Liz Wilde
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| Liz Wilde | |
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| Birth name | Anne Whittemore |
| Born | October 27, 1971 |
| Style | Shock Jock |
| Country | United States |
| Website | http://www.myspace.com/lizwilde |
Liz Wilde (born October 27, 1971) is an American radio personality known for her shock jock radio show.
[edit] History
Liz Wilde, American radio personality, began her career interning for WYSO and WDAO in Dayton, Ohio area, first doing call-in voices and requests, sweeping floors, and getting coffee for the Jocks she interned for at around the age of 14. Liz helped to co-host and produce a progressive jazz show at WYSO/Antioch College, and played many a Miles Davis album while the host disappeared for long periods of time, leaving the show to her. She claims "Rhapsody In Blue" is one of her favorite albums because it's associated with large amounts of adrenaline surges due to the host just leaving her there alone in the studio. Then Liz went on to graduate high school early with honors, shortly after suffering the death of her two younger brothers, Michael and Jeffrey, lost to a drunk driver. Liz then did some extensive cross country traveling with her mother, Rachel, to show Liz that Yellow Springs, Ohio was a fairly unique, artistic, hippie, intellectual utopia that most of America did not reflect, and to help heal the fact that her nuclear family was shattered.
Liz decided to attend college in Key West, Florida, much to her scholarly father's disapproval ( Paul wanted her to attend an Ivy League school ) Liz was well on her way to her undergraduate degree in psychology, but felt she was being "lead" to talk to people on the radio again. A co-member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society suggested that she go to a radio station and read some commercial copy. Within a week, Liz had her own afternoon drive show on WIIS, Key West, Florida. The technology allowed her to play reel to reel tapes of pre-programmed music, so Liz regularly had the more colorful people of Key West into her studio which helped to define her signature style of "anything goes" broadcasting today. Liz also received fan mail from Cuba which she regularly read on the air, detailing its resident's life under the Castro regime, and family stories of the madness and courage of the Mariel Boat Lift era. A relatively unknown treasure hunting dive team had also been assembled around this time in history, headed by businessman Mel Fisher. Work began on the "Atocha" dive, and several crew members including Mel, would bring by artifacts they found that day to discuss on the air and let steam off from long days in the sun under dangerous conditions. Gold and silver bars, broken clay vessels, priceless jewels, and salty sailors passed through the Liz's studios at WIIS and WAIL95.
After 3 years at WIIS (FM107), she moved to WAIL95/99, Key West to do her first own morning show where she performed until August 1988. She sent her demo tapes out all over the country and got many responses, but decided that WSHE 103.5/Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, "She's Only Rock and Roll", was a safe bet, being just 200 miles to the north, which Liz could sometimes hear the signal to.
In 1989, Program director David Grossman renamed her "Liz Wilde", and she broadcast an evening show directly following Rhandi Rhodes. Around this time, a local club favorite, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids played clubs that Liz did weekly Friday broadcasts from (The Button South, City Limits). A freelance journalist who wrote for local rock magazines took a liking to Liz's outrageous on air antics and wrote about her show and the abrasive language and themes that she used. The journalist's name was Brian Warner, a.k.a., Marilyn Manson. Both were masters of "shock-rock" in their own right.
With the addition of the "Cream Cheese Bitch" moniker and very edgy talk shtick, Liz's ratings soared through the roof and she found that she could write her ticket anywhere in the genre. Liz chose Boston, Massachusetts, the well respected WAAF 107.3 to perfect her craft of theater of the mind, rock/talk radio, where General Manager Bruce Mittman and Program Director Ron Valeri allowed her to experiment. The station was owned by Zapis Communications, and all programming disputes were had out in the hallways and studios, not by memo or board meeting, as it is done today. Liz claims it made for some of the best radio known to the cochlea, because there "was no time for red tape, it was seat of the pants problem solving!".
Liz Wilde started her New England career in rock/talk radio with a highly rated evening show, quickly moving to afternoon drive-time on WAAF-FM in Boston, Massachusetts from 1990-1995. Under the guidance of program Director Ron Valeri, Liz was the first female to pioneer what is now known today as the "FM talk format". The format went from 12 songs an hour down to a chosen few, and the rest of the broadcast was comedy, phone calls, and popular culture musings. Frequent performers on the show included many live musical performances and interviews with KISS and Gene Simmons, including Liz helping to get the original line up back together, undying support of Aerosmith during the "grunge" surge of popularity, Extreme, Godsmack, setting up a "This is Your Life" for comedian/actor Denis Leary (with calls from his mama, his school nuns, and extended family members, and debuting the new song "I'm An Asshole" live for the very first time unedited, much to the PD's chagrin. Another notable and sad day for Liz was the day Kurt Cobain was found dead in above the garage. She was there for 2 million listeners, providing a sounding board for the mourning Kurt’s fans, allowing them to say whatever they wanted, and how it changed the face of rock and roll forever......
When Liz left WAAF for Chicago's LUP FM, Ron Valeri hired two unknown men who never performed a show together using the same template as he did Liz, Opie and Anthony. O & A also dominated in afternoon drive on WAAF, but when program director Ron V left, Keith Hastings gave them a relatively hard time with the new "shock jock" template that Ron has instituted at WAAF with Liz.
Wilde moved to WLUP in Chicago, Illinois. Liz found a very nice pre-war apartment in "Boystown", Lakeview, on the Gold Coast of Chicago, and accepted evenings on WLUP. After her show, Liz and her staff would frequent many places where they would run into people for material and interviews for the next day's show. Liz says, "Chicago is my heart. I am a midwestern girl born and raised in the area, , but the 60 below windchill makes me cry in the winter..whew!!!!!!!I will no longer be wearing my diamond encrusted brass bra because it leaves frostbite marks on my sexy, luscious back fat!"
She followed Jonathan Brandmier and Danny Bonaduce on the LUP, where Operations Manager and broadcast visionary, Jimmy DiCastro/Evergreen Media, put together a legendary line-up, again touting and defining the genre of FM talk, before Infinity Broadcasting went national with it some years later with their stable of syndicated personalities. In a market ranked number 3 in size, Liz enjoyed many celebrity guests and dramatic plotlines to work with, including Jerry Springer, Courtney Love, Boy George, RuPaul, Gary Sinise, and more. Courtney Love once was put on the phone by Dicki Barrett, the lead singer of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and Liz says, "Courtney went off of the handle enough for Entertainment Weekly magazine to write about it on my show, talking about someone that her husband Kurt had a fancy for, Mary Lou Lord, and how she liked to hit her in the face, and all of Kurt's succubus, vampiric friends that tried to suck his soul away, how she loved clocking them in the face!..." When Liz's one year deal was up, she decided that an opportunity in morning drive was better suited for what she wanted to accomplish (always thinking morning drive), and she accepted an offer for her own morning show in Miami, Florida, at WPLL, Planet radio, for Paxson Broadcasting, where she could again spread her wings. Liz said her brass bra would not be quite so cold there.
Liz found a big, drafty house in Shaker Heights, right on Shaker Blvd., and moved in some of her show members, so that the "writer's meetings would be bar none." Liz always figured that the formula for truly great bit writing involved the core staff to “be realllllll close.” She recalls driving to work at Terminal Tower in downtown Cleveland, having to pass through the most hardcore African American neighborhoods of East Cleveland because there wasn't an alternative route to get to the city. "At 3 in the morning, no one cared that I was passing through the socially insular neighborhood, but at 2 p.m., when I was returning home to Shaker Heights, the fine people in this neighborhood seemed to really adore my large breasts and convertible Mustang and blonde hair and exclaim....Hey baby!...Lightbright! They'd yell, and stand in front of the car, stopping me to talk to them, and asking me to give them my car, money, and or body....But it was hilarious, two blocks down from my huge old style Cleveland house that I only utilized 4 rooms of, I could walk down to the A & P and buy chitterlings from the back of a car, and hot cigarettes, and Lord knows what else if I wanted it from a 10 year old...I remember going to the back of the house to get firewood for the wonderful Queen Anne style fireplace that was in my bedroom (the only fireplace in my bedroom I ever had), and as I gathered the aged dried oak spotted with crispy moss, catching my breath because it was that lake effect wind blowing up my nostrils, I'd hear rapid fire gunshots and screaming...whether murder or domestic disputes, it was 2 blocks away to each side. At this point though, I was used to violence in my own existence, so I'd go inside, light my crackling fire, and bake chicken Vesuvius for my writers..."
She signed a million dollar deal with Nationwide Communications to join rock-and-roll powerhouse station WMMS 100.7FM in Cleveland, Ohio to compete against Howard Stern in mornings, where she tied and/or beat him in most day parts, seldom ever accomplished, especially by a female driven show. Programming worked closely with Liz to ensure localized success in this "iron belt, working man's" city. With Howard's previous beheading of the Buzzard mascot a few years before, WMMS had a lot of work to do in localization and "pressing the flesh" perception, and Liz was the right candidate to achieve their short term goals by being funny, approachable, born in Ohio, and have a rockin' show that "fit" the locals that could smell BS a mile away...Liz said, "Cleveland is a very unique town in the sense that every person living here, more than perhaps anywhere else, can smell a rat, brass tacks... That's what I have always loved about Cleveland, Ohio."
Upon the sale of WMMS, Liz moved back to Miami, to broadcast a racy afternoon drive show on 940 WINZ, Supertalk 940 for Dave Ross and Clear Channel Communications. The Miami market enjoyed many extreme, comedic live broadcasts, including one of "radio legend" with comedian Dave Chapelle at a local beach resort shortly before his meteoric rise to fame with Comedy Central, who also reigns from Yellow Springs, Ohio. Some more notorious guests at this time included comedian Jim Bruer from Saturday Night Live, Fred Durst of Limp Biscuit, Ron Jeremy, Teri Weigel, Leslie Nielson, and many other classic signature broadcasting moments. It was from this platform of "controlled chaos" that The Liz Wilde Show became poised for national syndication with Fisher Entertainment, of Santa Cruz, California.
Her show then aired from 2003-2005 on KYNG/KLLI, the talk that rocks Texas, in the Dallas/Fort Worth,Texas market under CBS’s Program Director Bob McNeil, who once again, let her be completely “free” with that hands off approach that worked so well for Liz in the past. The Dallas audience enjoyed many more shows with her regulars-comedian Christopher Titus and his “End of the World Report”, Gene Simmons and the infamous Four Seasons hotel gathering, KISS’s Manager Doc McGhee, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Tammy Faye Baker, Charlie Daniels, Bret Michaels, David Dramain of Disturbed, and the “stalking producer’s obsession” storyline. There were and completely outrageous live broadcasts from the Clubhouse Gentlemen’s club with Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell of Damage Plan/Pantera. Fan favorite bits include the “Don and Sheila Show” mock broadcasts (“radio that is safe for the whole family”), and Liz’s character Queen Laqueefa with her “Wrong Number Theatre” bits torturing unsuspecting credit card and mortgage companies. KLLI’s mainstay afternoon talent Russ Martin often did racy crossovers with Liz, involving him offering her Jack Daniels whiskey and requesting to see her “cans” and take wild rides in his Bat Mobile”.
WRXK in Ft. Myers, Florida from November 2004 till April 2006. Update coming soon.
In 2001, Wilde's show was nationally syndicated by NBG Radio Network from their studios in Portland, Oregon debuting on eventually over 30 stations including KOTK in Portland. Liz also broadcast on a multi platform basis, with daily simulcasts on the web as the show was live on the air nationwide, a fledgling technology at the time.
Liz Wilde is currently writing her autobiography detailing her many colorful stories about rock and roll and acting celebrities, her dark journey of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and relationship co-dependency, and her journey of recovery through Christianity and pastoral studies that to lead her back "INTO THE LIGHT"-Stories of an American Shock Jock" (book title). Liz will begin her multi-media tour of the United States in Fall 2009.
