On Aug. 31, 1999, Todd Leabo entered an elevator from the press box level at Arrowhead Stadium to take it down to the exit on the third level. It was just another day in the life of a young sports reporter working for the daytime sports radio station KCTE 1510. But before the doors would close, three other men stepped inside.
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“It was this great big guy and two other guys,” Leabo said. “I recognized the great big guy as John Tait. And his face was red as a beet. The other two guys were his agents, and they had steam coming out of their ears.”
Months earlier, the Kansas City Chiefs had selected Tait, then a junior offensive lineman at Brigham Young, with the 14th pick in that year’s draft. However, Tait’s contract negotiations had moved about as much as a bear in hibernation, so Leabo had a pretty good idea why the lineman and his representatives looked angry. Inside the elevator, one of the agents hit No. 1, thinking that would take them to the exit. Instead, No. 1 was the field level, not the exit. So the men sat in the elevator longer than they normally would have, fuming, saying things such as, “I can’t believe he said that!”
Leabo listened, believing the “he” they were bashing was then-Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson. Leabo couldn’t believe what he had stumbled on. Once the elevator finally arrived on the third level, the three men strutted out of the stadium and past a group of other media members. All three hopped in a car and drove off.
“I’m like, holy sh*t,” Leabo said. “Something bad happened up there. So I put my little reporter’s hat on.”
We play “The Feud” with Todd Leabo (@Leabonics) now in The Program on Sports Radio 810 WHB. pic.twitter.com/u1nHVhqJaq
— Soren Petro (@SorenPetro) February 12, 2020
Thinking Tait and his crew would be staying at the Adam’s Mark Hotel just down the street, Leabo ran to his car and drove across the George Brett Bridge. Sure enough, he saw their car in the parking lot of the hotel. So he parked, walked into the lobby and called into his radio station, explaining what he had just seen, saying, “I’ll stake it out.”As the sun began to fall, other media members soon arrived at the hotel, hearing that Tait’s agent, Ethan Lock, would speak. Minutes later, Lock descended down to the lobby from his room with a yellow legal pad to explain what had happened.
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Leabo knew the newspaper reporters wouldn’t be able to relay Lock’s comments to sports fans in Kansas City until the paper was delivered the next day. He wanted to provide the audio live through his Nextel phone. The station was hesitant, not knowing for sure what Lock would say and not wanting to break any FCC rules, yet they obliged. And so Lock’s voice hit the airwaves.
Nate Bukaty couldn’t believe this was happening. Another young sports reporter at the time, Bukaty was sitting inside a studio at WREN 1250 in Kansas City, then an all-sports station Entercom had recently launched to compete with Leabo’s KCTE 1510. Bukaty enjoyed listening to the rival’s station, but what transpired this specific evening opened his eyes to how far ahead the competition was.
“I remember thinking, like, we are getting crushed,” Bukaty said. “We have been absolutely smoked in this situation. It was not a good feeling.”
After graduating high school in 1994, Bukaty attended the University of Kansas with hopes of becoming a sports radio personality. In college, he interned at Entercom’s KMBZ 980, the news/sports talk station Kansas City sports radio legend Don Fortune worked for.
Bukaty moved to Moberly, Mo., after college. There, he called high school football games for Super Station KRES, among other duties. He DJ’d country music at the station. He listed off names during the obituary roundup. He even hosted the party line for the Moberly Trading Post.
“This was before eBay and stuff,” Bukaty said. “People would call in and sell things on the air. You’d write down the phone numbers and make a list, and if people were interested in a used tractor, they’d call and ask, ‘What the’s number for that guy?’ You’d give them the phone number.”
In early 1999, before the Chiefs drafted Tait, Entercom offered Bukaty a job at a new station they were thinking of creating. Two guys named Chad Boeger and Kevin Kietzman had garnered a bit of an audience at KCTE 1510 while taking shots at Fortune with a “Lose A Fortune” billboard campaign and even hosting a walkout at Kauffman Stadium.
NEW — Twenty-one years ago, swaths of Royals fans wearing the same t-shirts staged a walkout at Kauffman Stadium.
The event helped shape sports radio in Kansas City.
Here’s how:https://t.co/26gUHkEFri
— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) April 29, 2020
Entercom wanted to take them down.
On June 16 of that year, a story ran in the Kansas City Star featuring a quote from Bob Zuroweste, then the vice president at Entercom: “It’s our intention to launch a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week sports station. It will be Kansas City’s only 24-hour-a-day sports station.”
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The station would air on WREN 1250, and it would be called “The Game.” But nobody knew that yet.
Zuroweste wanted to get creative in launching the station, hoping to get back at Kietzman for his “Lose a Fortune” billboards. He came up with an idea: What if Entercom bought advertising on KCTE 1510 and promoted an internet site called “The Game?” The day the station went live, Zuroweste thought, the internet site would link directly to the station. So that’s what Entercom did. A staffer at Entercom called up KCTE 1510 and bought $5,000 in advertising, suggesting they were launching a board game. The station bought it and aired the advertisem*nts.
“They weren’t real happy with us after the fact,” Zuroweste said.
“When it was all said and done,” Boeger said, “we were like, well, that was a nice $5,000.”
Making up ground meant hiring personalities who could engage with the Kansas City audience. By that time, Kietzman had made a name for himself, so Zuroweste reached out.
“I tried to hire Kevin Kietzman a number of times,” Zuroweste said.
During one meal,Zuroweste brought a blank piece of paper and pushed it in front of Kietzman, like a scene in a movie.
“I said, ‘Write down a number,’” Zuroweste recalled. “I didn’t say I was going to hire him for that number.”
Kietzman refused to write down a number, so Zuroweste moved on.
Jason Whitlock was another frequent Entercom target. After all, he had proven to be plenty engaging in his Kansas City Star columns. But Whitlock also snubbed Zuroweste, joining KCTE (until 2003). That left Zuroweste with one last major name: Joe Posnanski. Truth be told, Posnanski, who in 1999 had already been a sports columnist at The Star for three years, never really wanted to do radio. He had gone to lunch with Entercom executives before but had always turned them down.
“I just kept telling them I didn’t really want to do it,” Posnanski said. “That wasn’t really my thing. And I wasn’t too concerned about it. I was writing. I had enough to do.”
NEW — Fiery columns, bold billboards, a George Brett phone call, and the time the NCAA received a particular notice.
Here’s the story behind the early battles that fueled sports radio in Kansas City:https://t.co/OGSehSFJbU
— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) April 7, 2020
In 1999, though, with Entercom focused on creating an all-sports station, it hired Brooks Melchior as the station’s would-be program director. Melchior, who many now know as “Sports by Brooks,” reached out to Posnanski and asked if he’d want to be a co-host on this new station.
“My wife won’t want me to say this,” Posnanski said, “but we had just gotten married in 1998 and he had called about doing it, and my wife was like, ‘We could use the money.’ It was really one of those things. We’d like to get a house. This wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
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On June 27, 1999, a story ran in the Kansas City Star, indicating what was coming: “Are sports talk-show fans ready for another sports columnist from The Star on their daily menu?” the story read. “Ready or not, it looks as if they’ll have to be. Star scribe Joe Posnanski appears to be closing in on a deal with Entercom’s upcoming 24-hour sports station WREN (1250 AM), which should launch its programming early next month.”
The station did ultimately launch in July.
“It was on all day and all night,” Leabo said, while KCTE had to cut off at sundown, per FCC rules. “Their slogan was all day, all night, all sports. But you couldn’t hear it anywhere. It was really all day, all night, all static.”
Posnanski and Melchior co-hosted a show from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with Bukaty was one of their producers. Entercom also added John Renshaw’s nationally syndicated sports show. Early on, though, the station’s ads were “sketchy”, as Posnanski remembered them.
Gentlemen’s clubs were advertising live.
“Talk radio wasn’t my world,” Posnanski said, “and that really wasn’t my world. But the days all blur together.”
One day Posnanski remembers was one involving Melchior, who was co-hosting the show from River Falls, Wis., where the Kansas City Chiefs were holding their training camp. Posnanski was back in the studio in Kansas City. Melchior operated the show as a main host would, throwing the show to breaks, commanding the conversation. They were talking, shooting the breeze as sports radio hosts do — then Melchior’s voice suddenly vanished.
“There was just dead silence,” Posnanski said. “And I didn’t say anything. I hear Nate in my ear, ‘Hey man, uh, I think we, uh, lost Brooks.’ I said on the air, ‘We’ve lost Brooks?’ Nate goes, ‘Yeah, you’re on the air!’ I go, ‘I’m on the air?’
“I think they just cut it off. And then Brooks was back.”
Suffice it to say, the station was not tracking the way Entercom would have wanted.
Standing in the lobby of the Adam’s Mark hotel, seven minutes into the conversation that was airing live on KCTE, Ethan Lock outlined why Leabo had seen steam coming out of his ears earlier in the day.
“When we were in the office today,” Lock began, “Carl Peterson said, ‘You can go back in the f*cking draft.’ I’m sorry to use that language. I don’t usually speak that way. But he used the f-word four or five times when he was yelling at John.”
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This was the point at which folks listening across Kansas City stopped in their cars. Lock continued.
“John is a very strong Mormon,” he said. “It didn’t take until probably after the second f*ck that this thing was over, but Carl kept going. … John is not going to let someone treat him the way these people treated him. He’s not going to stand here and take these types of indignities. He’s not going to let somebody threaten him (and say), ‘He better get his f*cking pads on, or he can go back in the f*cking draft.’ And, ‘This is the language in the bonus that he better accept, or he can get the f*ck out of here.’
“I apologize for using that language, but if I would have taped the conversation, I could’ve just played it for you.”
“It was the craziest thing,” Leabo said recently. “This was another one of those moments you felt like you did something other people weren’t doing. There was no chance 980 or 1250 was going to carry an agent cursing on he radio. But we did!”
The Springfield News Leader ran an Associated Press story of Tait and Lock’s feud with Peterson. (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
For its part, KCTE was fined by the FCC for the curse words. The interview also was aired after the sun had gone down, so the station was fined for that as well.
But back in the rival studio listening, Bukaty knew his station had been crushed.
“It was, like, ‘Oh, man,’” Bukaty said. “I would sit there and just kinda look longingly at what they were doing, like, ‘Man, those guys are the cool kids right now, and we are not.’”
Later that fall, around the time Tait ended his holdout with the Chiefs — the two sides agreed to a five-year deal — Jerry Green amplified the audience of the “cool kids,” purchasing 810 WHB, a station that aired all day and all night, a station that could garner a much larger audience than WREN 1250.
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It sparked a domino effect. Posnanski left the station, largely because time spent away from writing affected his column. Even Melchior left.
Bukaty, though, remained.
“I could see the writing on the wall that 1250 wasn’t going to last,” Bukaty said recently. “At this point, I’d told my sister: ‘Look, I’m going to lose my job any day now. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ She and her husband were like, ‘If you want to come crash in our basem*nt, that’s fine.’”
Bukaty, searching for any way to stay alive in the business he’d dreamed of working in, walked into an executive’s office at Entercom and laid out a plan. At the time, the station carried Kansas City Royals games. Bukaty liked baseball, so he offered his services, suggesting he could produce the pregame and post-game efforts.
He’d interview players, edit the sound and organize the breaks among the audio.
The executive told Bukaty there wasn’t enough money in the budget, so Bukaty said he’d do that part for free. They agreed on Bukaty writing up his work as overtime, though Bukaty knew the station didn’t have enough money for the hours he was willing to work.
“So I’d put in, like, 1 hour of overtime but do the job,” Bukaty said.
Nate Bukaty poses for a photo taken nearly 20 years ago. (Courtesy of Bukaty)
Before Entercom finally pulled the plug on WREN 1250 in August 2000, the executive told Bukaty he was trying to keep him on staff and sending him to River Falls, Wis., to cover Chiefs training camp, but that he couldn’t tell anybody.
The day Entercom pulled the plug on the station, Bukaty’s sister was worried her brother had lost his job. She contacted him, to no avail. He didn’t own a cell phone. Finally, by email, she got a hold of him.
“She’s like, ‘What’s your story?’” Bukaty said. “I’m like, I don’t know, I’m covering training camp.’ It was heavy. I was like, ‘Man, I think I just dodged getting let go.’”
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The saving grace was that training camp, Bukaty met Boeger, Whitlock and Steven St. John, who all worked for 810 WHB at the time. Over the years, as Bukaty continued on with KMBZ, he grew closer to those hosts at the rival, which had won the battle. Well, up to that point, at least. In 2003, Whitlock, Bill Maas and Tim Grunhard resurrected Entercom’s vision of an all-sports station in Kansas City by launching 610 Sports, which ironically propelled Bukaty to join the kids he always thought were cool.
He has been with 810 WHB ever since.
(Top photo of the MiniDisc containing the Lock interview audio: Courtesy of Todd Leabo)
