Marc Germain
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| Marc "Mr. K" Germain | |
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| Birth name | Marc Germain |
| Born | May 28, 1967 Los Angeles, CA. USA |
| Show | The Marc "Mr. K" Germain show |
| Station(s) | AM 1150, KTLK, Los Angeles
+ live internet feed |
| Time slot | 3pm - 7 pm (M-F) |
| Style | Talk Radio |
| Previous show(s) | Ask Mr KABC, 1997 - 2007
Ask Mr KFI, 1992 - 1996 |
| Website | http://www.marcgermain.com |
Marc Germain (born May 28, 1967), colloquially known as Mr. K, is a popular radio talk show host broadcasting from Los Angeles, California on "Progressive Talk" station KTLK (AM 1150). He was formerly known only as Mr. KABC (1997–2007) and before that as Mr. KFI (1992–1996), but now uses his given name on air.
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[edit] Biographical Info
[edit] Personal
Marc Germain grew up in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles (Tarzana and Woodland Hills)[1], with the exception of a 6-year period between 1969-1975, when his family lived in San Diego near San Diego State University.[2] He graduated from El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills.
He attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo for two years before transferring to The University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) where, in 1989, he received a degree in Political Science[3].
His wife, playfully known as “Mrs. Mister K”, hails from Long Island, New York. The two met while both worked at KFI, a Los Angeles radio station (it was she who hired him at KFI). They have been married since July 1992. They have one son and one daughter. Mrs. Mister K is currently a substitute teacher. The family resides in the area of Greater Los Angeles known as “The Inland Empire”.
He is a fifth generation Angelino (on his father's side); his mother is of Russian heritage - once describing his maternal grandmother as a "green-eyed Russian". His father was a well-respected Journalism and English teacher for almost 20 years at University (”Uni”) High School in West Los Angeles. Germain is the youngest of four sons.
One of Germain's brothers, Paul, is an animation screenwriter and producer - best known for Rugrats, Recess and Lloyd in Space.[4] Another brother Daniel, is an attorney in Los Angeles. A third brother Gregory, is an Assistant Professor at The College of Law, Syracuse University, New York. He specializes in taxation, commercial law & bankruptcy, and corporate law.
[edit] Radio Career
While completing his degree at UCSB, Germain found himself drawn to the talk radio format. He told interviewer Matthew Gilbert: "it reached out of the radio and grabbed me by the shirt collar"[5]. Germain called local radio station KTMS offering to do anything to get his foot in the door. At first he was rebuffed. He then discovered that there was an intern position available. On his third day of interning, he was offered a job "running the board". Within a year and a half, he was the assistant program director[6].
Returning to Los Angeles, Germain found employment at radio station KFI. He was a screener and producer at first (of Stephanie Miller, Bill Press, former police chief Daryl Gates, among others), and then as described in the next section (Genesis of His Original Show), started hosting his own show - Ask Mr. KFI. Displaced from his evening time slot in 1996 by The Phil Hendrie Show, he was offered the overnight slot. He said no and left KFI [7].
In January of 1997, after a contractual, non-competition clause, 3-month waiting period, he brought his show to KABC radio renaming it Ask Mr. KABC.[8] The show had difficult times its first few years due to it frequently being pre-empted by sports programming, also it was at times only one hour long. For several months in 1999, he co-hosted a morning show with Brian Whitman. According to a newspaper article by Sandy Wells, Germain could not wait to get back to an evening time slot[9].
His show blossomed in March of 2000 when KABC management expanded Germain's show to 3 hours.This was due to Stephanie Miller’s syndicated show being removed from the KABC lineup[10]. He steadily built a following and in its final year he had the number 1 or 2 rated show for his time period. Midway through 2006, the start of his show was pushed back an hour (to 10 pm) to make room for a syndicated show based out of New York – Mark Levin. In January of 2007, KABC wanted to push his show back another hour (to 11 pm) to make room for another hour of Levin’s show. Germain balked at that proposal stating that it would be detrimental to his family life, and he and KABC parted company on what is reported to be very good terms.
Three weeks later, (March 5, 2007), he returned on radio station KTLK, with what is considered by the radio industry as the coveted “drive-time” time slot.
- 1987 – 1989 KTMS, Santa Barbara: intern, board operator, assistant program director.
- 1989 – 1996 KFI, Los Angeles: producer, call-screener, on-air talk show host.
- 1997 – 2007 KABC, Los Angeles: on-air talk show host.
- 2007 – Pres. KTLK, Los Angeles: on-air talk show host.
[edit] The Radio Show
[edit] The New KTLK Version (March 2007)
While still new and subject to change, Germain's new show is expanding to incorporate more traditional aspects of the talk radio format. These include: "News You Can't Use", unusual news stories told with light-hearted banter between Germain and Lisa Goich, (introducing her as his producer, sidekick, call screener and "women around town"); what many might consider more frivolous topics such as Tuseday's, March 6, 2007 hour-long topic - “Does Jesus love Osama Bin Laden” ; as well as more traditional interviews about topical news related events, such as he did the day of the Scooter Libby conviction.
Germain stated that his plan is to have at least one hour per day for his original Ask Mr. K - no guests, no topics, no screeners, format. Currently Ask Mr. K is the last hour of every program. He also stated that he hopes to have fellow radio personality/comedian April Winchell on with him twice a month. The fate of the Mr. K quiz is unknown at this point - Germain having said that he may bring it back in some form at a later date.
[edit] Genesis of His Original Show
The creation of his show was explained, by this call/question which Germain fielded at 10:41 pm on Nov 28th, 2006:
Caller: “Getting into the radio field, when did you decide not to have a screener?”
Mr. K: “Well, here’s the thing, before I was an on-air personality, I was a behind-the-scenes guy, and one of the things I did as a behind-the-scenes guy was screen calls, and people used to come and watch me screen ‘cause they thought it was pretty entertaining, so my idea was to host a show where I basically screen the calls live on the air.”
Caller: “Did they deter you from that?”
Mr. K: “Who?”
Caller: “Like you know, management, when you . . . ?”
Mr. K: “No, I pitched my boss at the time on the idea, and he said, all right, lets give it a shot, and he put me on at 2 in the morning on a Sunday, and figuring that if it blew up on the launch pad, no one would be the wiser for it – under the cover of darkness.”
Caller: “Any reason why more hosts don’t do that?”
Mr. K: “Because they can’t.”
Caller: “Meaning . . . a little deeper?”
Mr. K: “No, I don’t think they have the skills to do it, I think that most hosts have a lot of skeletons in their closets or issues that they don’t want to talk about. Most talk radio is issue-oriented, specific issue, here's the topic, we are going to talk about gays in the military for the next hour and if people were to call up and be off-topic, it would be distracting from their show, so if I did that kind of a show, and occasionally I do that kind of a show, ah, most hosts would need the crutch of a screener.”
[One can see Germain in action at his former station, KABC in this July, 2006 video clip[1] provided by guest, comedian April Winchell.
[edit] The "Historical" Version (1992 - 2007)
Germain’s (Mr. K) original format - since he started as an on-air personality in 1992 - is Ask Mr. K- - -, where callers to the program are directed to ask questions of the host. Mr. K slogan is "no guests, no topics, no screeners," to contrast his program from the standard talk radio format. His trademark response when asked by callers "how are you?," is "Better than most, not as good as some."
He does not answer sports related questions, explaining that he was "born without the sports gene." There are also three questions that Mr. K will not allow, presumably because they have been asked so many times that Mr. K fears his audience feels as weary of the three as he has grown to be. One of the forbidden questions is "what is a Sig Alert?"; another is "What is the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan?"; the third is "What are your views on the legalization of drugs?".[11]
Besides the current events and everyday questions he answers - just about anything is fair game - he has a marked interest in computer-technology, cars and motorcycles.
His stated goal is to have entertaining radio. Callers who sound unenergetic or asking uninteresting questions are quickly dispatched. Others are sometimes given 8, 10, even 12 minutes, even if what they say seems (to Germain) as ridiculous - as he says: “I enjoy giving them enough rope to hang themselves with”.
Notwithstanding his primary format, Mr. K sometimes does have guests. He used to regard such guests as merely "hanging" with Mr. K (not to break the format); nowadays he regards such sessions as brief hiatus from "Ask Mr. K": if in such a session he accepts questions or comments from callers at all, each must pertain to the subject of the guest. He hosted the last interview with Wolfman Jack and one of the last interviews with Milton Berle.
On May 15, 2006 in the 11:00pm hour, Mr. K made the following comment when the subject of Wikipedia came up:
Mr. K: "Any encyclopedia that anyone can add to has to have good information. It's a lot of fun; I love the Wikipedia... And the Wikipedia entry on me is about 90% correct... It's got a couple of little factual details that are not correct."
[edit] Philosophy / Ideology / Beliefs
While less ideologically driven than most of his talk radio colleagues, he is a registered Democrat with moderate to liberal political views. When asked by callers, Germain describes himself as a "Law and Order Liberal".
Germain has a strong interest in science and technology, and callers frequently ask him about those topics as well as political news. In the early twenty-first century, Germain devoted considerable airtime to "California's bogus power crisis," and was one of the state's first and leading voices to expose the manipulation of the public sector by energy companies at the great expense of California's taxpayers.
While Jewish by heritage, he does not practice that faith. When asked about his religion/spirituality, he replies that he a Deist.
His comments towards vegetarians and vegans callers to his show reveals a marked hostility towards those eating routines.
His libertarian leanings, as expressed on his show (of “live and let live”), are reflected in his pro-choice and pro gay-marriage beliefs.
[edit] Dissolution of his relationship with KABC (2007)
Even though Germain boasted on air that he now had the number one rated radio show in the Greater Los Angeles radio demographics - for the Midnight to 1:00 am time period, as well as number two rated show for the 10:00 pm to 12:00 am period, listeners were surprised to hear the following statement read on KABC - shortly after 10:00 PM, Monday Feb 12, 2007:
The following is a message from KABC Radio. The Mr. KABC program normally heard at this time will no longer be broadcast on Talk Radio 790, KABC. KABC Radio and Mr. KABC were unable to come to terms on a new contract, despite ongoing efforts on both sides to do so. KABC radio is grateful to Mr. KABC for his years of service and to his listeners for their support. Changes like this are never easy. KABC thanks Mr. KABC and we wish him well.
LA Observed reported [2] that the difficulty was that KABC management wanted to add a second hour of the ABC-syndicated Mark Levin show, which would have pushed the highly rated Mr. KABC show to an 11 PM - 2 AM time slot, a situation which Mr. Germain found unacceptible.
"I came to the difficult decision to leave because of family considerations," Germain told LA Radio. "With two youngsters, the new proposed hours just didn’t work for our family. I am not yet 40 years old and I have a long career ahead of me. I have been a ratings and revenue winner working evenings at KABC and I have nothing but warm thoughts about the station and hopes for their continued success."
On March 1st, KTLK AM 1150 in Los Angeles announced [3] that Marc will be joining their line up in the 3pm - 7 pm timeslot, effective March 5, 2007.
[edit] The Regular Callers (KABC days)
"Mr. K” encourages (and sometimes tolerates) an exceptional degree of participation by his listening audience. On at least two occasions, he has invited interesting listeners/callers as guests in studio and once had Ernest, a frequent caller, sit in and take calls right along with Mr. K.
Mr. K has several regular callers who have become running gags on the show. These includes: Mr. Non-Sequitur, who spouts off disjointed phrases that have nothing at all to do with each other; Mr. Doubletalk, a man who often repeats what he says twice; Ralph, an alleged gym buddy of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and whose accent is often mocked; The Belly-Aching Truck Driver, who expresses disdain to any potential employers as well as expressing strong opinion towards NAFTA; Billy, who always starts his call by saying "Hi April . . . Hi April . . ." (referring to April Winchell) even when she is not a guest that night.
In addition, he had a handful of regular callers to his show, including: Bubbles, (a young enthusiastic woman who cries easily); Casper, (who has told some interesting stories on air of being a gay street-hustler in the 70’s[4]); Ernest (who Mr. K refers to as “his most confused listener”); Mae, (as Mr. K says - “my oldest documented listener”, at 97 years old); Mike, (who won a $100 cash bet between him and Mr. K earlier this year); Rita, (whose stated goal is to improvise a joke/routine about the previous call right before her call); Skipper (who calls Mr. K “little buddy”, a reference to the TV show Gilligan's Island); as well as Zan (who believes in various conspiracy theories including those involving 9/11 and man never having landed on the moon). One can see pictures of many of the above-mentioned callers at "Mr. K" website[5].
A still mentioned caller from the past is Freddy, a militant who believed that everything is a conspiracy to get rid of African-Americans (Freddy Andersen died October 2, 2005[6]) A recording of a 10 minute long call of Freddy is at Mr K's website [7]
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5Kw4E1Fk7
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5Kw4E1Fk7
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5LC6DAQ8N
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5Kxj1CVkI
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5LC6DAQ8N
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5LC6DAQ8N
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5NDV4a21g
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5NDV4a21g
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5NDV9YeKp
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5NDV9YeKp
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/5Kw4E1Fk7
