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Revenge of the Monkey Boy

Sports-talk radio host Scott Hastings is riding the Broncos�and his wild image�all the way to the bank.

A A A Comments By Michael Roberts Thursday, Nov 11 1999

"I ended up doing like forty interviews around the country," Hastings says. "Afterward I told John, 'Next year, if you decide to play again, tell somebody else.'"

But Hastings won't turn up his nose at fame as a nationally syndicated radio personality. By beaming Sports Zoointo Fort Collins, Clear Channel has taken the first tentative step in that direction (just as it's now sending Peter Boyles's KHOW morning program to a station in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and KTLK's Business for Breakfast to a Casper, Wyoming, outlet). Billed as "the 50,000-watt voice of the West," KOA already booms into Fort Collins -- but it doesn't market to Northern Colorado advertisers, so putting the Zoo on Fort Collins's KIIX gives local advertisers "a chance to buy a show that might have been unaffordable for them before. They can now listen to the Zoo but also get local news, weather and sports updates and win local prizes," says Clear Channel's Bertolucci.

Caged animals: "Monkey Boy" Scott Hastings and Susie Wargin on Sports Zoo.

David Rehor

Caged animals: "Monkey Boy" Scott Hastings and Susie Wargin on Sports Zoo.

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In the short term, Bertolucci notes that Denver will likely become a "regional hub" whose programming will increasingly appear on outlying stations in Colorado and neighboring states, thereby upgrading content quality and, not coincidentally, saving money for Clear Channel. But when it comes to Sports Zoo, program director Martin sees even more possibilities. "The biggest problem with syndication is that you've got to be good at spinning all your stories nationally, so there'd have to be some changes," he says. Adding Wargin to the mix has broadened the program's appeal, he notes, "but the big magnet for Scott and Dave isn't that they talk about the Broncos. It's their humor, the electricity and their personalities. And I think that could translate anywhere."

While Logan is open but cautious to the idea of going national, Hastings is enthusiastic. "I don't want to settle for the Zoo being a run-of-the-mill sports show, I don't want to settle for being entertaining just three days out of five, and I don't want to be satisfied with being just in this market. I want more."