Wake Up Call

By David Chmiel

Joe Nolan tells you how to get to work, Bill Evans says you might need an umbrella, Patty Steele gives you a head’s-up on what went on while you slept, and Monkey Boy keeps the ship running. Then Brad Blanks, the Aussie who won’t leave, does... well, nobody’s quite sure what he does...

This cast of characters would not be part of your morning routine were it not for Scott Shannon and Todd Pettengill.

WPLJ’s “Scott and Todd In The Morning” was a collaboration born in 1991, when Shannon, the industry veteran credited with creating the “Morning Zoo” drive-time format, returned to New York radio after a dalliance with the Los Angeles airwaves. He needed a partner and an audition tape from upstate New York via Philadephia sealed the deal.

Talk of the Town: The “Scott & Todd In The Morning” crew has had people laughing behind the wheel and in the office for 16 years.

Pettengill’s radio career began in Amsterdam, New York, at the age of 13 (apparently, the town didn’t have a decent child-labor attorney). Just more than a decade later, he was on his way to the City of Brotherly Love’s Q102. Shortly thereafter, the guy who hired him did something stupid and wound up unemployed, which meant that the incoming Q102 program director would be arriving with his own on-air talent. So Pettengill sent his tape off to ’PLJ and general manager Tom Cuddy fell for the talent and brought Pettengill in. As “The Big Show” quickly evolved, Pettengill became the creative center and Shannon the straight man, seemingly baffled by what spins around him.

The show caught on with audiences in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Whether it’s Pettengill’s phone scams, pop tunes rewritten with lyrics skewering pop stars, his hilarious observations on topics big or small, Shannon’s “Knuckleheads In the News” shtick, or Monk’s array of listener contests, the show turned into a must-have companion for commuters, soccer moms, and folks in office buildings all over.

Shannon and Pettengill also let listeners get a feel for the other members of the show. Steele is the calming den mother, a newsy voice of reason who remembers to toss in the odd “allegedly” or “reportedly” into any discussion of the dodgy activities of alleged celebrities. Blanks is the off-the-wall maniac who barged into the studio years ago with no discernable talents and somehow conned them into letting him hit red-carpet events around the world with a ’PLJ microphone and press pass, unearthing the quirkier sides of bigtime events and fearlessly making himself the target of great gags (go onto bradblanks.com and look for the Elmo Ironman Triathalon).

As for the “TV boys,” Evans, the WABC-7 meteorologist and author of the recent best-selling Category 7, Evans is a perfect comic foil for the crew. And then there’s Nolan... Joe Nolan, the Channel 7 traffic maven, is walking comedy. The butt of many “Big Show” jokes, Nolan is an amalgam of obfuscation, misdirection, and convoluted convictions. Known for his prodigious appetites in food and adult beverages, Nolan is the Babe Ruth of traffic’s talking heads.

Monk, the intern-turned-executive-producer known in the civilian world as Joe Pardavila, manages the mayhem. With a Rainman-esque recall for pop-culture minutiae, Monk serves the audience—and Shannon—as a cultural touchstone for anecdotes from the world of entertainment. Pardavila’s also a tireless volunteer for a variety of causes, especially in raising money for research into Huntington’s Disease, and the station provided the Cox Classic with a steady blitz of pre-tournament ads and web-sponsored event promotion. The show is as popular among radio wonks as it is with the listening public, earning multiple industry awards for individuals and the show itself. It’s the longest-running morning show in New York City and the nation’s highest-rated adult-contemporary morning program.

For now more than sixteen years, Scott & Todd and their motley crew have become friends to listeners all over. But it’s their support, and the support of WPLJ, for the Cox Charity Classic, that make them something else. They’ve become Friends of Steve.