Whoever decided to give Preston Elliot and Steve Morrison twenty five years (so far) to have free reign over the Philadelphia radio airwaves is… well… a genius! It’s lead to wild antics, outrageous moments, and very few arrests.

Ultimate Photo History of The Preston & Steve Show

With these two masterminds behind the stunt, you never really know what’s going to happen. A few friends and bosses chimed in with their “oh geez” moments.

25 Memorable Moments From 25 Years Of Preston & Steve Interviews

• Concerns? Bill Weston Has Had a Few.

  Two overriding concerns with all those Preston & Steve stunts- ‘Is someone going to get hurt?’ or ‘Are we gonna get sued?’  Both have happened, unfortunately.  Mr. Peanut, the lady in the wrong place during the shopping cart races, intern Steve arrested on a highway overpass wearing a woman’s thong?  Or how about the MMR PD in the back seat of a squad car watching 10,000 marbles bouncing down the Art Museum steps?   My biggest anxiety was during a VAG Launch- that actually took off and appeared headed to the flight path of PHL!!!  Only to start an early descent onto I-95 and wringing my hands over what motorist was about to be squashed trying to retrieve the diamond in the bush.

  Hmmmm, the pony in the studio for Kathy’s birthday party?  The show guest in the green room piercing himself with 200 needles and going into shock?  A Drunk Day episode with Casey rubbing his ice cream covered butt up against the Philly Insurance office window?  Good Lord.  The Surstromming rotted fish tasting that filled our entire office complex with the most putrid, vomit inducing stench?  Intern Joe buried up to his neck in horse manure being pulled on a trailer around the 1 Bala office complex?  Or the Haunted Whore Ride that had strippers on a hay wagon circling 1 Bala just as the corporate owners/ property managers arrived at the building.    I really thought we were going to lose our lease over that one. – WMMR Program Director, Bill Weston

• This is how Jim McGuinn Remembers the Deep Fry a Turkey Stunt:

  You have to realize, when the Preston and Steve show launched at Y100 in the late ‘90s, we were stumbling in the dark trying to figure out both how to make the show awesome, and how to get people to listen.  We knew they had *something* but what was unclear.  So we did anything we could think of to draw attention to the station and show.  We were an Alternative Rock station – we were supposed to be some kind of anti-radio version of radio, but most of the time we just took classic ideas and thought we were being unique and different because we put a little spin and filtered production voice on them.  One stunt that was horrible at the time but hilarious in retrospect was the time they decided to Deep Fry a Turkey during their show.  The old Y100 was in a low-rise building in Media, and the studio was on the second floor, with a window that went out to the roof over the first floor.  All the smokers on the airstaff would hop out the window during their shows to light up.  So on this particular November morning, they got a buddy to bring them a big deep fryer, which they put on the roof and heated up.  What they didn’t realize is that when you plunge a cold turkey into a deep fryer, quite often they created almost an explosion, and the grease can slosh over the top, which this did, setting fire to the roof of the building.  Several fire trucks later, we were safe to carry on.  Our owner Dan Lerner (who also owned the building) was not pleased with his idiotic, low-rated morning show that day, and while it would take more disastrous stunts for us all to learn (make sure you have plenty of leak free garbage bags and puke buckets when you invite contestants in to guzzle a gallon of milk), eventually both the show and audience realized that stupid stunts don’t foster community as well as real conversations, great music, and a loving radio family does.  Unless it has to do with trying to Kill Casey, which is a whole other topic… –  Y100 Program Director, Jim McGuinn, now WXPN Assistant Program Director 

• Matt Cord History of the Y100 VW Beetle Commercial

  The commercial shoot for the Y100 VW Beetle took place during the day on a street in WC and it was pretty neat cause, with the exception of Brett Hamilton, we are all recently hired. Preston and Marylin, Leeann Curtis and Myself, we all new each other from DRE and MMR days so obviously we all became fast friends. Lots of jokes were cracked the entire shoot and  the 3 of us in the back of the car (Brett, Leeann and me) kept calling Preston and Marylin “Mom and Dad” relentlessly.  The commercial aired a ton and I still think of it every time I hear 3EB “Semi-Charmed Life.” Fun day and I think the station ended up giving away 6 of the VWs.

• They Might Not Have Been Giants?

  This is the story about how the P&S show turned a rejected scrap of a song into what is probably the highest earning song on that artist’s career.

  It was the early days, I think it was 1998, and the latest ridiculously desperate idea we had to generate some interest in the show was to give away $25,000 thru a contest called Dead Guy in the Envelope, where someone on the show knows the name of a person, who also happens to be dead, and the first person to guess that name wins.  It starts with just random guesses among all the people in the history of the world that have died, and eventually, you get people to tune in to hear obscure hints until someone figures it out.  This radio contest is so fraught with difficulty – what if someone guesses it right away?  Can you trust the people who know to not cheat in some kind of kickback scheme?   There’s a lot of trust involved and weird variables.  If I recall, maybe only Preston knew the name – not anyone else on the show?  Anyway – as we were launching the contest, the team was setting up a visit from They Might Be Giants in front of a local gig, and I knew them pretty well from years of promoting shows, etc.  Now TMBG used to publish a new song every day – they had a “Dial-a-Song” phone number and had kind of made their acclaim by writing a ton of quirky ditties.  So, I think I reached out to them and asked if they had any rejected songs floating around, and would they consider making us a theme song for our contest (gratis of course, cause this is radio)?  And to our surprise, they did it!  As I recall, it was some piece of a tune that they quickly re-wrote lyrics to, which we then pounded into the ground as our promo theme as the contest went on for several weeks. It was amazing to have a bit of music supplied by a band we loved, and the contest was pretty successful, as I recall.  Preston played it out for weeks of guesses and reeled out hints until someone got the name, and the cash, while the TMBG tune burned itself into our brains.

  The next year, a new show debuted on Fox called Malcolm in the Middle, featuring a theme song by They Might Be Giants, called Boss of Me.  The song used the exact same music.  The show was a hit, from maybe the last era where a TV Theme Song meant as much as it once did.  I haven’t verified it with the band, but if I had to guess, they probably made more cash off that tune than anything else they’ve created across a 40-year career. “who’s gonna guess the dead guy… in the en-ve-lope, on Y100.” –  Jim McGuinn,

   

• Marilyn Russell has seen worse.

  Oh man…the time P&S sent Casey down to my car to rummage through some things for an on air discussion was frightening as hell. I had some … shall we say “personal” pics I didn’t want anyone to see and I was shitting myself. Thankfully they remained in the car and never made it to the studio.

  But Preston eating off the toilet at Y100 remains my fav. I’m a germaphobe and he wanted to prove to me that there’s worse germs everywhere…like cell phones, laptops etc. That the toilet wasn’t nearly as disgusting as those spots I cleaned!!! So he ate off the friggin toilet. Mind you…the toilet for the entire bldg. y100 was in a house and resources were limited.

  

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