Steak Shapiro returned to the radio Thursday on 92.9/The Game with a new name: The Steakhouse.
He will have a variety of different co-hosts but mostly Sandra Golden. Her husband Larry Wachs, the former host of The Regular Guys fame, came up with the name, Golden said.
The new show airs from 9 to 11 a.m. with Hugh Douglas and John Fricke, the morning show, moving back an hour from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and the midday show Andy Bunker and Randy McMichael trimmed to 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. (with more work forthcoming on the digital side.)
Shapiro, who has been on the radio in Atlanta since 1995 and owned 790/The Zone for more than a decade, is back on the air for the first time in nearly two years since 680/93.7 The Fan dropped him during the pandemic to save money. Golden, who was part of the show with Shapiro, voluntarily left a few months later.
“I’m a little nervous,” Shapiro admitted in the opening minutes of the new show Thursday morning.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Golden added.
Golden did not want to work full time, so Shapiro will have former UGA football player Drew Butler and recruiting analyst Rusty Mansell rotate in and out as co-hosts when she isn’t on the air.
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Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@
Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@
News/talk WSB’s listeners came through in a big way last week during the annual Care-a-Thon to raise funds for the AFLAC Cancer & Blood Disorders Center with a record $1.82 million raised by the time the two-day event ended Friday.
Morning host Scott Slade, who came up with the Care-a-Thon idea 22 years ago, joined late-morning host Eric Von Haessler and former WSB host Clark Howard to close out the Care-a-Thon last Friday. For the first time since 2019, volunteers were able to take calls in person and the energy in the room was electric when Slade left the studio and greeted everyone when it was over.
“Here’s something you can do to help fix a great wrong in this world: a child getting cancer,” Slade told the volunteers.
“Who doesn’t feel great right now?” Von Haessler added.
Howard, who contributed $20,000 himself, said he will also be helping a sister station in Jacksonville, Florida, which will be holding a similar Care-a-Thon soon, inspired by this one.
The previous fundraising record was 2017 with $1.75 million. Over 22 years, the station has raised about $29 million.
Other personalities that took part included part Tim Andrews, Mark Arum, Erick Erickson, Doug Turnbull, Chris Chandler, Ashley Frasca, Shelley Wynter, MalaniKai and “Smilin’” Mark McKay.
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Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Mike Roberts and Carol Blackmon, former morning hosts for V-103 in the 1990s, reunited on talk station WAOK-AM last week.
“It went well,” Roberts said in a text Thursday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We had a good time.”
The two Buffalo natives spent time on a special edition of “The Mental Space with Sean Garvey” sharing memories and taking calls by folks like gospel radio host Reggie Gay.
“I miss working with great people like Carol and the staff,” Roberts said. “I miss the V-103 listeners. But I don’t miss getting up at 4:30 in the morning. I don’t regret moving on. For me, it was important to pursue other interests and make way for others to take over. I had a good run.”
Garvey said Roberts, who owns a radio station there, was “the man with the golden voice” and lauded the positive influence their show had on Atlanta.
Blackmon has been a lottery host for decades and has worked at other radio stations including Majic 107.5/97.5.
Both expressed gratitude for their time on V-103 and how the listeners “made Atlanta home for me,” Roberts said on air.
“We felt like we were part of their family,” Blackmon said.
From 1990 to 1998, the pair connected with fans via daily call-in polls, interactive games such as “Battle of the Sexes” and gobs of community support. “We stuck to a simple premise: educate, entertain and inform,” Roberts said in 2009.
But growing competition from other R&B and hip-hop stations took a toll on ratings. In September 1998, Blackmon quit the station, saying she wasn’t treated fairly by management.
Roberts voluntarily ended his run at V-103 a month later, to accolades and respect from listeners and peers.
“I could have stayed on and reinvented the morning show,” he said. “But my head wasn’t there at the time. And I didn’t want to become one of those 50-year-old guys trying to sound hip.”
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