▼ Culture Back With A New Pack “The Old Grey Wolf” Mike Rhyner returns to radio at 97.1. BY KELLY DEARMORE U p until the summer of this year, retirement had been great for Texas Radio Hall of Famer Mike Rhyner. He left his role as cohost of The Hardline on 1310 The Ticket in January 2020 after 26 years of being the face and voice of one of the most powerful and wide-reaching radio stations in the country. His move not only sent shock- waves through the place on the dial he had created in 1994 with a largely unknown band of radio misfits, it generated headlines through the national radio industry. But he’s back on the air now, shockingly, as the marquee personality for newly chris- tened 97.1 The Freak. The all-talk format de- buted on Oct. 3, replacing the 97.1 The Eagle, which had been a hybrid of modern rock mu- sic and talk. Sports will be central to the sta- tion’s focus. Rhyner calls it “sports adjacent,” but The Freak is not an all-sports station. The current events of the day and pop-culture topics will also be front and center. And to be clear, Rhyner’s return to the airwaves isn’t the result of his retirement growing stale. “Initially, I was worried that four days af- ter I left The Ticket, I’d be in bed at 4 in the afternoon, wondering ‘Oh, god, what have I done?’” Rhyner says over the phone. “But that never happened. I very quickly em- braced the idea that when you retire, you get to do what you want, whenever you want.” That freedom and autonomy are what lured “The Old Grey Wolf,” as he’s known to generations of local radio listeners, from the rocking chair back into the studio seat. After BEST BEST HAIR SALON DALLAS OBSERVER 18-TIME WINNER BEST COLOR SALON ALLURE MAGAZINE EXPERIENCE D MAGAZINE BEST IN THE USA HARPER’S BAZAAR BEST BRAZILIAN WAX LUCKY MAGAZINE Thank you for voting us Best of Dallas West Village 12 214-750-5667 • www.avalon-salon.com Mike Books temporarily filling in for 97.1 host Jeff “Skin” Wade earlier this year when Wade under- went cancer treatment, Rhyner, Wade and his cohost Ben Rogers began exchanging ideas about what sort of station they’d like to belong to if given the chance. For Rhyner, there was a key ingredient he would require for any new gig. He wasn’t ready to leave the freedom of retirement for a station with many, or any, constraints. “There is a parallel to what I’m doing with the station now and what I was doing in my retirement,” he says. “I have to do it within the bounds of radio, of course, but those stretch pretty wide. We at the station get to say what we want, however we want, whenever we want, and there aren’t many people in radio who get to do that.” Rhyner isn’t the only former Ticket per- sonality flying their freak flag these days. Ju- lie Dobbs, Mike Sirois and Michael Gruber each have key roles at 97.1 This new addition to the Dallas/Fort Worth talk radio scene has stirred up a good bit of passion and has introduced a rare pub- lic airing of grievances. The day The Freak debuted its programming, The Dallas Morn- ing News ran a column that included a reac- The Old Grey Wolf howled on The Ticket one last time, but now he’s back with the competition. tion from Rhyner’s former Hardline cohost Corby Davidson and former boss, 1310 pro- gram director Jeff Catlin. Davidson called Rhyner’s surprise return “unimaginable and unconscionable” and said that Rhyner “de- stroyed relationships that had been in exis- tence for 30 years.” It was a strong shot, and it’s one Rhyner wasn’t necessarily surprised to hear. Still, it left him feeling perplexed. The following day, Oct. 4, Rhyner, Dobbs and Sirois used the prime 5:30 p.m. drive-time segment to ad- dress what Sirois called “the elephant.” Rhyner was diplomatic, but head-on in his response to Davidson and Catlin’s comments, saying, “if any relationships were destroyed, it wasn’t by me, because as far as I’m con- cerned, those relationships still exist.” Rhyner’s responses during that segment weren’t groundbreaking or particularly juicy. If anything, he explained, he understood that his former coworkers have a sort of tribal mentality, in large part because he had fos- tered that in the earliest days of the Ticket. The segment was noteworthy, however, in that the hosts were allowed to wheel out a bit of dirty laundry that usually remains hidden. He also gets why the story with this new station is attracting more attention than when other talk stations have premiered in the area or when other former Ticket voices have found new homes. He likes that in- stead of playing the usual radio game where a station’s personalities are told to not ad- dress any off-mic drama on air, he and his mates were allowed to speak freely and let the listener in behind the curtain. “The difference with The Freak is that you have three fairly high-profile Ticket em- ployees who left on their own terms,” Rhyner says. “They weren’t fired. The Ticket is such a great place to be that most people are trying to get there, but here are three significant fig- ures who left. What does that say, exactly?” Rhyner also says he’s “an all-in kind of guy,” and that while he understands The Ticket is a ratings titan that’s perhaps unlikely to be top- pled, he’s not shying away from trying. “There’s no sinister plot to overtake The Ticket in play,” he says. “But we are compet- itive people, as are the people at the Ticket. But I’m in it to win it. I’m going to do what I have to do, within reason, to come out on top of this thing.” If nothing else, this local radio drama has proven to Rhyner that people still care about radio, even with the rise of podcasts and sat- ellite radio. “That people still care about this medium has been one of my biggest takeaways from the first week of broadcasting,” he says. “If you give people something good to listen to, something they want to hear, they will be there. It sounds simple, but most stations these days are very conservative and afraid to take chances. Everyone’s trying to keep their jobs and unwilling to color outside of the lines, and that’s too bad.” Even more than the public’s enduring af- finity for terrestrial radio, the “happy re- tiree” in Rhyner has been surprised by something else after his first few days of be- ing the voice of The Freak. “The biggest surprise for me is just how ready for this I was,” he says. “I thought I’d have to go through a break-in period where I might have an ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’ pause, but every day this week I’ve gotten going and I’ve embraced the day, em- braced the challenge, embraced the show, all of it. I’m really digging it, man.” OCTOBER 20-26, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com
