6 January 25 - 31, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The Golden Ticket For three decades, The Ticket has ruled the airwaves with its own crazy mix of sports, stunts and schtick. BY KELLY DEARMORE T he studio itself looks rather generic. The broad- casting space for 1310 The Ticket in Dallas is a basic, narrow room with a large desk in the middle for several people to sit around, with plenty of room for monitors, microphones and laptops. Four mid-sized flatscreens on the far wall show sports, local news and weather with the volume muted. Off to one side, a couple of windows open into a pair of smaller spaces filled with behind-the-scenes crew keeping time, twisting knobs and producing sports news updates, more commonly known as “Ticket Tickers.” There aren’t any win- dows overlooking the American Airlines Center next door. But the room blooms into something unique once the mi- crophones are switched on and the hosts don their headsets. From 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. each weekday the smallish studio houses the voices that give flight to one of the most domi- nant radio signals that North Texas has ever listened to. The Ticket will celebrate its impressive run with a 30-year anni- versary party on Jan. 26 at the House of Blues in Dallas. Since its start in 1994, The Ticket has not only been the most popular sports station in DFW by far, but one of the most-listened-to stations, regardless of format, in North Texas. 1310 has become a force on a national level as well, winning a major reputation across the country for its out- landish antics, skyrocketing ratings and prestigious awards. Devoted listeners, the so-called “P1s” (a radio industry term for a station’s most loyal listeners, as well as shorthand term for the first preset button on a car radio), and even plenty of more casual followers have long since memorized the sta- tion’s origin story. When you’ve celebrated as many milestone anniversaries as the Ticket has, the extraordinary has an odd way of feeling uniform. For the uninitiated, longtime Dallas-area radio personal- ity Mike Rhyner cobbled together a combination of proven local talent and some lesser-known names to kickstart the only 24-hour sports radio station in North Texas in January 1994. When the broadcasts began, the on-air roster included pre-ESPN Skip Bayless and pre-NFL on Fox Curt Menefee, along with members of the local radio landscape who were ready for a better gig, such as former University of North Texas roommates Craig Miller and George Dunham. There was some uncertainty leading up to the station launch, and once things got rolling, there were some lineup shake-ups early on (see ya, Skip), but in pretty short order, the station was a hit with listeners and advertisers. E specially in those early days, the novelty of a station dedicated to sports might’ve been the cause for the large number of listeners, but there was more in play. The Ticket is an all-sports station that has never been only about sports. Long before ESPN turned into debate-all-day television, The Ticket developed a rebellious us-against-the-world type of radio that felt more like freeform pirate programming than it did something strictly formatted by a large corporation. Many of the station’s youngest staff members even lived together in a frat house-type environment. Sure, sports was the primary fo- cus from the start, but there was plenty of “guy stuff” banter re- garding news and pop culture that would never dare be uttered on just about any other sports station in the country. One journalist, a few years into the Ticket’s reign, described the station as “ESPN mixed with Saturday Night Live.” Similar to the way Seinfeld introduced the nation to a new glossary of show-specific terminology in the mid-to-late ’90s, (see: “close talker” and “Sponge-worthy”), the Ticket did that for North Texas dudes happy to have a new vernacular. Countless Dallas- area spouses have grown tired of hearing that something is “spare” or “wheels off” while their partner speaks primarily in “drops” from the station, instead of plain English. These days, such a combo of fun and sports is more com- mon to hear across the nation, thanks to the success of 1310, but the Ticket still stands apart. For example, the no-name hosts from three decades ago are now local celebrities with giant social media followings. Some of them are even Texas Radio Hall of Famers now, with Dunham, Miller and co-host Gordon Keith having been inducted in November. That honor came a couple of years after the hosts won the highly esteemed Marconi Award for major market personal- ity of the year. The station itself won the national prize for sports station of the year in 2021, following up on its first win in that category in 2007. Of course, when a station has been on the air for as long as the Ticket has, there are bound to be some bumps and bruises along the way. There have been on-air meltdowns, hosts who just didn’t mesh, bits of bad blood and aired dirty laundry at certain points over the past 30 years. From 2008 until 2020, the ratings-dominating four-show weekday lineup experienced a remarkable amount of stabil- ity, without any major changes to the host positions. Rhyner’s departure just weeks before COVID-19 showed it- self in the U.S. was the first of a wave of controversial lineup changes that included retirements, complaints about low pay, a lack of upward mobility and even a high-profile 2023 court case over a noncompete clause. The current regular lineup, however, in place since early August, has enjoyed some of the biggest ratings the station has ever experienced, proof that listener loyalty, built up over de- cades, helps weather even the most tumultuous storms. T he relationship between the station and the audi- ence isn’t recognized only through the black-and- white numbers of a ratings book. For each of the many listeners, there are moments when the right hosts at the right moment helped a listener get through their day in a way no one else could, not unlike the way we take comfort in the work of our favorite musicians, artists or writers. In 2019, when The Ticket celebrated its 25th anniversary, the morning broadcast from Sept. 11, 2001, was voted as the “Top Ticket Moment” by listeners. On that tragic morning, Dunham, Miller and Keith relayed the events of 9/11 as they happened to their audience. What began as curiosity quickly built into shock and uncertainty as the three efficiently shifted from their planned sports-centric topics to the hor- ror that was unfolding on the studio’s television screens. There was no social media in 2001, so radio was a primary vehicle for people to get information quickly on that day. Many who were already tuned in to the station that morning as the terrorist attack continued made 1310 a main source for updates and details as the day progressed. Sports and entertainment would cease to be regular 1310 programming fodder for many weeks after as the station talked almost exclusively about what we all wanted to talk about in that world-changing era. “I just remember it being so surreal,” Dunham said on a recent morning during a morning show break. “When I lis- tened back to it [the 9/11 morning broadcast] later, I just kept thinking, God, I could’ve done a much better job. These guys [gesturing towards Miller and Keith to either side] did | UNFAIR PARK | Kathy Tran From left to right: Matt McClearin, Gordon Keith, Craig Miller, George Dunham and Donovan Lewis fill the morning hours on 1310 The Ticket. >> p8
