O&A in the NY Daily News

[BITENY]

O&A's Return....


Opie and Anthony
talk of returning



By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Opie (Gregg Hughes, l.) and Anthony Cumia in their WNEW days

Tossing off jokes and showing no particular remorse about the St. Patrick's Cathedral sex stunt that got them heaved off the air at WNEW 17 months ago, exiled radio bad boys Opie and Anthony vow they will be back in June - and just as offensive as ever.
They lost their WNEW gig after an August 2002 incident in which they broadcast a live account of a couple allegedly having sex in St. Pat's.

"I can't help but think if the couple had sex in a mosque, we would have gotten a raise," Opie (Gregg Hughes) said in the February issue of FHM magazine. "That would have been a patriotic thing to do for your country."

Anthony (Anthony Cumia) was equally casual in the pair's most extensive comments to date about the incident.

"I don't know if there's much of a lesson to be learned from what happened to us," he said. "If you're going to do something, there will be consequences. And in some cases, there's no way to prevent the consequences."

The Virginia couple was arrested for their alleged action, prompting a firestorm that led to the dismissal of WNEW's station manager and program director.

"We could have been fired for any of 20 other things" before that, said Cumia, noting the "Voyeur Bus" with topless women that tied up Manhattan traffic, and a listener who got a graphic anatomical reference into a live television news shot.

Their Infinity contracts expire in June, and as they prepare to return to the air - with Sirius Satellite radio considered the most likely spot - they are expected to begin raising their profiles again.

"We're eagerly awaiting our return to the airwaves," Cumia said. "We want to work."

"For a few months, [being paid not to work] is awesome," Hughes said. "I wish this had happened to me when I was 22, so I could call up all the guys and go to the beach. But after a while, you realize you're the only one not working."

Hughes said he didn't realize when he signed his contract that this kind of enforced absence was possible.

"I didn't know what I was signing," he said.

Reflecting on their time at Infinity, Cumia said they were once given a profane dressing-down by Infinity radio chief Mel Karmazin after "another on-air personality from Infinity" - speculated to be Howard Stern - complained to Karmazin that Opie and Anthony were talking about his personal life.

Cumia didn't identify the other "Infinity personality," but said, "Even though this person had built a career out of touching on other people's personal lives...when you touched on his personal life, he ran to Mel Karmazin."

An Infinity spokeswoman had no comment about the FHM interview.

[Keyser Soze]

thanks grumpy

[BITENY]

Here's more info, from today's paper...

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment...6177c.html

Sirius likely to relaunch Opie
and Anthony show





By DAVID HINCKLEY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Don't be surprised when WNEW exiles Opie and Anthony pop up more and more as June approaches and they prepare to return to the radio.
There are no accidents in the promotion game, at which O&A excel.

Also, don't be surprised if they sign with Sirius Satellite Radio, meaning fans would have to buy a Sirius receiver and pay $12.95 a month.

Opie and Anthony have been off the air since August 2002, when two listeners were arrested for having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral as part of O&A's "Sex for Sam" contest.

WNEW's station manager and program director were fired, and the station soon dumped the whole "hot talk" format O&A had been anchoring.

The two have always implied that they wonder what the big deal was, and they say so again in the new FHM magazine.

They also use the interview to reinforce their irreverence, sniping at WNEW's parent company, Infinity, and complaining because Infinity has been keeping them off the air.

Of course, Infinity has also been paying them millions. But they have always painted themselves, and their fans, as proudly rebellious targets of a disapproving and humorless world, and they're not about to abandon that position.

As for where they will surface in June, three major factors suggest Sirius.

First, satellite has no content rules.

Second, former WNEW program director Jeremy Coleman - a big O&A supporter - now works at Sirius.

Third, Sirius trails rival XM and wants splashy, high-profile programming to close the gap. It recently committed $221million to carry NFL games.

"A hundred channels is nice, but that's not what sells," says Tom Taylor, editor of the trade magazine Inside Radio. "We've seen from cable TV that what sells are specific things people really want that they can't get anywhere else."

Opie and Anthony would likely cost millions. But if they brought Sirius 20,000 new subscribers - a small fraction of their daily audience when they were syndicated out of WNEW - that alone would mean $3.1 million a year in subscription revenue, exclusive of advertising.

Asked if Sirius would be interested in O&A - acknowledging that they are still under contract to Infinity - Sirius vice president of programming Jay Clark says, "You never know. They're very talented guys who are restricted by the rules in commercial radio."

O&A would have to make decisions, too. They would have a smaller audience. Also, part of their shtick on WNEW was getting around content rules with winks and code words. Sometimes graphic is less interesting than suggestive.

But if it worked out, O&A could say they were to satellite radio what MTV was to cable television - the key to popularizing a whole new medium.

[The Man]

It's going to be great when they blame Sirius management for the fact that they have no audience.

'THEY'RE NOT ADVERTISING ENOUGH!!! WAAAAAAH

[diceisgod]

The Olive Garden is gonna look like a wet dream to them if they go satellite.

[JimmyBlueEyes]

Still not paying for satellite