The morning team of Paul Castronovo and “Young Ron” Brewer are celebrating 20 years as the kings of South Florida radio. In addition to their flagship station, WBGG/Miami, the Paul & Young Ron Show also is heard on WKGR/Palm Beach County, WFKZ/Key Largo and WAIL/Key West, allowing the duo to blanket most of the state. FMQB recently chatted with Paul and Ron about how they formed the show and where they hope to take it in the future.
Paul & Young Ron
By Mandy Feingold
Paul Castronovo and “Young Ron” Brewer have been ruling the airwaves in South Florida for 20 years, starting in 1989 at WSHE and now broadcasting from their flagship station, Classic Rocker WBGG/Miami. The show also is carried on WKGR/Palm Beach County, WFKZ/Key Largo and WAIL/Key West, giving the Paul & Young Ron Show quite a footprint on the South Florida market. “It is kind of remarkable, especially here in South Florida, to be such a long running radio duo,” notes Ron. “Normally you get fired!” But this duo is showing no signs of slowing down. Recent PPM numbers for WBGG show that Paul & Young Ron were #1 in Men 25-54 in September with a 7.1 share, and their Q3 average was a 7.8, also making them #1 for the quarter. FMQB recently chatted with Paul and Ron about their accomplished past and what they hope to do in the future.
Compare your show now to when you first started. How have you grown as broadcasters over the course of your career?
Paul: They first hired us at WSHE at the end of ’89. I had worked there for a few years prior and I really wanted to be back at the station. Ron was already doing middays and news, and they said, “Here’s how the show is going to go. You’re going to play twelve songs an hour and it’s not a morning show. The music is the star and you’re going to talk and then he’s going to talk, but you’re not going to talk to each other.” But that was not going to work. We would always break the law and talk to each other and do shtick. Inevitably we would end up in the owner’s office, and he would scream and yell and throw things.
Then I was alerted by his secretary that he didn’t wake up and turn on the radio until 8:30. So Ron and I would just do a full-blown morning show until 8:30, but it was really making us miserable. Then we started evolving. We let our contracts expire and they didn’t know it. We literally went to the station, took all our stuff and left in the middle of the night. We went across the street toWZTA where Neal Mirsky put us on the air. He said, “Hey guys, have fun and do a morning show.”
After Neal hired us, they gave him the boot within weeks and brought in Gregg Steele, who is now VP/Rock Programming for Sirius XM. He became an architect of our show and was the guy who really turned us loose. Also, the timing was good for us because this was about ’94, ’95, and we came from a Classic Rock station to an Alternative station when the format was happening. We spearheaded this new format. They gave us TV ads and billboards. It was a great time and the station really was very popular at the time.
When Howard Stern left for satellite, Ron and I were asked to go over to the Classic Rock station. The timing was right there because they were targeting the 25-54 demo and we were both in that demo. Alternative Rock was not happening at that time, and at this point we were not playing any music. We were a full-blown talk show. Howard was gone. We took a chance and that’s when the real success happened.
Being on in four different markets, how do you relate to people in those different areas and make the show relatable to everyone?
Ron: It’s all in South Florida. We really don’t have that problem. With the exception of a fishing report that we do once-a-week on Fridays, our program is pretty much palatable to anybody in the country.
Paul: If you grew up anywhere south of Orlando it’s really the same state, the same sports teams, the same lifestyle. We all worry about hurricanes here. The Florida Keys stations were added just six months ago, and aside from a little bit of a lifestyle difference (they’re much more laid back and they drink a little more than we do) we’re still all South Floridians. That being said, I have to echo Ron: It’s not like, “Oh, that show’s in Florida; it’s a Florida show,” aside from when hurricanes come and football season, because I’m a big fan of the Dolphins.
Now that radio involves so much more than just the actual frequency, what tools do you use to keep in touch with listeners?
Paul: I resisted Facebook initially. Then a friend of mine in marketing said, “You’re an idiot if you don’t jump on board.” So I’ve been using Facebook and it’s almost like having my own focus group. If there’s something we’re doing on our show I’m not really sure about, if I don’t have a gut feeling about it, I’ll ask a question on Facebook: “What do you guys think of this bit that we’re doing?” And I’ll get 200 responses! If someone’s going to respond to something you say on Facebook, that’s a P1 listener. I really believe that. They are honest. They’ll say: “Hey this sucks,” or “That’s hysterical, we love that guy.” I’ve also been using it like, “Hey guys, in 10 minutes comedian Dom Irrera is going to be in the studio.” Or “Drew Carey is going to come on the show and give away a million bucks. Check this out.” In the middle of the show during a commercial break, I’ll go on Facebook and I’ll tell them what’s coming up in the next 10 minutes. They love it! If they’re not listening and they happen to get it on their Blackberry, they may turn on a radio.
Describe who your average fan is, and what is your relationship with them like?
Ron: For me, that’s one of the coolest parts of the show because I can’t imagine there are many radio programs that appeal to not only the 50-year-old father, but also the 18-20-year-old son headed off to work and school in the morning. It’s something that even when they don’t get along that well, they both have our show in common. For me that’s one of the most gratifying things about the situation we’ve carved for ourselves here.
Paul: I’ve got the roofer listening and the Budweiser dudes, and at the same time we just took 800 listeners to the Bahamas with us, and I’m having a cocktail at the bar with a circuit court judge who is quoting everything I say on the air. It’s unbelievable! We’re not the only show in America that has that, but it’s kind of neat. Years ago we won an award, and it was one of the local magazines in one of its Best Of issues. Our award was “Person I would most like to have a beer with.” And you know what? I’ll take that. If they think of us as beer-drinking buddies, that’s great!
Do you have any good stories about stupid or outrageous things that a fan has done on the show lately?
Paul: I can tell you about my partner, Ron, who in the Bahamas fell into a stingray tank and nearly drowned.
Ron: Every year we take hundreds of listeners with us to the Bahamas for our live broadcast. After the live broadcast was over I was headed back to my hotel room and I don’t really remember anything after that.
Paul: You’d have to understand the premise of what happened before that. He went on this weight loss regimen and he was kind of starving himself and didn’t eat anything. Our friends from Patron Tequila were there at the broadcast, and apparently Ron knocked back five or six shots. After urinating in public, some listeners saw him and they said, “Ron, you okay?” And he said, “Yeah, I’m going back to my room.” Well, at midnight I got a phone call in my room and it’s Ron’s wife saying, “What did you do to my husband? He’s lying in the shower. Security brought him up here in a wheelchair, and he’s crying and bleeding.” I said, “The last I saw him was at 10 o’clock and he was going back to the room.”
When I saw him the next day, he was riding around like a 90-year-old man on one of those old scooters you see in the mall, and he’s bleeding and black and blue from the eye and the face. His arm was hurt and his leg was shredded! At the resort, Atlantis in the Bahamas, they have outdoor gigantic lagoons where sharks and stingrays swim freely. We determined that he fell into the stingray lagoon, but we don’t know how. We have made this into one of the greatest radio bits ever! No one really knows what happened. All I know is the pictures are unbelievable. To this day we still have a lot of laughs with it.
Ron: The only thing I remember was being underwater, breathing in water and thinking, “Wow! I’m drowning! What’s going on?”
You two have dominated the market for a long time. How do you keep the show fresh and compelling after all this time?
Paul: It’s a cast of characters. It’s not just Ron and myself, and over the years different characters have come and gone. One of our producers left to go to the Rick Dees Show. Another one left to do his own morning show in Atlanta. Through that process you have opportunities to re-cast the show. What I do best is learn about somebody’s weaknesses or strengths, and then prey on that. We bring in different people who become characters and cast members of our show. That really freshens it up. We’ve had a Country guy on the show. We’ve had single, swinging guys. We had a gay dude. We have a Jewish guy now, and I think a single, Jewish dude on Miami Beach can only be gold! We also have a fearless stunt guy named OMG Mike and I can say this to his face – a loser. But yet he relates to a huge segment of the society. He’s a lovable loser who can’t get anything right. That’s really how things stay fresh.
What inspires you to keep doing it after all this time?
Paul: A handsome paycheck!
Ron: I never expected to get a handsome paycheck in my life. For me it’s the love of broadcasting. I always wanted to be on the radio. I’ve been in radio for almost 35 years and when I walk in here in the morning I still get excited walking down the hallway.
Paul: I just like being a celebrity. It sounds crazy, but even in high school, I was doing the announcements. I wanted to be a star on the football team. I just like being in the public eye. I like showbiz. When I went to college, I was like, “They don’t have a class on how I can get on Saturday Night Live?” I fell into radio and it’s as close to show business as you can get. One thing we learned when we did a focus group a few years ago was that the single reason our listeners come to us is not to be shocked, it’s not titillating, it’s not conflict: it’s humor. They want to laugh, and I guess we do that okay. Who gets to go to work and crack up for four hours a day? Literally that’s what we do. We just laugh. Ron will come up with these things that happened in his life. I don’t know what kind of crazy life he leads, but he’s honest on the radio and I prey on that. We exploit it and have fun with it.
Also, it’s very evident on the radio that we’re all buds and that’s key. I’ve heard of morning show hosts who hate each other, but Ron was in my wedding. The day his first son was born, I was in the hospital with him. We live our lives on the air as well. Ron’s son was born premature. My wife has battled cancer and automobile accidents. Our listeners suffer with us. We’re honest on the radio. We don’t try to make it a sappy show, but sometimes you’ve got to be real.
Are there any goals that you still want to achieve?
Ron: Syndication. It seems like that’s the next step – to be fruitful and multiply.
Paul: We have a couple of thousand listeners that listen to our podcast every day at United Airlines corporate offices in Chicago. It just so happens one of their bosses left Miami and took a job there, and he started playing us over the loudspeaker. These people love us! They’re like, “If we had a morning show like this in Chicago you guys would be huge.” I’m not saying we need to be on in Chicago, but there are syndicated radio shows out there that I don’t think are as entertaining as what we do or work as hard as we do. A goal of ours is to be on some other radio stations. Our agent is Paul Anderson, and he’s got his ear to the grindstone. We thought the first smart thing we should do was to get a stranglehold on South Florida. Our station WKGR in the Palm Beaches is a monster. It goes from Boca Raton, which is the furthest south that you can go, almost to 20 miles south of Orlando. We blanket a huge portion of the state, and with Key West at the bottom of the state we have a big footprint. That’s a lot of real estate and we believe that is a great genesis to start a network.
You also do a lot of charity work. What events do you have coming up this holiday season?
Paul: Our big one is our annual food drive. Last year over one million pounds of food were raised, and last year’s efforts were with comedian Billy Gardell, who did a comedy show at the Improv in Ft. Lauderdale for us. We have a pizza named after us at a place called Anthony’s Coal Fire Pizza, so at one of their locations we had a Pizza and Wine Night. Then we did the online auction. We do a marathon broadcast all day where listeners donate. We call it the World’s Longest Morning Show. We have a guest every hour, and comedians and celebrities. It’s our signature charity event. This year we partnered with the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino where we’re going to do a massive outdoor concert and comedian Ralphie May has donated his services for the event. In my opinion things have to change every couple of years or your listeners will get tired of it. We haven’t announced the bands yet, but that’s all being done by the people at the Hard Rock. A lot of people donate a lot of their time and effort.
***eQB Content by Mandy Feingold***
