Steve Harvey arrived 18 months ago in the kingdom of the radio shock jocks, where the royalty included Howard Stern, Don Imus and Opie and Anthony. The “King of Comedy” surveyed the raunchy landscape and launched his morning drive-time show with some trepidation
“I was concerned about it,” Harvey said recently after finishing his four-hour weekday show at WBLS-FM. “But I am who I am. I can’t stop being who I am. I’m not a mean-spirited guy.”
And so Harvey started his show each morning with 12 minutes devoted to gospel music and God .
Skeptics abounded, but Harvey was resolute — and, it turned out, he was right.
The latest Arbitron ratings show Harvey’s morning show as No. 1 among urban stations and No. 5 overall in the nation’s largest and most competitive radio market. His audience more than doubled Opie & Anthony’s, and far outnumbered Imus’.
The program now airs in 45 markets, including Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, Miami and Philadelphia.
He arrived at WBLS on Sept, 19, 2005, and went into syndication two weeks later with just four affiliates — two of them in one city, Chicago. A year and a half later, the show was airing coast to coast, with ratings climbing almost everywhere.
Harvey said radio’s appeal is a freedom he finds lacking in other venues.
“In TV, you can’t be as funny as you want to be,” Harvey said. “They’ve got standards and practices, restrictions … In stand-up, the thing I love the most, you can’t be too serious too long, because people are paying a lot of money for you to make them laugh.”
During his morning show, Harvey plays a variety of roles: “You get to let the community know what’s going on. You get to bring up topics and issues. You get to be serious, you get to be a humanitarian. You get to be uplifting, spiritual, motivating.”
For Harvey, that diversity is more important than ever.
“I don’t want to be just known as a guy who was funny,” Harvey said. “I want to be known as an impact person.”
