‘Bert Show’s’ Bert Weiss one year after leaving radio: ‘I haven’t missed it’
In 2013, popular syndicated Dallas-based radio host Kidd Kraddick died at age 53 while hosting a charity golf tournament he had created to raise money to take sick kids to Walt Disney World.
Kraddick’s sudden death left a deep impression on then-46-year-old Bert Weiss, who worked with Kraddick during his formative radio years. By then, he had his own successful syndicated radio show based out of Atlanta’s Q100 studios.
“I didn’t want to end up like Kidd,” Weiss said in an interview last week with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A year ago, at 58, Weiss voluntarily shut the mic on “The Bert Show” after an impressive quarter-century run. He had earned enough income to bow out while the show was still popular.
“I respect those guys that stay in the industry because they really, really love it,” said Weiss, who now resides in Sandy Springs with his wife Amanda Coker. (She is divorced with a six-year-old daughter while his two sons from a previous marriage are out of the nest.) “That was never my intent. I didn’t want to be a 60, 65-year-old man trying to connect with a younger audience.”
His success has earned him multiple nominations for the National Radio Hall of Fame and induction into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.
But as Weiss got older and his target 25-to-54-year-old female audience began to lap him in years, Weiss said he found it harder to get excited over the latest gossip about Katy Perry and Taylor Swift.
“I was talking about things that didn’t interest me anymore,” he said. “I was aging out of the drama, which I know plays well on radio and social media.”
His thirst for attention waned. He wanted to focus more on his relationship with Coker, whom he began dating in 2024 and married earlier this year. And he yearned to travel, not just a week here and a week there. Even if he was on the beach, the business of “The Bert Show” always hovered over him like a dark cloud.
So he left the show a year ago with no regrets.
“I haven’t missed it,” Weiss said. “The only thing I miss is being in studio and having fun and laughing.”
More control meant more work
In 2010, Weiss took ownership of “The Bert Show” from Q100’s Atlanta-based parent company Cumulus Broadcasting, providing him more creative and financial control. And he syndicated the show, which ended up in more than 20 markets such as Charleston, South Carolina; Indianapolis; and Nashville.
He was able to negotiate this deal because “we were bringing in so much money for that radio station. And for them to be able to take all those salaries off their books and have me absorb it, that was a win for them as well.”
But the downside for Weiss was the extra work it took overseeing employees and managing radio affiliates while constantly thinking up content for the show.
“You have your content antenna up all the time,” Weiss said. “So I don’t know the last time before I retired where I had a genuine conversation with someone where I wasn’t thinking like a producer and wondering if it could work for radio.”
Over 25 years, “The Bert Show’s” rotating cast of members (with Weiss there the entire time) generated more than 10,000 hours of stories about their lives, their listeners’ relationship dilemmas, celebrity interviews and whatever goofiness they could conjure up.
“More people actually come up now than they did when I was doing the show which has been nice because I just kind of figured they’ll forget about me now,” Weiss said. “But I think we made an impact.”
Weiss can now live his life without more than a million weekly listeners knowing all his business.
Nonetheless, he is putting himself back in the public eye in podcast form.
Over the past year, Weiss has taken his yen for traveling to heart, making more than a dozen trips to places like Mexico, Austria, Slovenia, Scotland and Vietnam. He spent an entire month in New Zealand earlier this year. He will be in Japan this month.
So he began a weekly podcast in October with his wife called “Trip Happens.”
“We travel so much and we have such a good time together,” he said. “Why not share these stories?”
It’s a format he knows well because “The Bert Show” added a podcast version several years ago, generating extra income as more people gravitated to that format.
And in 2021, he launched Pionaire, his own podcast company, with “Real Housewives of Atlanta” cast member Kim Zolciak as one of his first clients. (That lasted only a few months.)
Pionaire now has 10 podcasts including a new daily show from longtime former Bert Show host Kristin Klingshirn starting Nov. 2 called “Barely Functioning,” described on his website as “unserious takes on life’s ridiculous dilemmas, viral topics, maybe a good rant, definitely a good laugh, and a sprinkle of pop culture.”
Klingshirn, a close friend of Weiss, was briefly given an afternoon show on Q99.7 in January but was a target for budget cuts in August.
“I told her not to take it personally,” Weiss said. Cumulus, the radio company that owns Q99.7, declared bankruptcy protection in March, completing its financial restructuring last month.
Klingshirn didn’t respond to a text about Weiss and her new podcast.
The most popular Pionaire podcast, he said, has been a daily curated version of “The Bert Show” using a quarter-century of material from the vault.
“It gets an amazing amount of hits,” Weiss said. “People really miss ‘The Bert Show.’ There’s nostalgia for the show now that radio is so PC. You go back and listen to the older shows and so much of what we did you can’t do anymore.”
Risk aversion, he said, has stifled radio. Near the end of his run, he bribed an intern $1,000 to sneak into a Beyoncé concert at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The intern pulled it off.
In the old days, he said, “we would have milked that bit for two straight weeks, but the radio station came to me and said we’re getting so much heat for it from sponsors.”
He had to pull the bit from the podcast and was forced to decline an interview with CNN about the stunt.
Authenticity was the key
Weiss, who grew up in San Diego, learned his craft from radio personalities who emphasized authenticity over wacky jokes, especially Kraddick.
When Atlanta’s new top 40 station Q100 launched in 2001, Brian Philips saw potential in Weiss and gave him a shot to helm his first morning radio show.
Weiss was teamed with “Real World” alum Lindsay Brien, level-headed former 99X news reader Melissa Carter and jokey radio producer Jeff Dauler from another market. The reality star soon left, replaced by Jenn Hobby.
His show was a slow burn. It built an audience listener by listener over the years. By the time the show was featured on the cover of Atlanta magazine in 2005 (headline: “The Bert Show: Yep, It’s tacky. But we can’t stop listening”), it had become the talk of Atlanta and soon became a dominant force. It remained a top-rated show among 25-to-54-year-old women for two decades.
While Weiss tried to create an atmosphere of positivity and support, not everything went smoothly. Dauler left the show in 2015 in a huff and tried to compete with Weiss on a rival station. Davi Crimmins was fired in 2022 because of a chemistry issue with another team member. And Moe Mitchell departed the show just weeks before Weiss without explanation and quickly settled a breach of contract suit. (Weiss declined to comment about Mitchell.)
Weiss also aired much of his personal travails over the years.
“I talked about my divorce and an engagement that didn’t work out,” he said. “My dad passing away and my mom’s dementia. There were a lot of tough things. It takes its toll on you.”
Weiss’ departure came during a difficult time for radio morning shows, with smaller audiences and declining revenues.
“I get nervous for my industry,” Weiss said. “It’s pigeonholed itself because programmers have told personalities not to share their personalities in long form. You have to be quick now and get back into songs. Radio is competing with podcasts where you can be so much freer. And if you want music, you go to Spotify.”
Star 94, a rival to Q99.7 (it was rebranded from Q100 in 2019) last week brought in a new show led by Bret Mega, a former morning show producer in Atlanta who has run a St. Louis show for five years and considers Weiss a mentor.
Q99.7 launched a replacement show in March after Weiss’ departure with three newcomers.
B98.5, another Q competitor, has the most established morning show among the three stations: Tad, Drex and Kara, who have been together for nine years. But they don’t have the ratings or name recognition of “The Bert Show.”
“It’s wide open whoever can step in and fill Bert’s shoes,” said Ron Roberts, program director for Star 94 in 2018 and 2019 who now runs Audio GayTL, a streaming LGBTQ+ radio station as a side project, attracting 1,500 to 1,800 streams a month. “And you’re talking about fishing in a much smaller pond. Atlanta is not shrinking, but the radio audience has.”
The part of Weiss’ legacy he still loves is not what he did on air but an idea he happily took from his mentor Kraddick: Bert’s Big Adventure.
Every February, Weiss takes 13 children with chronic or terminal illnesses to Walt Disney World. He now has a network of more than 300 children and families who support each other and reunite regularly.
“We have really formed a family and a community,” he said. “I’m really proud of that.”
And while Q99.7 allows him to promote Bert’s Big Adventure on air, it’s not the same as having a daily radio show.
“That concerns me most because I want it to go on and on,” he said.
Otherwise, Weiss is at peace with his decision.
“Leaving this show was the most authentic thing that I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “I left two years of salary on the table, but I just knew in my heart it was the right time. Why stick around for two years and disrespect the industry that was so good to me?”