Just a week into his revived radio show, and one forgets that Tom Leykis was off the air for a couple of years after the demise of KLSX-FM 97.1. He's back to his natural, hilarious, ranting self over at blowmeuptom.com, blowing up listeners Kobe style and all sorts of other styles. The first couple of days were devoted to Leykis taking calls from his adoring audience, a slew of guys and gals so ecstatic that their Dad was back that you half-expected them to declare Leykis Jeebus.
Tom was kind enough to take some questions from us–and OF COURSE I asked about his favorite radio personalities, KFI's John Kobyalt and Ken Chiampou, whom Leykis memorably called “total fucking pussies” for apologizing for their Whitney Houston “crack ho” crack.
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OC Weekly: One week in, how are you feeling? Have the listeners resposne and their numbers blown you away?
I'm feeling AMAZING. We are way ahead of where we thought we'd be at
this point. We had to use so many servers on Day One to handle all the
overflow of listeners, we are still calculating how many listeners we
had on Day One and in Week One. One thing we know for sure: over 80,000
heard us in Week One ON OUR WEBSITE ALONE from 100 countries. That
doesn't include the listeners on all the various media players that
people use to hear the show such as TuneIn, Windows Media Player and
others. Thousands of people hear our 24 hour stream who may not have
heard us if they only had the choice of listening when we're live in
the late afternoon.
I noticed that Anaheim ranked in your top 10 list of cities with the
most listeners to your show. Did that surprise you? Why Anacrime as
opposed to other citites in OC?
I an not surprised that Anacrime is one of our top cities. It always
was! It just happens to be a big OC city with a big Mexican population,
and wherever there's a big Mexican population, we have a lot of
listeners. We have even have thousands of listeners now in Mexico
itself! And those listeners had to have either lived in SoCal at one
time or have family that does.
Given the new format, are you planning to substantially change your style? More cursing, more graphic conversations?
Our plan is not
for more gratuitously conversations, but to simply let
people speak the way they naturally speak, and for me to speak the way I
naturally speak. My style can naturally be more relaxed now, too, because we
run way less commercials than before and because I work for myself now
without management breathing down my neck.
Any plans for OC events in the future?
We definitely
plan for OC events in the future, but for starters, we are staying in
the studio making sure that everything is buletproof. Any day we get
through an entire show without a glitch or a technical interruption, we
get closer to being able to break out from the studio and do fun things
away from it. I'd love to do something in OC this summer.
Finally, any words for your favorite total fucking pussies, JohnKen?
You will notice
that John & Ken never said a peep about my calling them “total
fucking pussies.” I would bet a substantial sum that is not only because
they know it's true, but because I'd guess they've been told by
management at KFI that they are not ALLOWED to respond. Imagine big, bad
John & Ken, who “tell it like it is” and who the station calls
“fearless” being told by management what they can and can't say!
Hey,
John & Ken! If you indeed “tell it like it is,” tell us what the
management told you that you can and can't talk about! Perhaps Weekly
readers would like to call John & Ken at 1-800-520-1KFI and demand
to know what it is they can and can't say? Let's see how “fearless” they
really ARE!
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