Grumbles about commercial radio’s tight formatting? Check. Horndog comments to a female caller and his station’s traffic reporter? Check. References to Disco Demolition and Garry Meier and a phone call to wife Janet? Check, check and check.
Sheepishness, self-deprecation and hubris were on display, too, along with a fair number of laughs found in the midst of all of this as Steve Dahl returned to radio in Chicago.
In his four-hour relaunch on WLS-AM 890 Monday, Dahl, in other words, was pretty much the Dahl you may remember from six years ago, when the onetime bad boy of Chicago radio last regularly occupied the city’s airwaves.
For those of us who have residual fondness for the broadcaster, it worked pretty much as expected: Dahl leading a team of sidekicks in an unhurried search for found material.
Some of it worked, as when he interviewed a friend, the comic and “Breaking Bad” actor Bob Odenkirk, or when he nipped the hand that is now feeding him. (He talked at the outset about handing off the broadcast for “the traffic I could get on my phone more accurately.”)
Some of it rambled and repeated or was too much about Dahl’s past and not enough about what’s happening in the contemporary world. Those who never cottoned to the broadcaster — whose Chicago radio run included a stint at WLS-AM in the early 1980s — will cite those moments as worthwhile reasons to continue not listening.
But some misfires are the price you pay for this style of radio, which anticipated podcasting. In the best moments of Dahl (and another practitioner, Howard Stern), it comes across as an honest exploration of one man’s personality.
Stern’s is the more “produced” show, giving the host more material to bounce his thoughts off of. But Dahl has taken listeners deeper into his personal life, including the upbringing of his three sons and his sobriety (which he said Monday stands at 19 years).
The fans he took calls from during Monday’s show certainly wanted to relive the old days or catch up on the fates of the boys or his wife.
“Janet and I are still married and everything’s good,” he told one caller. “Why are you laughing at that?”
Dahl, who’ll turn 60 later this month, didn’t overtly pander to potential new listeners who might have tuned in wondering what happened to Roe Conn and Richard Roeper, the longtime occupants of the station’s afternoon time slot. Their ratings had been slipping, and the news-talk station decided to give Dahl a shot instead; his show airs from 2 to 6 p.m. weekdays. Asked on air why he came back to radio, Dahl said, at various points, “They said I could do what I wanted to do,” “I missed being a part of the conversation” and “I needed the money.”
The second half of the show, when more potential listeners are in their cars, was thicker with material from outside of Dahl’s personal universe: Chris Rock jokes from “Saturday Night Live,” an interview with Willie Geist of the “Today” show, who had hosted Discovery’s telecast of the Nik Wallenda tightrope walk the night before.
Certainly, it seems fair to allow Dahl time to rediscover his broadcast legs after working in recent years on a subscription podcast recorded in a home studio.
“Remember,” he said early on, “as I told the program director, this is only the first day of three years,” the length of his contract.
Dahl brought his chief cohorts from his podcast, which he’s still doing a version of — local musician Dag Juhlin and producer Brendan Greeley. Neither seems a threat to the legacy of past Dahl partnerships that really worked, with Meier and with Bruce Wolf. News anchor Jennifer Keiper and traffic reporter Christina Filiaggi came with the station and did well rolling with the host’s interruptions.
Dahl managed, for the most part, to hit his time cues for commercials, newscasts and traffic and weather, even as he made fun of himself for doing so.
He read aloud some tweets critical of him, including one saying there’s a “need to bring in new talent, not a 60-year-old, out-of-touch retired dude.”
“I don’t really feel 60,” Dahl responded. “In my mind, I’m still a very sharp 55-year-old.”
His critiques of the station were moderate by the standards of his heyday, when, partnering with Meier, he would conduct open feuds with some of the managers who oversaw his shows.
But he did take a shot at his station’s morning team, Dan Proft and Wolf. “We found him,” Dahl said at one point. “We found the one Bruce and Dan fan.”
In an e-mail interview before his debut Monday, Dahl said, “My plan for the show is to be funny and get good ratings.”
Ratings, as former top broadcasters from Dahl to Jonathon Brandmeier know all too well, are hard to come by in radio these days.
But Dahl was funny enough, even on day one, to at least earn WLS a place on the car-radio button lineup. Two years, 364 more days to go.
