Scott Allen Miller

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Scott Allen Miller (also known as Scotto) is an American talk radio personality. He currently hosts a local morning-drive news and call-in talk program on WROW in Albany, New York, and also serves as WROW's program director.

Miller has been named one of America's top talk show hosts by Talkers Magazine. At 36 years of age, he is the youngest major market morning drive talk show host in the United States. Miller's calling cards are his knowledge of a wide variety of issues, his clever sense of humor, his personal engagement with his audience, and his fiercely independent points of view. The Boston Radio Hall of Fame website declares, "Miller is for the most part, a fair and balanced talk show host with a deeply developed thought process and a slight chip-on-the-shoulder attitude. [sic] ... Miller stands out on this landmark talk radio station." Politically, Miller leans libertarian but differs strongly with the Libertarian Party on matters of criminal justice, national defense, and immigration.

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[edit] Biography

Miller was born on October 9, 1970 in Muncie, Indiana. When his father died in 1986, Miller left his rural Daleville, Indiana home for Howell, New Jersey to live with his mother, who had divorced his father and remarried a few years earlier. In New Jersey, Miller attended Howell High School with future CBS sportscaster Bonnie Bernstein, who has appeared on his show several times.

While studying music at Trenton State College Miller met his future wife. He dropped out of college and, after getting married in 1992, moved to western Kansas where his wife was teaching music. According to his resume, Miller began his radio career in March 1992 at 1420 AM KULY in Ulysses, Kansas, but soon moved on to High Plains Public Radio in Garden City, Kansas. In 1993, Miller took a hiatus from radio to return to college. While earning a bachelor of arts in social science from Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, he wrote extensively as an op/ed columnist for the award-winning daily K-State Collegian, which maintains an online archive of his writings.

[edit] Radio career

After graduation in 1996, Miller moved to Kansas City and began his talk radio career as a producer for then-sister stations AM 980 KMBZ and AM 810 KCMO while working odd jobs to supplement his income. He DJed for a year in Kansas City before moving to Los Angeles in 1998 to produce The John & Ken Show, which at the time was syndicated nationwide. He also worked as a phone screener for Stephanie Miller before moving back to Kansas City.

In 2000, Miller hosted his first talk radio show at AM 580 WIBW in Topeka, Kansas. The following year, Miller began hosting a weekend show and producing the weekday morning show on AM 710 KCMO. In the spring of 2002, Miller was named the host of a morning drive radio talk show in Tulsa, Oklahoma but, according to Miller, was fired after just a few weeks "for not being conservative enough." By the end of 2002, Miller was hosting The Scotto Show in afternoon drive on AM 810 WGY in Albany, New York. He reportedly turned down an offer in a larger radio market because WGY promised him the use of a digital sound effects device called an Instant Replay that Miller still uses extensively and refers to as "The Hot Box of Comedy". In the days after the start of the Iraq War, Miller promoted and spoke at a rally to show support for military servicemen and their families that drew 10,000 people to upstate New York, according to the Boston Globe.

Miller came to Boston's WRKO in September 2003, replacing morning show co-host John "Ozone" Osterlind. He shared hosting duties with Peter Blute, a Republican career politician who had represented Massachusetts' Third District in Congress and directed Massport before joining WRKO in 1999. In May 2004 Miller wrote an op/ed article in the Boston Globe critical of the Federal Communication Commission's crackdown on broadcast indecency.

After Blute departed WRKO in September 2005 to pursue other interests, WRKO launched Boston This Morning with Miller as its sole host. While Blute and Scotto discussed a few select issues of the day in depth with guests and callers, Boston This Morning covered a wider range of stories through newsmaker interviews and breaking news coverage but with less time devoted to Miller's commentaries and interaction with callers. According to the Boston Herald, WRKO designed Boston This Morning to be more competitive with all-news market leader AM 1030 WBZ, but Boston Phoenix media critic Mark Jurkowitz has lamented that WRKO has transformed the freewheeling and funny Scotto into the much more serious and sober -- and newsmanly -- Scott Allen Miller.

In the spring of 2006 the program was renamed The Scott Allen Miller Show and changed once again to a more relaxed, caller-friendly format without the frequent traffic and weather breaks, interviews with a variety of guests, and scarce audience participation of Boston This Morning. The Scott Allen Miller Show maintained a strong news presence through Miller's in-depth interviews with newsmakers and updates from WRKO's news anchors.

On January 11, 2007, it was announced that Miller was leaving WRKO, to be replaced by former Massachusetts Speaker of the House Tom Finneran.[1][not in citation given] Miller's last day on the station was February 9.

Miller returned to Albany in October 2007 to replace Paul Vandenburgh on WROW, beginning on October 22.

Since his departure from WRKO he has occasionally filled in for John Gibson on his Fox News Radio show.

[edit] Personal life

Miller has denounced talk radio personalities who demand that callers reveal their personal lives and experiences on the air but refuse to do the same. There are in fact many personal details about his life peppered throughout his radio show. Miller lives in the affluent suburb of Needham, Massachusetts but insists he would live in Boston (especially the ) if the city's public schools were better. He complains that his wife is sexually frigid and obsessed with knitting and spinning her own yarn, but blames these problems on himself for being "fat and ugly". He refers to his wife and their two pre-school aged daughters as "Mrs. Scotto" and "The Scottettes" to protect their privacy. Miller frequently sees his in-laws from New Jersey but visits his own mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and lives near Dayton, Ohio, only a few times a year.

As a child he attended a Pentecostal church and occasionally attends services at Trinity Church in Boston with his wife, but long insisted he was an agnostic. However, on January 12, 2007 Miller announced he had converted to Orthodox Christianity; He and his daughters were baptized into the faith on Easter of that year. He said that his religious conversion began when he attended a service at an Orthodox church in South Boston with a friend more than a year before. He further went on to say that his faith is helping him be optimistic about his future after being released from his show on WRKO.

Miller's experiences as a victim of childhood sexual abuse fuel a passion for reforming Massachusetts' sex offender laws, a recurring topic on his program. He freely gives out his personal AOL Instant Messenger screen name (IAmScotto) and answers most of the email he receives from listeners, often in surprising length and detail.

Miller has a blog called The Scotto Bloggo. He speaks, reads and writes Spanish fluently. His alcoholic drink of choice is bourbon. Miller is an aficionado of heavy metal. He regularly attends metal concerts and praises artists like Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, Tool, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society, Anthrax, Mötley Crüe, and even Ratt. Miller also plays guitar and sings recreationally in his own heavy metal band, Red State.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Report: Tuning in to Tommy: Finneran’s ‘RKO deal set The Boston Herald, January 11, 2007. Retrieved January 11, 2007.

[edit] External links