Preston & Steve
After a tumultuous end to their successful tenure at then cross-town Modern Rocker WPLY/Y100 and a brief and contested non-compete sitout, Preston Elliot and Steve Morrison crossed the street to Greater Media Mainstream Rocker WMMR, and the rest is truly Philly radio history. Since their arrival, ratings in mornings (18-24 and 25-54) have soared to Stern proportions. We tap into the guys and get up-to-speed on the current state of the show – one that’s been named best local morning show in the country inFMQB’s Year End Leaders Poll the last two years and in two different formats.
eQB presents excerpts from this week’s FMQB hard copy Rock Q&A with WMMR/Philly Morning Hosts Preston & Steve
On cume issues in the early stages…There was a lot of love when we first came on WMMR because we obviously had a lot of transplanted Y100 listeners tuning in. As is any time you come into a station as the new show, you’re going to meet a little resistance. After being on a few months, it really started to pick up a momentum that exceeded our expectations.
On beating Howard Stern before his departure to Sirius… Howard Stern has always been the Holy Grail in Philadelphia. Before he left we did finally manage to best him. That’s because the WMMR listeners came on board very quickly and the Y100 listeners came over. Howard is a legend, and deservedly so. If you’re in radio and you want to measure what you’re doing, besting Howard is something that makes you feel like, “wow, I guess we’re doing okay.”
On the commitment from WMMR and Greater Media…John Fullam and (WMMR PD) Bill Weston knew that in order to get WMMR back on its feet and rolling in the direction they wanted, they had to have solid ground in the morning. Bringing us onboard was an investment, but they knew they had to make a stronger commitment by promoting the investment they had made. That was one of the things made clear to us before we came here.
On the power of the Internet… Prestonandsteve.com has been such an important tool when we came here to get the word out. We have all this audio and video we wanted to get out to people, and now we have millions and millions of hits on the site every month [61 million hits in January 2006].
On the merits of podcasting… The difference now with podcasting from two or three years ago, if someone wanted to spread the word and convince people to listen, people would stick to their rituals and it would be harder to convince them. Now, they can simply download the podcast, burn it on a CD and say, “Here, listen to this,” and they can sample us for themselves.
On advice to new morning shows just starting up… Our advice would be: don’t be terrified by new technology and competition. Embrace it and use it. Work on the content. The most elusive thing to get in radio when you’re putting together a show like ours is to get that symmetry and simpatico as a team. There’s no ego on our show. You have to find the right group of people.
QB Content by Mike Bacon
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