And it helped that Tom was overseeing D.C. at the time and our general manager, John Fullam, was overseeing the market. It certainly made the transition much easier when the two guys that were helping you move were helping you move to a market where they were in charge. I felt like I had a fair chance of going in because the audience was used to a personality driven morning show.
MP: When you made that transition, did you become more edgy? What was the difference in doing the Z show versus what you started doing on DC101?
ES: It came down to more of my natural sensibilities and what I wanted to do. Was it edgier than Z? Yes, of course. Was it different from Z? Yes. We weren't doing bits and it was all talk. I was playing a little bit of music back then, but it was a chance to really find content that fit my natural curiosities and tendencies and then being able to talk about it. We were going to lean more edgy than they were in Top 40.
MP: It was a golden age of what you could get away with on the radio and I don't lump you in with the shock jocks of the era, but you did get yourself in trouble a few times with the FCC. How did you decide where to push the limits?
ES: I don't know. When I was in New York, Opie and Anthony were doing afternoons and I thought their show was great, I loved it. Obviously Howard [Stern] was doing his thing, which I didn't get to hear, but was certainly aware of what he was doing. Mancow was doing his thing. But I don't know if I ever really sat down and thought about where's the line and where can I push it. It was societal of what was going to be accepted and what wasn't. Everybody's going to push to see where that line is and that's what we were hired to do. I've never considered myself a shock jock, but I think the people that I was working for when that clampdown came where Howard was getting popped and Opie & Anthony were getting popped and I was getting popped, that the managers knew I wasn't doing it just to do it. I wasn't looking to wear it like a badge of honor. They trusted that I would figure out how to get up to that line and not fall too far over it. Obviously we fell too far a couple of times, but it wasn't intentional.