Today, you’ve got your television on, your radio on, the microwave going, your phone charging and your iPod plugged in. Radio has to give people the news and entertainment at the same time, and that’s what we try to do.”

Now for Job No. 2

Of course, when Salley wraps up his radio show, his responsibilities are only half over. After meeting with his radio-show producers or making conference calls, Salley moves on to Fox Studios near Century City to tape “The Best Damn Sports Show Period.” Through the show’s several incarnations, Salley has always been a go-to guy when it comes to lighthearted banter, provocative opinions and sometimes even raunchy humor.

More accustomed to television -- and probably because he’s not carrying the load as with his radio show -- Salley is typically relaxed and almost always flashing his trademark smile with his three on-air co-hosts and big-time sports guests such as NFL players Shaun Alexander and Chad Johnson.

“I’m not saying I’ve got television down to a science, but I know how it works,” said Salley. “In television I can vibe off the audience and I’m usually reading off a teleprompter, and if I don’t get it right, I reread it. But radio is live and you have to get right.”

Salley’s hope is that his two worlds -- radio and television -- will finally unite soon. He’s working on a deal similar to Howard Stern’s E! Channel television show taped during his radio broadcasts. Salley cites a recent in-studio visit by Snoop Dogg as the kind of fare people want to see as well as hear.

“When you have people like that around you, you’ve got to see it,” said Salley. “I’ve always wanted to do radio and television at the same time. I want it to be like ‘Larry King,’ a radio show on television.”