Mancow Muller

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erich Matthew Muller (born June 21, 1966 in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American radio and television personality known as Mancow and Mancow Muller.

He is best known as the controversial radio personality from Mancow's Morning Madhouse formerly on WKQX-FM (Q101), a Chicago-based radio show that has, in recent years, been nationally syndicated mostly in small markets by Talk Radio Network. Mancow's career with Q101 was cut short in July 2006, when he and the station parted ways. Before he was on Q101, the show originated on Rock 103.5, another Chicago rock radio station. He is a regular feature on the Fox News morning show Fox and Friends during the 8:00 AM hour. On Saturday, November 18, 9:00 PM EST, Mancow hosted his own show on Fox News titled "Planet Mancow" and featuring his friend William Shatner. He has claimed to be a libertarian at times. However, he has also described himself as a "conservative, Bible-thumping radical who curses." [1]

1 Early life
2 Radio career beginnings
3 Pre-Chicago notoriety
4 Mancow's Morning Madhouse
5 Incidents
- 5.1 Cowboy Ray
- 5.2 Lawsuits
6 Personal life
7 References
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] Early life

He was born to John Muller, a salesman, and Dawn Muller, a homemaker and is an American of German, Italian and Apache heritage. Mancow attended Our Lady of the Lourdes Church in Raytown, Missouri until his teens, when his parents left the Church and experimented with other denominations, such as evangelical and Nazarene.

As a child, Mancow modeled for Lee Jeans and Wal-Mart, and appeared on stage in more than 35 professional plays, including a record-setting pre-Broadway production of On Golden Pond. Mancow first attended high school at Blue Ridge Christian School in Kansas City, Missouri before moving to Harrisonville, Missouri and attending Harrisonville High School from where he graduated with a C- average. After high school, Mancow attended college at Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri), receiving degrees in public relations and theatre in 1990.

[edit] Radio career beginnings

Thanks to his radio mentor, Marion Woods, Mancow's radio career began at KOKO-AM (a one-kilowatt AM radio station) in Warrensburg, Missouri, playing commercials during the Larry King satellite feed. His role gradually expanded until he got his own afternoon show. "This was a small station," he says, "but people started to listen, and it became a weird, cult thing."^{[citation needed]}

He later worked as assistant to local disc jockey Randy Miller at KBEQ-FM in Kansas City, Missouri. After turning the morning show around and making it #1, he decided to carve out a radio career of his own. He became a part of the morning show Holy Moly & Maxx for station KMOK in Kansas City soon thereafter^{[citation needed]}. While Mancow often claims to have attended seminary, there is no verifiable confirmation of this claim.

Among Mancow's fans was the general manager of KLSI-FM in Kansas City, who offered him a full-time job as head of station promotions. Mancow accepted the position, plus a weekend air shift, while completing his final semester at CMSU. "I literally had four hours a day that was not taken up by work," he says.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Pre-Chicago notoriety

After a stint at KDON (the first radio station to feature UFO Phil) in Monterey, California, Mancow headed north to San Francisco. In 1993, Mancow made national headlines working for radio station 107.7 KYLD-FM in San Francisco, California, when a story was circulating that President Clinton tied up traffic on an LAX runway for over an hour getting a haircut on Air Force One. Mancow staged a parody of the incident on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during rush hour. He used vans to block the westbound lanes on the bridge while his then sidekick, Jesus "Chuy" Gomez, got a haircut.

As a result of this publicity stunt, Mancow was prosecuted and subsequently convicted of a felony by a San Francisco Municipal Court. His sentence included three years probation, a $500 fine and 100 hours of community service. The radio station eventually paid $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a bridge commuter.

Mancow's 2003 book

[edit] Mancow's Morning Madhouse

After leaving California, Mancow came to Chicago where he was offered a job by Evergreen Media President Jim de Castro at more than double his salary if he would move to Chicago to work at WWBZ-FM, "The Blaze". "The Blaze" had lost its fire and Mancow renamed it "Rock 103.5" (WRCX-FM), and created his radio show, Mancow's Morning Madhouse which debuted in July 1994.

Within two Arbitron ratings periods he took the station's 19th-ranked morning show to #5 among all teens and adults, and #1 among 18-to-34 year olds. Evergreen did little to promote Mancow, except for a few highway billboards. His fans mostly discovered his show by word-of-mouth.

Originally, he broadcasted from WRCX-FM (Rock 103.5) studios in the John Hancock Center and in 1998, moved to the city's foremost alternative rock station, WKQX-FM (Q-101) 101.1, where the show was broadcast from the Merchandise Mart for eight more years until July 11, 2006, when WKQX-FM in Chicago announced that they would no longer carry Mancow's Morning Madhouse after July 14, 2006.

[edit] Incidents

While Mancow has usually abided by FCC guidelines while on the air, he has straddled the line a few times in its history.

For many years, the show hosted a plethora of unusual contests in which listeners would be subject to humiliating ordeals, such as eating cat food and other disgusting items. On other occasions, the show would use contestants to play pranks on Chicago businesses, walking into a Chinese dry cleaner with a bloodstained shirt while feigning anguish over a supposed murder. Other contests were designed to scare passersby, such as "Grand Theft Auto" where contestants would be issued car keys, and instructed to find an expensive automobile which would preferably be parked on a busy Chicago intersection. However, only one of the keys would actually work. Even so, a contestant could win the car without the proper key by pretending to be a car thief to an uninformed observer.

Muller appeared as a speaker in the second season of Penn and Teller's Bullshit!, in an episode about profanity. Interestingly enough, Mancow refused to say the word cunt.

On December 6, 2005, Mancow drew controversy when he vilified Howard Dean on Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends, antagonizing with such words as "vile", "bloodthirsty", "evil" and retaliated to Dean's opinions on the War in Iraq, calling Dean a traitor that "ought to be kicked out of America" and "tried for treason". [2]

On March 19, 2007 Mancow was removed by "listener request" from radio station, KAZR, located in Des Moines, Iowa.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Cowboy Ray

On November 20, 2005, Ray Hofstatter, aka Cowboy Ray, a 45 year old mentally challenged frequent caller and guest on Mancow's Morning Madhouse, was struck by a car in a hit-and-run accident and was killed. During the following January, a devastated Mancow Muller offered a $23,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the faceless culprit. Ray's life support was terminated on January 11, 2006. The still unsolved hit-and-run case of Cowboy Ray was featured on Fox's America's Most Wanted television show on February 25, 2006. To this day the driver has still not been found.

[edit] Lawsuits

Mancow spearheaded two major lawsuits, against the antics of Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst following his behavior toward fans at a radio concert in Chicago, and another suit against a man who reported Mancow to the FCC for alleged indecency on the air, which Mancow withdrew as it was merely a publicity stunt.

[edit] Personal life

Since February 14, 2003, Mancow has been married to Sandy Ferrando, a former publicist. He also has twin daughters named Ava Grace and Isabella Sofia Muller. Mancow reportedly met his wife at La Scarola, an Italian restaurant in Chicago. Mancow is a regular at this restaurant, which has a dish on its lunch menu named Pollo alla Mancow.

[edit] References

Some information in this article or section is not attributed to sources and may not be reliable.
Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/a/n/Mancow_Muller_ea59.html"