What the!?

Quite possibly the weirdest local media story in several weeks: Beaner and Ken return to The X

BOB CARLTON
News staff writer

Beaner and Ken are coming back to The X.

And Tuttle and Kline are moving on to a bigger market.

This morning on Birmingham radio station WRAX-FM (107.7 The X), Guy "Beaner" Patton and Ken Heron are expected to announce theywill return to the station where they first started together in 1998.

They will replace The X's current morning team of Tim Tuttle and Kevin Kline, who are leaving for an undisclosed Top 10 radio market in the next couple of weeks, Dale Daniels, the station's general manager, said Thursday night.

"We are sorry to see Tuttle and Kline go, but we sure don't want to stand in the way of this opportunity for them," Daniels said.

Due to contractual reasons with their new station, Daniels said he can't disclose where Tuttle and Kline are headed.

Beaner and Ken became one of Birmingham's most popular morning teams after they joined The X in 1998 but left after the station was sold three years later.

They returned to the market two years ago when they joined Tuscaloosa's WANZ-FM (Z-100.5), an alternative rock station that also broadcast into Birmingham.

However, they left Z-100.5 in December after they couldn't agree to a contract with the station's owners.

Last month, Beaner and Ken went back on the air on Syracuse, N.Y., rock station WAQX-FM (95X). That station is owned by Citadel Broadcasting, which also owns The X and recently bought Z-100.5.

Broadcast from Syracuse:

Citadel will simulcast Beaner and Ken's show on both its Syracuse and Birmingham stations. It will originate in Syracuse.

"We are excited to be back on in Birmingham," Patton said Thursday. "We made a promise when we came back and were on in Tuscaloosa that we would continue to do a radio show for Alabama until we retire from this business, and as long as people will have us, we intend to keep it."

Currently, Citadel is carrying The X on both the 107.7 and 100.5 FM frequencies, but 100.5 will become the sole home of the station in the next couple of weeks.

How very odd. I was saddened recently when Citadel said they were going to start simulcasting Tuttle and Kline on Beaner and Ken's old station--a) because I think they're crappy, and b) Beaner and Ken killed in the ratings even without any help from the folks at Apex. It just seemed like twisting the knife--not only were Tuttle and Kline soundly thrashed at "The X," now they were going to bring down another station as well. And Beaner and Ken got shipped off to Syracuse.

And now? Somehow, Tuttle and Kline managed to get a gig in a Top 10 market, and Beaner and Ken are back where they started, kinda, with the added lure of Syracuse. (And for the people in Syracuse, the added lure of Birmingham.) So very odd.

As for the technical side, it'll be simple to do the Syracuse-Birmingham tie--before when Beaner and Ken were on the air in Tuscaloosa, Beaner was actually living in New Jersey and through some sort of digital hocus-pocus and a pact with Satan was able to broadcast and make it sound like he and Ken were both sitting together in the station in Tuscaloosa. The thing that is going to be interesting to see is how their show will translate to what are admittedly two rather different markets. The show here in Alabama had a lot of local flavor, especially the long-running gag with Vulcan reading the weather, so it might be hard to do something that will appeal to both places. Or not. I suppose we'll just have to see how it works out. (I just hope they quit saying "ass" so much.)

In the spirit of learning more about our new radio sister city, here are some little known facts about Syracuse:

1. The dental chair was invented by Syracuse’s Milton Waldo Hanchett in 1840.
2. The Erie Canal in its century long existence, contributed more to the growth of Syracuse than anything in its history.
3. Country’s first drive-in window installed by our own Merchants bank in 1941.
4. Literacy volunteers was founded here in 1962-helping thousands of adults world wide read.
5. Did you know that at one time there were more than 50 breweries here in the Syracuse area.
6. Syracusan Charles F. Brannock invented the measuring device that tells the shoe salesman, what your size is. Also Nettleton patented the world’s first “Loafer” in 1933.
7. Our State Fair in the longest running State Fair in the country, in fact it started in 1848.
8. Archabold stadium was the first totally poured concrete stadium in the country.
9. At the turn of the century 90% of the nations garment pressing machines were manufactured right here in Syracuse.
10. Cornelius Tyler Longstreet invented the first standardized clothing in the mid 1880’s.
11. Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Upstate Medical Center predecessor Geneva Medical College in 1849.
12. Crouse Hinds manufactured the country’s first traffic light installed in Texas in 1921.
13. Robert E. Dietz can boast ownership of an English patent issued by Queen Victoria in 1873 for a self-setting animal trap better known as a mousetrap.
14. The first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court was a Syracuse University Grad. Belva Lockwood.
15. 27 antennae located on the moon were made in Syracuse by Sims.

Now then, a little trivia about Beaner and Ken's new old station, 107.7--long ago, there was a tiny startup station called WBHR, "The Bear," broadcasting at 105.9 here in the local area. They did a lot of indie "new music" stuff that the kids thought was real groovy, and grew influential enough amongst the radio goobs to be noticed by the bigger radio goobs, and were then bought, and then swapped frequencies with one of the old-line stations in town, WENN, and changed their call letters and name to WRAX, "The X," and then they hired Beaner and Ken who quickly became very popular before they went their separate ways several years back.

That original station, WBHR?

It originated from, of all places, Trussville. (The call letters have since been reassigned to an AM station in Minnesota.)
posted by Terry at 8:35:00 AM