Talkradio 850AM WTAR

"Imus in the Morning", Weekdays 5:30am-10am.

A 1972 story on radio in Broadcasting (now Broadcasting & Cable) described Don Imus at work at WGAR (AM) Cleveland: "Sitting behind a microphone screaming and cooing, selling religion like used cars, Hollywood like a loony bin and punching holes in anyone who dared set foot on the front page of the morning papers." Thirty years" later, not much has changed.

John Donald Imus has been one of radio’s dominant personalities for four decades. He's been interviewing guests and offering his opinions-often provocative, rarely dulI-on his lmus in the Morning program since 1971.

Born in Riverside, Calif., in 1940, he served in the Marines for a couple of years, formed a band and tried his hand at producing records, "I couldn't get any radio stations to play the records so I thought, I’ll just get a job in radio and play my own records and I won't have to deal with that."'

So, in 1968, after attending the Don Martin School of Broadcasting in Hollywood, Imus landed a morning job at KUTY (AM) in Palmdale, California about 50 mites north of Los Angeles, "Between the records," he says, "I always thought it was important that I share my point of view with everybody. I wasn't very mature, and I always resisted authority." Nothing was sacred to him, and he attracted listeners as well as attention. Two years later he was at WGAR (AM), where his brand of clever banter and controversial "insult" humor got him noticed by Perry Bascom, the general manager of WNBC (AM) New York. And in 1971, the 31-year-old Imus found himself occupying morning drive in the nation's No.1 market and earning $100,000 a year.

He was fired in 1977, moved back to Cleveland for a year, but was back at WNBC in 1979. In 1987, after the station was sold and its call changed to WFAN, Imus switched his format to all talk. In 1993 he was syndicated and today his 6-10 a.m. program is heard on 89 stations via Westwood One.

The show's focus has evolved over the years, reflecting the changing interests of its host. In the 1960s and '70s, he used to greet female callers with: "Are you naked?" And while the conversation and calls can still get raunchy at times, there are decidedly more mature themes and guests. In 1988, after WFAN bought WNBC, Imus dropped the music from his show, opting for all talk, especially social and political commentary. "My interests change," he told B&C in 1993. "And I'm comfortable getting older. I don't try to pretend I'm 30," He's now 62.

This radio personality has television credits too. "I did a couple TV shows," he recalls. "After I got fired by WNBC in 1977 I did a syndicated talk show which was dreadful; it lasted 13 weeks. And then I was the initial VJ on VH1 back in '85. I did that for a while, but I’ve never had a real interest in television;" Since 1996 MSNBC has been simulcasting the first three hours of his radio show. "I don't understand the point of that, but it's fine with me," he says.

A principal Imus life priority is his work for children. WFAN and Imus have raised some $50 million for construction of the Don Imus/WFAN pediatric Center for Tomorrow's Children. And there's the 4,000-acre ranch he and his wife, Deirdre, operate in New Mexico for kids with cancer. "1 don't want to make it sound like my whole motivation is to help people because it hasn't been, but it seems like a good idea. 1 grew up on a cattle ranch; I thought that some of these kids needed to be treated like normal children and needed to have their dignity returned to them, So we have this working cattle ranch and I spend four or five months a year out there. None of that would have been possible had it not been for radio."

What's it like to be Don Imus? "It's unpleasant, as you might imagine," he reflects. "If I'd have been a group, like the Beach Boys or the Beatles, I'd have broken up by now. But unfortunately, I just had myself to deal with."

Sinclair Communications