I first heard Don Geronimo on Washington, D.C., radio in summer 1980, doing nights on WPGC, then in the middle of a Top 40 battle with WRQX (Q107). In the intervening years, Geronimo and co-host Mike O’Meara would become Top 40 WAVA’s morning superstars, later moving to afternoons at hot talk WJFK and syndication. Geronimo had an on-and-off retirement in the late ‘00s/early ‘10s, including a stint on N/T radio in Sacramento, Calif. He hosted a podcast from 2014-19. It was a career both exceptional and typical of radio’s changes.
You don’t hear a lot about well-known personalities either switching stations or returning to the airwaves these days. As Radioinsight’s Lance Venta noted, “There are very few talents available in a given market with the ability to potentially move the needle and bring lapsed listeners back to radio.” This morning, Geronimo returned to daily radio as the morning host of “Washington’s Classic Rock,” iHeart Media’s WBIG (Big 100). (The first song was Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”) We took a First Listen.
I’ve never written about somebody on their first day before. But I wanted to hear Geronimo again and wanted to share it. So it’s important to state that this is a recap, not a review—a description that would fit most of our First Listens anyway. But on the first morning, you could hear every aspect of Geronimo’s career here, including that over-the-intros night jock element that doesn’t always follow a radio person as their career takes them to talk radio or Classic Rock mornings. But WBIG itself evolved from Oldies and controlled both positions in the market until Classic Hits WIAD (the Drive) launched a few years ago.
As with all air personality First Listens, on-air bits are always easier to reproduce than on-air context. But here are some very partial highlights from the first two hours or so on Sept. 23. (Each hour had 5-6 songs; there were more in the 8 a.m. hour.)
6:07 – “There’s nothing better than being back in the studio doing a real radio show.” Geronimo talks about the job he did not get at an unnamed station in Sacramento, the market where he had relocated more than a decade ago. They asked for references. “I had to give them Scott Shannon’s phone number.” The next day, he resolved to move back East. Then the Big 100 opportunity came up.
6:19 – Geronimo tells listeners this won’t be a big ensemble morning show. Driving East, Geronimo says, he heard a lot of boilerplate morning shows and canned laugh tracks or obligingly amused co-hosts. He promises to be “The Office,” without the canned laughter, not “Seinfeld.” He also says he likes Big 100’s music. “I can sell it because I mean it.”
6:27 – Geronimo gives his first caller tickets to see Willie Nelson and Sturgill Simpson. He talks about being back on the radio near where he began his career at suburban WINX Rockville. “The house I used to live in is three miles from here.” WBIG/WWDC (DC101) PD Dustin Matthews gets his first shout-out. With DC101 morning host Elliot to monitor as well, “I want to make sure he’s listening so I can win him over to my way of doing radio.” So Geronimo plays his first “is Dustin listening” song, by going to his phone to play part of “Hitching A Ride” by Vanity Fare.
6:33 – Geronimo announces “Dustin’s not listening. I can do what I want.” A minute later, he comes back to add that Matthews had been listening, but he didn’t see the hotline until after the break.
6:38 – We get the first call from a listener asking for more music and less talk. Geronimo will, he notes, be airing his calls without a screener. Through the next hour, he’ll run a number of those calls, including the man who tells him “don’t pack up the house yet.” Geronimo notes proudly that the caller was on hold for 15 minutes waiting to tell him that.
6:58 – The “an iHeart Radio station” legal ID runs. “I’m part of that big conglomerate now.” Geronimo teases an upcoming visit from CNN’s Jim Acosta. “It’s just a social call,” he emphasizes, since there’s already been one tweet complaining about his “political” guest.
7:05 – Acosta talks about making the transition from White House correspondent to weekend anchor. Walking out of the White House after the tumult of the last four years was like “The Shawshank Redemption,” Acosta says. “I looked up at the heavens and the rain was coming down.”
Geronimo and Acosta talk about Wolf Blitzer, about watching Ted Lasso and appreciating the show’s positivity. (Geronimo says he’s wearing his “Believe” shirt today.) Geronimo asks how Acosta handles gushing fans in the supermarket. “I’m so happy that somebody’s being nice . . . so it’s completely fine.” Acosta talks about how he grew up listening to Geronimo. He then cuts Geronimo’s first celebrity drop-in: “This is Jim Acosta and I never listen to Don Geronimo on Big 100.”
7:30 – Now the “welcome back” calls are coming in, too. A caller says he thought of Geronimo a few days ago on the 9/11 anniversary “like so many people who listened to you on that day.” “You’re going to make me cry,” Geronimo says.
7:39 – A female caller asks if she can “get the other announcers back.” She says, “I’ll tell the people who run the station.” He says, “Call Bob Pittman.”
7:48 – Now Geronimo is getting the defender callers. “I’ve been listening to you since 1980 when I got out of the navy,” says one. In between, there’s a caller who asks “is this the postmaster general?” It’s WBIG swing host Albie Dee, another veteran of WPGC (in this case, from its R&B/Hip-Hop days in the mid-‘90s). Geronimo and Albie promise to get together for dueling intro talk-ups at some point.
8:00 – Over Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself For Loving You,” Geronimo talks about having scoped out all the different bathrooms in the iHeart complex. He recommends DC101. Two hours in, he has finally found the men’s room.
8:10 – A listener calls who heard Geronimo’s first afternoon on WAVA in the mid-‘80s. A listener calls from Houston on the iHeart app. A listener recalls how “you and Mike spanked me on the air for my birthday.” “That’s the kind of thing you don’t do on the radio in 2021,” Geronimo says.
Geronimo’s callers are essentially serving as his on-air team. There are tweets from people saying that Geronimo has brought them back to radio. Indeed, some of the callers don’t sound like they’ve called a radio station in a while and have trouble keeping up the volley. The good news is that it’s a lot of calls, something you can’t count on in today’s radio.
Through the morning, Geronimo also teases a daily podcast that will more fully recap his cross-country move back to D.C. I came back for the final break at 9:55. It’s an abbreviated version of the closing credits I remember. “Don Geronimo is a copyrighted feature that may not be reproduced without the express consent of Major League Baseball. Until tomorrow morning at zero-dark-thirty, 5:30 A.M. I thank you both for listening.” The first podcast is now posted here.
