P
Phantom
Guest
Talk hosts keep listeners tuned in to their lives
RADIO: Pugs and Kelly plug away, gaining listeners and advertisers
09:48 AM CDT on Sunday, October 16, 2005
By SPENCER MICHLIN / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
There are no parking spots at Duke's Original Road House on a steamy Wednesday night. In fact, the otherwise empty lot of the adjacent Sam's Club holds several hundred cars of Duke's overflow.
Pugs Moran and Kelly Mohr share the intimate details of their lives on their KLLI-FM radio talk show. Being forthright pays off with advertisers, too: The two have refined and redefined the 'live read,' a staple of radio advertising. Inside, wall-to-wall and packing the ample porch of the Belt Line Road club, young adults drink and perspire and flirt as the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" blares from the juke. Just beyond the porch flails the main attraction: the Southwest Dodgeball Conference. Perched in a booth above the action sit the driving forces behind the dodgeball: Pugs and Kelly, hosts of Pugs and Kelly Live on "Alternative Talk" KLLI-FM (105.3), heard weekdays in the midday slot between Howard Stern and Russ Martin.
As the dodgeball action continues on two courts (six balls, six jocks to a side with tournament pairings), Pugs and Kelly take turns in the booth, commenting on the games, plugging upcoming events at Duke's and occasionally mentioning KLLI.
The idea of the dodgeball tournament originated with the pair in 2001, well before the movie Dodgeball came out. How it grew into a big deal relates to something philosopher-politician Kinky Friedman was recently quoted as saying about himself: "You have your life and your work, and you should get the two as confused and as mixed up as possible. Make it all one fabric."
Woven deep within the fabric of Pugs and Kelly is the "live read."
One of the most tried-and-true ways of advertising on the radio is to have the pitch done by on-air personalities with whom the listener can identify. If radio was invented on a Monday, on Tuesday a host turned to his microphone and said, "Friends, let me tell you about a wonderful new product."
This technique has worked extremely well over decades, with many radio personalities becoming identified with their sponsors. Thanks to talk radio it's back in fashion, known these days as the "live read."
Two elements are essential for a live read to work: The audience must identify with and trust the announcer, and the announcer must be able to speak convincingly of his or her belief in the product.
Rush Limbaugh, for example, has the first part of this formula covered. Devoted listeners seem willing to accept anything he tells them about politics, and one can easily imagine the pride that like-minded sponsors feel when they tell their friends that, "Rush is doing commercials for my product." The problem is that the commentator is a better extemporaneous speaker on politics than he is a reader of copy, with the result that he often appears to be going through the motions.
In contrast, Pugs Moran and Kelly Mohr, both 36, are two of the finest practitioners of the live read ever to don headphones.
They speak to and for those 25- to 54-year-olds, mostly men, who listen between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The pair comes across like the husky-voiced youngest siblings of a large Irish-American family for which the term "dysfunctional" is almost quaintly inadequate. They fit right in at KLLI, where the shows are light, mostly nonpolitical and almost aggressively anti-intellectual.
Two for all
Pugs, round-faced, two-day growth, shirttail out, looking a little like Charlie Brown grown taller, is Everydude. His concerns are those of the males in his audience because he is so inescapably one of them.
Kelly, who bears a passing resemblance to the sexy young Karen Allen of Animal House, is Chickwoman because, while identifying with her audience in a girls-just-wanna-have-fun sort of way, she also comes across as the more adult of the two, given her concern for and strong relationship with her 9- and 5-year-old daughters.
According to KLLI program director Gavin Spittle, the main topic on the show is "relationships." Whether a reflection of the hosts' preoccupations or those of their listeners, "relationships" seems to equate to "sex."
During a recent show, the pair finished each other's sentences in a way that, beyond being their on-air approach, bespeaks an easy familiarity that comes only with time. They've been working together since 1993, when both were hired as interns at a Chicago radio station, and have been on-air on KLLI since 2000.
"That's 214-787-1053," says Pugs, giving out the call-in phone numbers.
"Or pound 105.3 to call in on Sprint," chimes Kelly. "And pound 105.3 is what I did over the weekend. My boyfriend and I had sex 105.3 times. The .3 was because I got tired."
Between comments on his own sex life, bachelor Pugs had been seeking a surrogate mother for the child he says he wants to father, and interested women were encouraged to apply via the show's Web site, pugsandkellylive.com.
Sidekicks-producers Eric Marc, 28, and Cybil Summers, 27, often join the discussions, contributing intimate information about their private lives. The men seem to spend a great deal of time discussing their penises and the women their periods ("girly time").
The net effect is radio that's almost a parody of radio and, at least to some degree, a parody of their actual lives, sort of like the sendups of public radio on Saturday Night Live. It's a joke about a joke that becomes oddly and uncomfortably endearing, more like a gathering of a funny and eccentric family than showbiz.
More to the point, the intimacy on the show appears to transfer to a feeling of community with listeners.
Their brand of alternative talk appears to be working. In the spring Arbitron ratings book, the show doubled its audience share (percentage of listeners tuned in to the station) among 22- to 54-year-olds to 4.4 from 2.0 during the same period a year ago.
When Pugs and Kelly do a live read, it's really a continuation of their banter and their lives. Frequently, these take the form of telephone conversations with the advertiser, who is treated more or less like a guest on the show.
They chat with the client (regulars include representatives of the Boothe Eye Care Center, Bally Total Fitness and Home Marketing Services) and, over the course of one minute, painlessly get across the various selling points. Often the commercial is couched in terms of the hosts' personal experiences – Pugs on his own eye surgery or Kelly discussing how HMS helped her get into her own home and what home ownership means to her and her kids. The effect is one of being introduced to someone by a mutual friend.
Often these live reads are recorded and played back on KLLI at other times during the day, serving as much as a promo for the Pugs and Kelly Show as a spot for the advertiser.
To the hardworking personalities (they do at least three live events each week), this is just a continuation of their life as their art. "Everything we say on the air has a basis in truth," says Kelly. "It's our lives," adds Pugs. "As entertainers, we try to maximize the story value, but basically we live our lives and then we talk about it."
Kelly picks up the thread: "People believe that we're telling the truth, and that extends to the things that we say about our clients. We get to know our advertisers and their products, and we turn down advertisers we don't believe in." She cites two weight-loss products that she has refused to endorse.
That one presumes Pugs and Kelly get loads of free stuff from their clients is beside the point; they make you believe that they believe in the product, and the connection they establish with it is real. Advertisers pay a premium for this connection. Program director Spittle says a live read costs the advertiser a talent fee to Pugs and Kelly, as well as a premium over normal ad rates. Mr. Spittle and advertisers interviewed for this article all declined to give figures, but the price of a live read can double the cost of a spot, according to Advertising Age.
A word from sponsors
Back at the game, the hosts have repaired to a nearby table with Duke's owner, Mark Collins. "These two are for real," he says. "They're the same off the air as they are on. What you see is what you get, and our customer base matches their audience. We've grown to be friends while working together."
Mr. Collins' words were repeated virtually verbatim by several Pugs and Kelly advertisers.
Given the pair's ability to build loyalty among both listeners and advertisers, stations in other markets have come calling, but both Pugs and Kelly insist that they love Dallas and are not tempted to move. "It's a top-five market and we're here to stay," says Kelly.
"This is where you want to raise a family," adds Pugs.
On the other hand, the two say they feel underpaid and wouldn't mind moving elsewhere on the Dallas dial.
"If they leave, I'll follow," says Bob Lovell, CEO of Home Marketing Services. "I'm not buying the station. I'm buying Pugs and Kelly."
E-mail [email protected]
The very public overlap of life and work can be hard on personal relationships, say Pugs Moran and Kelly Mohr.
Kelly, who met her current boyfriend at a station event (a "speed dating" night at Duke's), says the public nature of her private life, "has been an issue in some past relationships."
"It's been an issue in all of mine," says Pugs. "Women who go out with me realize that sooner or later I'm going to talk about them on the air.
"Sometimes we break up as a result."
Kelly acknowledges some concerns about what her children might someday hear on or about the show, but adds, "When it comes up, I plan to be honest with them that my job is just part of the deal. We all have things that we wish were different about our parents, and parents always embarrass their kids. I just want to live my life in such a way that they're more proud than embarrassed."
Spencer Michlin
RADIO: Pugs and Kelly plug away, gaining listeners and advertisers
09:48 AM CDT on Sunday, October 16, 2005
By SPENCER MICHLIN / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
There are no parking spots at Duke's Original Road House on a steamy Wednesday night. In fact, the otherwise empty lot of the adjacent Sam's Club holds several hundred cars of Duke's overflow.
Pugs Moran and Kelly Mohr share the intimate details of their lives on their KLLI-FM radio talk show. Being forthright pays off with advertisers, too: The two have refined and redefined the 'live read,' a staple of radio advertising. Inside, wall-to-wall and packing the ample porch of the Belt Line Road club, young adults drink and perspire and flirt as the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" blares from the juke. Just beyond the porch flails the main attraction: the Southwest Dodgeball Conference. Perched in a booth above the action sit the driving forces behind the dodgeball: Pugs and Kelly, hosts of Pugs and Kelly Live on "Alternative Talk" KLLI-FM (105.3), heard weekdays in the midday slot between Howard Stern and Russ Martin.
As the dodgeball action continues on two courts (six balls, six jocks to a side with tournament pairings), Pugs and Kelly take turns in the booth, commenting on the games, plugging upcoming events at Duke's and occasionally mentioning KLLI.
The idea of the dodgeball tournament originated with the pair in 2001, well before the movie Dodgeball came out. How it grew into a big deal relates to something philosopher-politician Kinky Friedman was recently quoted as saying about himself: "You have your life and your work, and you should get the two as confused and as mixed up as possible. Make it all one fabric."
Woven deep within the fabric of Pugs and Kelly is the "live read."
One of the most tried-and-true ways of advertising on the radio is to have the pitch done by on-air personalities with whom the listener can identify. If radio was invented on a Monday, on Tuesday a host turned to his microphone and said, "Friends, let me tell you about a wonderful new product."
This technique has worked extremely well over decades, with many radio personalities becoming identified with their sponsors. Thanks to talk radio it's back in fashion, known these days as the "live read."
Two elements are essential for a live read to work: The audience must identify with and trust the announcer, and the announcer must be able to speak convincingly of his or her belief in the product.
Rush Limbaugh, for example, has the first part of this formula covered. Devoted listeners seem willing to accept anything he tells them about politics, and one can easily imagine the pride that like-minded sponsors feel when they tell their friends that, "Rush is doing commercials for my product." The problem is that the commentator is a better extemporaneous speaker on politics than he is a reader of copy, with the result that he often appears to be going through the motions.
In contrast, Pugs Moran and Kelly Mohr, both 36, are two of the finest practitioners of the live read ever to don headphones.
They speak to and for those 25- to 54-year-olds, mostly men, who listen between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The pair comes across like the husky-voiced youngest siblings of a large Irish-American family for which the term "dysfunctional" is almost quaintly inadequate. They fit right in at KLLI, where the shows are light, mostly nonpolitical and almost aggressively anti-intellectual.
Two for all
Pugs, round-faced, two-day growth, shirttail out, looking a little like Charlie Brown grown taller, is Everydude. His concerns are those of the males in his audience because he is so inescapably one of them.
Kelly, who bears a passing resemblance to the sexy young Karen Allen of Animal House, is Chickwoman because, while identifying with her audience in a girls-just-wanna-have-fun sort of way, she also comes across as the more adult of the two, given her concern for and strong relationship with her 9- and 5-year-old daughters.
According to KLLI program director Gavin Spittle, the main topic on the show is "relationships." Whether a reflection of the hosts' preoccupations or those of their listeners, "relationships" seems to equate to "sex."
During a recent show, the pair finished each other's sentences in a way that, beyond being their on-air approach, bespeaks an easy familiarity that comes only with time. They've been working together since 1993, when both were hired as interns at a Chicago radio station, and have been on-air on KLLI since 2000.
"That's 214-787-1053," says Pugs, giving out the call-in phone numbers.
"Or pound 105.3 to call in on Sprint," chimes Kelly. "And pound 105.3 is what I did over the weekend. My boyfriend and I had sex 105.3 times. The .3 was because I got tired."
Between comments on his own sex life, bachelor Pugs had been seeking a surrogate mother for the child he says he wants to father, and interested women were encouraged to apply via the show's Web site, pugsandkellylive.com.
Sidekicks-producers Eric Marc, 28, and Cybil Summers, 27, often join the discussions, contributing intimate information about their private lives. The men seem to spend a great deal of time discussing their penises and the women their periods ("girly time").
The net effect is radio that's almost a parody of radio and, at least to some degree, a parody of their actual lives, sort of like the sendups of public radio on Saturday Night Live. It's a joke about a joke that becomes oddly and uncomfortably endearing, more like a gathering of a funny and eccentric family than showbiz.
More to the point, the intimacy on the show appears to transfer to a feeling of community with listeners.
Their brand of alternative talk appears to be working. In the spring Arbitron ratings book, the show doubled its audience share (percentage of listeners tuned in to the station) among 22- to 54-year-olds to 4.4 from 2.0 during the same period a year ago.
When Pugs and Kelly do a live read, it's really a continuation of their banter and their lives. Frequently, these take the form of telephone conversations with the advertiser, who is treated more or less like a guest on the show.
They chat with the client (regulars include representatives of the Boothe Eye Care Center, Bally Total Fitness and Home Marketing Services) and, over the course of one minute, painlessly get across the various selling points. Often the commercial is couched in terms of the hosts' personal experiences – Pugs on his own eye surgery or Kelly discussing how HMS helped her get into her own home and what home ownership means to her and her kids. The effect is one of being introduced to someone by a mutual friend.
Often these live reads are recorded and played back on KLLI at other times during the day, serving as much as a promo for the Pugs and Kelly Show as a spot for the advertiser.
To the hardworking personalities (they do at least three live events each week), this is just a continuation of their life as their art. "Everything we say on the air has a basis in truth," says Kelly. "It's our lives," adds Pugs. "As entertainers, we try to maximize the story value, but basically we live our lives and then we talk about it."
Kelly picks up the thread: "People believe that we're telling the truth, and that extends to the things that we say about our clients. We get to know our advertisers and their products, and we turn down advertisers we don't believe in." She cites two weight-loss products that she has refused to endorse.
That one presumes Pugs and Kelly get loads of free stuff from their clients is beside the point; they make you believe that they believe in the product, and the connection they establish with it is real. Advertisers pay a premium for this connection. Program director Spittle says a live read costs the advertiser a talent fee to Pugs and Kelly, as well as a premium over normal ad rates. Mr. Spittle and advertisers interviewed for this article all declined to give figures, but the price of a live read can double the cost of a spot, according to Advertising Age.
A word from sponsors
Back at the game, the hosts have repaired to a nearby table with Duke's owner, Mark Collins. "These two are for real," he says. "They're the same off the air as they are on. What you see is what you get, and our customer base matches their audience. We've grown to be friends while working together."
Mr. Collins' words were repeated virtually verbatim by several Pugs and Kelly advertisers.
Given the pair's ability to build loyalty among both listeners and advertisers, stations in other markets have come calling, but both Pugs and Kelly insist that they love Dallas and are not tempted to move. "It's a top-five market and we're here to stay," says Kelly.
"This is where you want to raise a family," adds Pugs.
On the other hand, the two say they feel underpaid and wouldn't mind moving elsewhere on the Dallas dial.
"If they leave, I'll follow," says Bob Lovell, CEO of Home Marketing Services. "I'm not buying the station. I'm buying Pugs and Kelly."
E-mail [email protected]
The very public overlap of life and work can be hard on personal relationships, say Pugs Moran and Kelly Mohr.
Kelly, who met her current boyfriend at a station event (a "speed dating" night at Duke's), says the public nature of her private life, "has been an issue in some past relationships."
"It's been an issue in all of mine," says Pugs. "Women who go out with me realize that sooner or later I'm going to talk about them on the air.
"Sometimes we break up as a result."
Kelly acknowledges some concerns about what her children might someday hear on or about the show, but adds, "When it comes up, I plan to be honest with them that my job is just part of the deal. We all have things that we wish were different about our parents, and parents always embarrass their kids. I just want to live my life in such a way that they're more proud than embarrassed."
Spencer Michlin
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