| Elliot in the Morning | |
|---|---|
Elliot in the Morning |
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| Format | Comedy, News |
| Created by | Elliot Segal |
| Starring | Elliot Segal and The Class: (Diane Stupar-Hughes, Tyler Molnar, Kayleigh Gelles) |
| Country of origin | USA |
| Production | |
| Running time | 4 hours, 32 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Elliot in the Morning Radio Network WWDC-Washington, DC, WRXL-Richmond, VA |
| Original run | 1999 – Present |
Elliot in the Morning is a morning radio talk show hosted by DJ Elliot Segal. It airs weekdays from "5:48 until 10-something" on WWDC-FM in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and on WRXL in Richmond, Virginia. The program was simulcast on WOSC in Ocean City, Maryland from 2003 to 2004 and on WCHH in Baltimore, Maryland from May 2008 to November 2009.
The format covers a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from in-person or telephone interviews with well-known celebrities, to gross-out stunts involving many of the colorful supporting cast. The show has regular telephone interviews with Patricia Murphy (from Politics Daily), Mark Steines (from Entertainment Tonight) during sweeps, London Fletcher (from the Washington Redskins) and Brandon Noble (former NFL player) during football season.
As of 2005, Elliot in the Morning had been the cause of the fifth largest amount of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fines since 1970, with $302,500 worth of fines leveled at the show.[1] As a result, while the show still frequently involves euphemistic mentions of sexual topics, it is broadcast with a short tape delay, and is occasionally "dumped" to canned music for profanity.
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Other former members: Dan Hoffman, Brett Haber, Jared Stern, and David Brody who is credited with giving Flounder his nickname (Because he looked liked Flounder from Animal House) and worked with Elliot at WHTZ.
The show's most prominent catchphrase has an unusual origin. The technically clean but inexplicably lewd-sounding phrase was conceived when the cast of the show was observing mug shots on the Frederick News-Post website (a local newspaper) for persons caught soliciting prostitutes. One picture that caught their eye was a badly disheveled man with a huge, bushy grey beard named Ronny Kline. Imagining what such a man might say to a woman after performing cunnilingus, the phrase “smell my face” immediately sprang to mind.
The phrase became a kind of "battle cry" and has been heavily integrated into the show’s promotional material, with bumper stickers, signs, and highly coveted T-shirts. The show’s cast and crew have also solicited (or tricked) numerous celebrities into saying the catchphrase for recordings used to promote the show. So far, there are recordings of Aaron Neville, Marguerite Perrin, Hélio Castroneves, Brittany Murphy, Mark Hoppus, Joe Frazier, Paul Stanley, Perry Farrell, Constantine Maroulis, Plain White T's, The Pussycat Dolls, Hulk Hogan, John Basedow, Josh Kelley, Sebastian Bach, Timbaland, Juliette Lewis, Pat McGee, Stephan Jenkins, Chyna, Night Ranger, Jeffrey Ross, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Chris Cornell.
In February 2000, Elliot related a lewd urban legend involving a woman who performed a sexual act with a live lobster. The show continued uninterrupted, but a message from General Manager Mark O'Brien was repeatedly played on the station later in the day condemning the story and announcing Segal's 'indefinite suspension'. Segal returned to the airwaves two days later. The episode has been replayed on "Best of..." versions of the show, with the offending portions censored.
On the morning of February 8, 2001, Elliot Segal sent Bryan "Flounder" Schlossberg to the south fence of the White House, where a gunman had been shot and arrested the previous day, offering passersby to a "free shot of bush." The "bush" in question was an anatomical reference in connection to a spread of porn magazines that were on display. Flounder was connected to the airwaves via cell phone when the Secret Service surrounded him and demanded that he hang up the phone. In the end, Flounder avoided being taken into custody, but was however banned from the grounds of the White House indefinitely.[2]
The morning of May 7, 2002, on D.C. metro area disc jockey Elliot Segal's radio program, DC101's "Elliot in the Morning", two sixteen-year-old O'Connell students called to be considered in a contest whose winners were to be cage dancers at an upcoming Kid Rock concert at George Mason University's Patriot Center. Instead, goaded by Elliot, they discussed alleged sexual activity at O'Connell. The students claimed to be eighteen. The two discussed giving oral sex to lines of boys in the hallway and having intercourse in stairwells and closets.[3] They implied these acts occurred during a typical school day. The students, who had used false names on air, were suspended the same day for their comments.[4] The principal addressed the student body on the PA system and discussed the immorality of Mr. Segal's radio show. The following day (May 8), Mr. Segal, angered by the students' suspension, personally insulted the principal on air, making lewd remarks about his family and his sexual activity. He also mocked the school's mission statement, specifically what he considered to be a hypocritical statement that their educational environment is "rooted in the life of Christ."[5] The two days of broadcasting were ruled indecent by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As a result, in October 2003, sixteen months after the incident, DC101's parent company Clear Channel Communications was fined $55,000.[6] L. Brent Bozell III, founder of nearby Alexandria, Virginia-based organization Parents Television Council, criticized both the anti-Catholic prejudice he perceived in those episodes of the program and the FCC's $55,000 fine that he claimed would not be effective for the multi-million dollar corporation Clear Channel Communications, owner of WWDC,[7] having criticized the show back in July 2003 for its indecent content.[8]
In the summer of 2003, Segal conducted an interview with whom he believed to be famous cyclist Lance Armstrong. In reality, the caller was Chad Dukes, currently the co-host of The LaVar Arrington Show on WJFK-FM in Washington, DC. Dukes stayed in character as Lance Armstrong for over seven minutes on-air without arousing the suspicions of Segal or his co-hosts. When Segal asked Dukes - still in character as Armstrong - what the greatest moment in his career was, Dukes responded that it was "when the The Junkies moved to HFS in the mornings you jack-tool-ass-f, I can't believe you thought this was Lance Arm...!" Segal abruptly hung up on Dukes in mid-sentence and laughed it off before going to commercial break.
On November 8, 2007, Elliot Segal announced that Dan Patrick would no longer be contributing to the show. Patrick, a former ESPN anchor, had commentated on Fridays during football season, but failed to call for two previously scheduled interviews. Elliot said, "The Dan Patrick thing just didn't work out and that's fine."[9]
The show was suspended on December 11 and 12, 2008. As part of an agreement to resume broadcasting, Elliot was barred from discussing the reason behind his suspension.
The show was pulled off the air on August 30, 2010 as Elliot spoke on the telephone with former Clear Channel employee, Jon Ballard, who was fired from sister-station WBIG-FM Big 100.3 earlier in the morning. The conversation abruptly ended when the show was pulled off the air and replaced with music, most notably, "Monkey Wrench" by Foo Fighters. The show returned the next day and Elliot blamed the incident on upper management.