Mancow Muller
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Erich Matthew Muller (born June 21, 1966 in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American radio and television personality known as Mancow and Mancow Muller.
He is best known as the libertarian [1] leaning controversial radio personality from Mancow's Morning Madhouse formerly on WKQX-FM (Q101), a Chicago-based radio show that has, in recent years, been syndicated across the U.S. in mostly small markets by Talk Radio Network. Mancow's career with Q101 was cut short in July of 2006, when he parted from the station due to growing tensions and frequent discrepancies with the station's management. Before he was on Q101, his show originated from Rock 103.5, another Chicago rock radio station. He is a regular feature on the Fox News morning show Fox and Friends during the 8:00 AM hour. On Saturday, November 18th, 9:00 PM EST, Mancow will be hosting his own show on Fox News titled "Planet Mancow" and featuring his friend William Shatner.
Since February 14, 2003, Mancow has been married to Sandy Ferrando, a former publicist. He also has twin daughters named Ava Grace and Isabella Sofia Muller. Mancow reportedly met his wife at La Scarola, an Italian restaurant in Chicago. Mancow is a regular at this restaurant, which has a dish on its lunch menu named Pollo alla Mancow.
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[edit] Early life
He was born to John Muller, a salesman and Dawn Muller, a homemaker and is an American of German, Italian and Apache heritage. Mancow attended Our Lady of the Lourdes Church in Raytown, Missouri, until his teens, when his parents left the Church and experimented with other denominations, such as evangelical and Nazarene.
As a child, Mancow modeled for Lee Jeans and Wal-Mart, and appeared on stage in more than 100 professional plays, including a record-setting pre-Broadway production of On Golden Pond. One night Henry Fonda, who later starred in the film version, was in the audience. "I was doing The Crucible in college and some director started screaming at me because I added a few lines," Mancow recalls. "That's when I thought, 'You know, I have some things to say.'"
Mancow first attended high school at Blue Ridge Christian School in Kansas City, Missouri before moving to Harrisonville, Missouri and attending Harrisonville High School from where he graduated. After high school, Mancow attended college at Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri), receiving degrees in public relations and theatre in 1990.
[edit] Radio Career Beginnings
Thanks to his radio mentor, Marion Woods, his career in radio began at KOKO-AM (a one-kilowatt AM radio station) in Warrensburg, Missouri, playing commercials during the Larry King satellite feed. His role continued to expand until he had his own afternoon show. "This was a small station," he says, "but people started to listen, and it became a weird, cult thing."
He later worked as an assistant at KBEQ-FM in Kansas City, Missouri, for local disc jockey, Randy Miller. After turning the morning show around and making it #1, he decided to carve out a radio career of his own. He became a part of the morning show "Holy Moly & Maxx" for station KMOK in Kansas City soon thereafter [citation needed]. While Mancow often claims to have attended seminary, there is no verifiable confirmation of this claim.
Among Mancow's fans was the general manager of KLSI-FM in Kansas City, who offered him a full-time job as head of station promotions. Mancow accepted the position, plus a weekend air shift, while completing his final semester at CMSU. "I literally had four hours a day that was not taken up by work," he says.
[edit] Pre-Chicago notoriety
After a stint at KDON (the first radio station to feature UFO Phil) in Monterey, California, Mancow headed north to San Francisco. In 1993, Mancow made national headlines while working for radio station KYLD-FM in San Francisco, California. At the time, a story had been circulating that President Clinton had tied up traffic on an LAX runway for over an hour because of a haircut on Air Force One. Mancow staged a parody of this incident on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during rush hour. He used vans to block the westbound lanes of the bridge while his then sidekick, Jesus "Chuy" Gomez, got a haircut.
As a result of this publicity stunt, Mancow was prosecuted and subsequently convicted by a San Francisco Municipal Court judge of a felony. His sentence included three years probation, a $500 fine and 100 hours of community service. The radio station eventually paid $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a bridge commuter.
[edit] Mancow's Morning Madhouse
After leaving California, Muller came to Chicago where he was offered a job by Evergreen Media President, Jim de Castro at more than double his salary if he would move to Chicago to work at WWBZ-FM, "The Blaze." "The Blaze" had lost its fire and Mancow renamed it "Rock 103.5" (WRCX-FM), and created his radio show, Mancow's Morning Madhouse which debuted in July 1994.
Within two amazing Arbitron ratings periods he took the station's 19th-ranked morning show to #5 among all teens and adults, and #1 among 18-to-34 year olds. Evergreen did little to promote Mancow, except for a few highway billboards. His fans mostly discovered his show by word of mouth. The love of Mancow started at the grass roots level and spread like wildfire.
Originally, he broadcasted from WRCX-FM (Rock 103.5) studios in the John Hancock Center. In 1998, he moved to WKQX-FM (Q-101) 101.1, the city's foremost alternative rock station and to the Merchandise Mart, where the show was broadcast. Mancow continued to broadcast from there for eight more years until July 11th, 2006, when WKQX-FM in Chicago announced that they would no longer carry Mancow's Morning Madhouse after July 14, 2006.
[edit] Incidents
While Mancow has usually abided by FCC guidelines while on the air, he has straddled the line a few times in its history.
- Muller has been involved in a long-term rivalry with Howard Stern.
- Over the course of the his show's existence, comedian Chris Farley made numerous appearances. Mancow claims Farley was slated to appear on the show the morning after his death by drug overdose. Incidentally, Farley's Chicago apartment (where he was found dead) is located in the Hancock Center, which was only floors away from where Muller broadcasted during his time at WRCX.
- For many years, the show hosted a plethora of unusual contests for listeners, notorious for putting contestants through humiliating ordeals, such as eating cat food and other disgusting items. On other occasions, the show played pranks on Chicago businesses, such as walking into a Chinese dry cleaner with a blood stained shirt, and pretending to be nervous over a supposed murder. Other contests were specially designed to scare passersby, such as "Grand Theft Auto" where contestants would be issued car keys, and then told to find an expensive automobile, which would preferably be parked on a busy Chicago intersection. However, only one of the keys would actually work. Furthermore, a contestant could win the car without the proper key by pretending to be a would-be car thief to an uninformed observer.
- Muller has appeared as a speaker in the second season of Penn and Teller's "Bullshit!", in an episode on profanity. Interestingly enough, Mancow refused to say the word cunt.
- On December 6th, 2005, Muller drew a swarm of controversy when he verbally attacked Howard Dean on Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends, antagonizing with such words as "vile", "bloodthirsty", "evil", and retaliated to Dean's opinions on the War in Iraq, calling Dean a traitor that "ought to be kicked out of America" and "tried for treason". [2]
[edit] Cowboy Ray
On November 20, 2005, Ray Hofstatter (aka Cowboy Ray), a 45 year old frequent mentally challenged caller and guest on Mancow's Morning Madhouse, was struck by a car in a hit-and-run accident. During the following January a devastated Mancow Muller offered a $23,000 reward pertaining to the arrest of the faceless assailant. Despite Mancow's pleas for information on various local news broadcasts, Ray's life support was terminated on January 11th, 2006. The unsolved hit-and-run death of Cowboy Ray was featured on Fox's America's Most Wanted television show on February 25th, 2006. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
[edit] Lawsuits
Mancow spear-headed two major lawsuits, against the antics of Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst following his disrespectful behavior towards fans at a radio concert in Chicago, and another suit against a man who reported Mancow to the FCC for alleged indecency on the air, which Mancow cites as totally unfounded. Mancow later withdrew his second lawsuit because it was a publicity stunt.
[edit] See also
- Mancow's Morning Madhouse
- Al Roker, Jr.
- Cowboy Ray
- DJ Luv Cheez
- Freak (Wally Kozielski)
- Irma Blanco
- Marissa Sanchez
- Turd, the Bartender
