David Lee Roth's Failed Takeover Of Howard Stern's Show - YouTube

**Terry** · 03-15-2020, 09:01 PM

A lot of Roth's career post-YFLM and pre-2007 at least the way I see it, has been a series of dabblings.

He did a Vegas stint. He got back together with Van Halen. He put out an autobiography. He did the DLR Band album. He filmed the Bar-B-Que. He did the tour with Hagar. He did the Diamond Dave album. He did the radio stint. He did the Van Strumming thing. Did some solo touring in-between some of these various undertakings.

Some of these dabblings I liked. Others didn't do much for me. When I heard Roth was taking over some of Stern's markets with the radio stint, I never took it seriously in terms of thinking Roth was actually gonna replace Stern long term in any sense. Mostly because the time 2005 rolled around, Roth had been all over the map for a decade. To a lesser degree, because Roth's popularity zenith was 20 years behind him when he gave the radio gig a shot: he wasn't going to get a fair shake by a certain amount of Stern listeners from the get-go because Roth circa 2005 had an aura of 'has been' around him.

And I think what Stern said about Roth in the clip was true to the degree that there's a big difference between being an entertaining interview subject vs. being a radio host. I gave several of the Roth radio shows a listen early in his brief run, and...it was just too much David Lee Roth, if that makes sense.

I will say I agree with the point the clip made that at least Roth didn't try and follow the typical Stern knock-off Morning Zoo Wack Pack AM Drive Crew template countless stations around the country have. My local AM Zoo Crew takes pains to say they're NOT a Zoo Crew, while simultaneously taking calls from and mocking local loser listeners, making smartass comments about whatever celebrity gossip is in the news that day and the like: apparently, their main factor in claiming not to be a Wack Pack is that none of them wear Hawaiian shirts.

**Seshmeister** · 03-15-2020, 11:35 PM

No one seemed to think it through. Either CBS were ridiculously incompetent which is not impossible or he was set up to fail but even so if it had been me or if say I had been Brian my first question would have been 'How can one person talking possibly fill 4 hours without music 5 days a week?' Removing the commercials and news it was still 3 hours. There was plenty of time to prepare, Dave has said so many times about how he was a radio fan I don't get how he couldn't see the trap. To do it you need all sorts of features and regular bits.

The counter to this is maybe something like the Rogan podcast where Dave and many other people do talk for 3 hours but apart from a podcast being a different format the key difference is at the end you don't say ok see you again tomorrow and the day after for month after month.

Still I'm saying it was dumb but Dave still walks away after a few months of doing a 20 hour week with a minimum of hundreds of thousands of dollars probably way more so who is the mug?

**ZahZoo** · 03-16-2020, 01:38 PM

Was it really a "failure" or just a mismanaged venture with a short life..?

Dave didn't produce that show all on his own... it had a producer, management and full supporting staff behind the scenes. Were the ratings so bad that the station was losng money?

**Heater** · 03-16-2020, 05:42 PM

Anytime ol' Dave does something where he isn't relying HEAVILY on his Van Halen connection or isn't, in fact, steeped in it, he fails. The only reason some of his, uh, stories might be interesting is because of the band he used to be in.

**twonabomber** · 03-16-2020, 07:46 PM

CBS Radio was in a no-win situation. They were going to lose that battle no matter who they signed.

**Terry** · 03-16-2020, 09:44 PM

3 hours a day 5 days a week for a morning drive show is a lot of air time to fill: unless you're someone on the level of Stern who can interview pretty much anybody and draw something interesting out of them or talk about pretty much any subject and have interesting points to make, I'd agree you're gonna need a lot of recurring bits and features to fill the show out. For whatever it's worth, for every Stern or Opie & Anthony who is able to do compelling morning radio there are probably literally dozens and dozens of Morning Zoo Crews across the country who, while they may be able to fill the hours, aren't coming up with anything worth hearing...and some of these guys have been in the radio biz for decades in some cases.

I'd agree that CBS Radio WAS in a no-win situation in terms of whoever immediately replaced Stern and the inevitable ratings drop. I'm still kinda surprised Dave took a swing at it...maybe at the time he figured taking a shot at hosting a multi-market morning radio show was preferable to doing another round of solo gigs to smaller audiences, which is pretty much where his career was circa 2005/2006 in terms of live performances.

**Seshmeister** · 03-17-2020, 01:30 AM

Originally posted by Terry

3 hours a day 5 days a week for a morning drive show is a lot of air time to fill: unless you're someone on the level of Stern who can interview pretty much anybody and draw something interesting out of them or talk about pretty much any subject and have interesting points to make, I'd agree you're gonna need a lot of recurring bits and features to fill the show out.

The biggest bit of evidence for the conspiracy of it being a set up to fail is the guests. I don't know much about US radio but this was one of the biggest slots in the country so why were the bookings C or D list or more often no one at all?

Where were all the people selling their latest movie, album, book or show?

**Baby's On Fire** · 03-17-2020, 02:46 AM

Originally posted by Seshmeister

No one seemed to think it through. Either CBS were ridiculously incompetent which is not impossible or he was set up to fail but even so if it had been me or if say I had been Brian my first question would have been 'How can one person talking possibly fill 4 hours without music 5 days a week?' Removing the commercials and news it was still 3 hours. There was plenty of time to prepare, Dave has said so many times about how he was a radio fan I don't get how he couldn't see the trap. To do it you need all sorts of features and regular bits.

The counter to this is maybe something like the Rogan podcast where Dave and many other people do talk for 3 hours but apart from a podcast being a different format the key difference is at the end you don't say ok see you again tomorrow and the day after for month after month.

Still I'm saying it was dumb but Dave still walks away after a few months of doing a 20 hour week with a minimum of hundreds of thousands of dollars probably way more so who is the mug?

CBS paid Dave 6 million dollars. I wish I was a failure like that.

**Seshmeister** · 03-17-2020, 02:53 AM

Where did you get that figure?

I was being super conservative but I doubt it was 6 million.

**Seshmeister** · 03-17-2020, 02:56 AM

Googling it I had forgotten it was also CBS that he sued over the movie thing way back in the day. Technically an entirely different corporate person I'm sure but it is funny how much 'free' cash he has got out of CBS over the years.

**ZahZoo** · 03-17-2020, 02:35 PM

Originally posted by twonabomber

CBS Radio was in a no-win situation. They were going to lose that battle no matter who they signed.

Yep... there was no way they were going to come close to capturing the market share Stern held.

Dave's show wasn't that bad... a little better development and guest roster and they could have done fine.

**twonabomber** · 03-17-2020, 02:55 PM

I had tried to get the local ratings but it's a subscription service and wasn't able to.

**Baby's On Fire** · 03-17-2020, 07:24 PM

Originally posted by Seshmeister

Googling it I had forgotten it was also CBS that he sued over the movie thing way back in the day. Technically an entirely different corporate person I'm sure but it is funny how much 'free' cash he has got out of CBS over the years.

I recall Dave saying it. CBS broke the contract and had to pay him out.