Letting our morning radio hair down with Steve Rouse

Legendary WQSR and Good Time Oldies morning host Steve Rouse joins Nestor at the new Costas Inn in Timonium to talk Baltimore radio history and how to grow an enduring audience that never leaves.

Nestor Aparicio and Steve Rouse discuss Baltimore radio history and Rouse’s career. Rouse, a Baltimore radio icon, reflects on his 40-year career, including his time at 92 Star and WQSR. He shares stories about his transition to mornings, the impact of corporate ownership, and the challenges of maintaining listener engagement. Rouse also recounts his experiences with pranks and listener interactions, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and connection. They touch on Rouse’s current podcast and his brief stint in farming. The conversation highlights Rouse’s influence on Baltimore radio and his enduring legacy.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Baltimore sports radio, Steve Rouse, Nestor Aparicio, WQSR, Maryland lottery, podcast, radio career, morning show, listener connection, pranks, ratings, corporate radio, radio history, Baltimore icons, radio promotions.

SPEAKERS

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Steve Rouse, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, M, S, T, AM, 1570 tasks of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. It says so right here we are celebrating 27 years in this radio station. On August 3, we kick it off where we’re going to be doing a lot of eating next month. It’s an eating tour. My 27 favorite things to eat cost us in right here in Timonium will be one of match. I’m going to be in Dundalk for that. We will have the Back to the Future scratch offs this week, maybe next week, but by the time August gets around, we’re gonna have new ones from the Maryland lottery. This guy did more Maryland lottery stick than anybody’s ever stuck or sticked anywhere. I have never had him on my show because he worked another place. They were a little bigger than me. He was up a little earlier than I was back in the day. He is a Baltimore radio icon and legend. I was never I was never good enough to be on QSR. I was never enough fun time oldies to be a part of. I still have never been on one Oh 5.7 even though, when I had 1570, people would write in the book that they listen to one Oh 5.7 right? And I get screwed on the arbitrage stuff. Anyways, it didn’t matter. Steve rouse is here off the chicken farm. Did you bring me any eggs? Or no,

Steve Rouse  01:14

actually, all the layers are gone. Now, you know, we’ve retired from the farm commercially. We still get stuff around and sold the chickens, but now I just have a small little family flock. They’re not laying yet. Soon as they really farm, yeah, soon as they lay Nestor, well, I’ll come down. Give you a dozen or we’ll cook them up.

Nestor Aparicio  01:35

I don’t know anything about farming. Yeah. Did he look at his hands? They look like they’ve been on a farm? No, they have never been on a farm, laughing at home, and she’s not even listening. I was

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Steve Rouse  01:44

actually looking at my fingernails make making sure they’re sort of clean, you know. Well, you’re a

Nestor Aparicio  01:48

crab, but they don’t have crabs here. This is not a crab house. I should say that Timonium go to Dundalk for the crabs. But, um, where do you been? What do you do? What are you doing? You’re doing, yeah,

Steve Rouse  01:57

yeah. We just started the podcast. I’m not, you know, I just wanted to see if it was something I was kind

Nestor Aparicio  02:03

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of, do you miss doing this? How much?

Steve Rouse  02:08

I guess I do because, you know, I’m coming to talk with you. I’ve been on a couple other podcasts and started our own, just to kind of see the feel, you know, that’s not my thing, but I’m fine. I’m finding out after a couple of podcasts, it’s a whole different ball game. You know, I think of myself more like a boss jock kind of, you know, spinning the tunes, talking up the intros, although we did a lot of interviews and that type of stuff on the show. But you know, when you’re sitting here just yapping for like, an hour or two, yeah, that’s a little different for me. I’m finding that it’s like, oh, okay, so where are we gonna go now,

Nestor Aparicio  02:44

like, someone that I respect, it said to me that I was the best interviewer, okay, that they had ever heard, all right? And I thought I take phone calls from people about, like, that’s what I did, right, right? Oh, yeah. And, well, I mean, let’s get after this. I mean, I don’t know anything about your like, back, I don’t you weren’t from around here originally, right? Is that? Right? I mean, you’re a radio guy, yeah, who landed here and made it, and made it, made it big. I mean, yeah, this was your great success. Oh,

Steve Rouse  03:12

was, you know, and the thing about it was, I mean, I’ve been here since 8540 years. 40 years. You graduated in 85 I’d been in the business about 15 years at that

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Nestor Aparicio  03:26

point, okay, but when you got here, B, 104 was kicking everybody’s ass, right? Yeah. I mean, I literally put a Rick Springfield ticket up the other day. I saw their toys for toss, you know, like I went to that show was Baltimore’s best be 104 means music. I still steal their ideas. The best idea ever was the little credit card that they gave me when I was a kid that I could get 50 cents off at skate land. I you know, it got me discounts. It was like a disc. It was like an entertainment book in a little red card. And you would come to places there’d be a sticker up, say the B 104 card is accepted here, which basically meant, like, you got a free cup of soup or something. You know what?

Steve Rouse  04:00

I mean. Here’s the thing about B 104 and I’ll just share a quick little story with you. When I came to Baltimore, I got a job at 92 star, which was wi st FM at the time. That’s that was the first station I worked at here mid days, eventually to the mornings at that station was there like three years. And when I got here, b1 that was 85 so be 104 was like, everywhere. You could not go anywhere in town without a B, 104 o’clock or your credit things. Or, you know, guys out. It was unbelievable.

Nestor Aparicio  04:33

At East Point mall every Saturday, they

Steve Rouse  04:35

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were everywhere. Yeah, they were everywhere. And I always thought, If I ever got to do a morning show. That’s how you win by just being out, being everywhere in town,

Nestor Aparicio  04:46

Brian and no Brian, Brian and no Brian in the morning on the morning on B, 104, I, but I was a grease man guy, yeah, so that was my like, I listened to the. East. Man, when you were just getting here, late 80s, and when I never wanted to be on radio. Man, I wanted to be a sports writer. Oh, my God. All I ever wanted. How you started, right? I wanted to be John stem. And I never, I never listened to sports radio. A little bit of Phil wood, but I was not a I was a sports savant, but not a guy that wanted to hear phone calls on Bal all night. I was, like, chasing girls going to the beach. I was 18 years old. Yeah, it’s an old man’s format, right? And the grease man’s gift to me was he could take any phone call and make it funny, make it interesting, that he, you know, he would just turn a phone call into improv stick.

Steve Rouse  05:41

Yeah, isn’t that kind of a sad story, though, when, I mean, he was so successful here, and then decided, okay, well, you know, maybe we can go to LA and do my thing, and it didn’t work, didn’t work, and that was kind of

Nestor Aparicio  05:56

it, I mean, and I saw, I want to talk to you about your thing, because I’m, I’m 35 years into doing this now, yeah, 27 years with the radio station in two weeks, some days, better than others. I still look at like what you did to dominate a market, what Laurie de Young has done Kirk’s, you know, career at this point. Marty bass did these long Denise Coke, these people, I mean, even Michael Lester, every day I still read his work and, you know, so it’s still relevancy. What? Yeah, you just went away, right? Like you wanted to go on the you

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Steve Rouse  06:31

well, you know, on May 5, 2005 may 4, 2005 the whole staff was fired at

Nestor Aparicio  06:40

WQs are, did you see it coming? No, no, not at all. You didn’t see any

Steve Rouse  06:44

but it was interesting because, you know, I had the band to Stevie and the satellites that we played all over the place. We brought a lot of the station. Brought a lot of people. We got a guy, we don’t take it off. What do you think John fireball, knock water all over this computer one time. So anyway, I forgot where I was going. You got fired. Oh, yeah. So we got all got fired that day, and that night, there was going to be a party, a client party downtown, at the power plant. And we were playing, you know, it was for QSR clients.

Nestor Aparicio  07:20

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They fired you on the day of the party. And so the left side of the building talks.

Steve Rouse  07:26

So the promotion director says, Do you want to go on tonight, first or second? And I was like, What do you mean? He goes, Well, we’re gonna have another band too. And I said, How come? And he said, Well, you know, just for a variety or whatever. And I was like, I thought that was weird, right? And so I said, I got first, I don’t know. And so I went back into our little office that we had there with the other guys from the morning show, and I said, That’s kind of weird. What do you think? And my girlfriend at the time now my wife, I called her, and I said, so that thing tonight, you know, this is what they’re telling me. And she said, Honey, I don’t think you’re going to be playing. And I was like, what? And the funny thing Nestor is the last song that we played when we went off the air at 10 o’clock was, hey, Nana, hey, hey, kiss them goodbye, a pair. I don’t remember that everybody else does. And then, you know, we went into a office with the management, and that was pretty much it. It was a shock. You know, we had no idea it was a shock. It was every you go through every emotion. I don’t know if you’ve ever been through a situation like

Nestor Aparicio  08:26

that, but I fired everyone in my radio station on Friday. My wife was on her deathbed, so I’m keenly aware, yeah, social media. So I, you know, yeah, you could see the scars in my back, but, but so, I mean, I feel from that perspective of I had to make a change financially. Just, quite frankly, it was good. The thing was not good, not working. It just wasn’t working any longer, and my wife was in peril, but I did it under different circumstances. Did you want to go on the radio? I mean, you’re Steve rash. There was

Steve Rouse  09:00

a couple of things, a couple of things that I was upset about. You know, we had such loyal listeners, lot of loyal listeners. And I was just, I was kind of upset that we didn’t have a last show just to say thanks, you know, for for all of this. I mean, they they made really, it was them that made the show so great, and we had a great connection with the listeners, so we weren’t able to do that, but I do have to say, I mean, you go through every emotion, you know, you’re angry, you’re upset, you’re shy, I mean, every emotion. But I also had an emotion of sort of relief, believe it or not, because once CBS, a few years before that, CBS bought all these radio stations in Baltimore, right? They built mix life, I think us a couple of the affinity was that, yeah, part of that, right, yeah. And once that happened, it was a lot different, you know, just from a management standpoint, it was a lot different. It was we had a big meeting when they took over at the Sheraton in Towson, and part of that meeting they got. Up and said, you know, we want all our radio our goal is to have all our radio stations get a earn a five share in the ratings for people watching and listening. You know, a five share is pretty good. It’s pretty okay, you know, from a sales standpoint, so they could go out on the streets of Baltimore and say, All right, we’ve got a package deal. We’re going to get you mix QSR, all these other stories

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Nestor Aparicio  10:22

about black, white, young, old, west, north, covering all the basic

Steve Rouse  10:28

demos. You know,

Nestor Aparicio  10:30

car dealership, you could buy five demos under grand a year instead of getting right complete coverage. You know, I ran is such a different operation. Man, like, I mean, I’ve been in radio all these years, but I never was in radio. I was never in that game. I was never in the ratings game, you know, I was in the results game, yeah, I was in the how many people were at the bar tonight, at the barn, yeah, these are my listeners, right? Come see it, feel it. And the internet changed that. But you were in an era where, much like the Howard Stern movie, like that book came out every 90 days, and you got

Steve Rouse  11:03

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trends. Oh my God, it was, that was what it was, the part

Nestor Aparicio  11:07

of your life. I don’t get I get you the radio star guy. But I mean, now that I’m sitting with you and having first thing you tell me about the day you got fired, I’m like, Yeah, this shitty business. I mean, like, really?

Steve Rouse  11:16

I mean, like, gonna say it’s a shitty business.

Nestor Aparicio  11:20

I do too. But from the people that ran it, I’m

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Steve Rouse  11:23

talking, yeah, well, let me just structure what happened. Let me just finish that story. Because so they said We want everybody have a five share. Well, I’m sitting there, and at that time, I don’t remember what we had, but maybe, like a 12 share, yeah, and, and so I’m going, Wait a minute, what? Wait no, that. And so that’s basically what happened. They sort of, we were doing great, so they sort of set us adrift and concentrated on the weaker points. And, you know, and it affected the show, for sure, because it’s a pie. I mean, you can have a good show, but if you don’t have any of the supporting members, it’s going to be a lot tougher for

Nestor Aparicio  12:02

major show great in your mind, when you look back and think the best shows you did, the best period of time, not your best book or whatever, when you did an 18 or whatever, but just like when you got up and thought, this is, this is, this is great, and what made it

Steve Rouse  12:16

great? Way, I think because we really cared about the listeners a lot. We did a lot with the listeners. We invited them in, you know, live. We took a lot of phone calls. We there was a connection. And I think it depends on where you are, for some reason for me, and I guess Baltimore there, somehow there was a connection. And I was actually thinking about that today. And I don’t know if this has anything to do with it or not, but you know, the a lot of the listeners in Baltimore, you know, at that time, were steel workers, watermen, construction guys working at the port, kind of blue collar sort of guys. And that’s where I grew up. I grew up in by the Canadian border in a little tiny town, but there were farmers in town. It’s a little tiny town called

Nestor Aparicio  13:04

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I got Google. Hold on. I’m gonna find it now. What language did you speak? I’m just kidding. It

Steve Rouse  13:09

was close to French. What’s the town? Governor, it’s G, o, u v, e r,

Nestor Aparicio  13:16

it’s already a French word.

Steve Rouse  13:18

Any you are, Governor, it’s funny that I came up with that. So rhymes with manure.

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Nestor Aparicio  13:23

You’re not far from Ottawa, let’s be and not too far from Montreal, right? Cornwall, Kingston, I got you.

Steve Rouse  13:29

So that’s why, that’s where I grew up, and that’s where there was no radio stations until I was about 50, and then there was one radio station there. And that’s where I started up there,

Nestor Aparicio  13:39

by the way, man, I went through your home area one time in my life. I went to see Pearl Jam up in Quebec City, and then came back through Montreal and Ottawa. And my flight home was out of Syracuse about four years ago, Hancock field, when I did that drive. Is it ganoak? Gananoke, gananoke, Mallory town, before a Wellesley Island, Wellesley Island. Yeah, that is one of the most beautiful places I have ever

Steve Rouse  14:04

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spent two summers, two summers on Wellesley Island, because my grandfather had a cottage. Can you tell people that is gana knock away, by the way, gana knock away.

Nestor Aparicio  14:14

Gana knock away. Okay, it sounds like it’d be a name on the Yeah.

Steve Rouse  14:18

Well, all that Nestor, all that area of the 1000 Islands which Wellesley Island is sort of in, is unbelievable, you know, in the summer, unbelievable winter. Forget it.

Nestor Aparicio  14:28

I drove through Labor Day weekend, and it was, I was blown away by how pretty it was. And I wasn’t, I was just trying to cross the border and get my passport out, and I’m like, oh my

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Steve Rouse  14:37

god, this is beautiful. Yeah, it is summers. You know,

Nestor Aparicio  14:41

I don’t meet people from that part of the world, all right. I mean, yeah, 20 miles away from there, maybe, yeah, okay, what wells. So you grow up in this Podunk, upper north, Northern New York. What was your Wolfman Jack pathway to being Steve Rouse? Well,

Steve Rouse  14:59

I knew what. I wanted to do since I was, like, five years old. I wanted to be an entertainer, you know? And so a radio entertainer. Well, it became radio entertainer. Who was your first Sullivan, or something like that, or no? Well, the Beatles, Ed Sullivan. I mean, that was a huge

Nestor Aparicio  15:16

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you want to be one or the other, yeah.

Steve Rouse  15:19

But really, if you look back, that Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan was probably the start, because we had a band in high school because of the Beatles. You know, every guy after the Beatles were first seen were like, oh, man, we gotta have a band, dude, come on, you know. And so we started a band, and we stick, stick to it, you know, we, we had our first gig after a couple of years of practicing, we, none of us knew how to play an instrument. We didn’t have an instrument upstate New York, right? Yeah, there’s not a lot going probably not even a record store guitars. We had to go to Watertown, New York to All right, and get a record or a guitar. Yeah, exactly. Drums, yeah. It’s literally, I know that’s true. So once the radio station got going, they had a little thing on Saturday mornings where they would invite local bands. And so they asked us, if we know this

Nestor Aparicio  16:12

was in Governor, okay, after this, you had your own am station there kind of thing, and it

Steve Rouse  16:17

became AM, FM, W, I, G, S, the Whigs twins. Hey everybody, it’s the week’s twins, you know, let’s

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Nestor Aparicio  16:24

go. What were they playing at that time? Everything, okay,

Steve Rouse  16:27

everything like, my first job on W, I, G, S was nighttime, and it was country, 7071

Nestor Aparicio  16:33

72 No, 6860 I was born in 6868 was your first rate. I was in high school, and you’re playing late night country, so it’s, you know,

Steve Rouse  16:42

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it’s, well, dollar young, hard little Patsy, little Patsy. Cline, yeah, I’m trying to think Farron young, Bucha Owens was huge, okay, you know, yeah, but from that appearance on the the station with our band when and I grew up, I had a little studio, make believe studio in my bedroom before this, you broadcast into your Oh, yeah. And I listened to cousin Bruce the WABC New York Jackson Armstrong was huge. Wolfman. Jack was a hero. You know, all these guys and so. But, you know, you think, well, that’s great. It’s a great dream, but I’ll never get out of here. I mean, you know, there’s no culture here

Nestor Aparicio  17:26

whatsoever, the animals. Yeah, there we go.

Steve Rouse  17:29

So anyway, we got done that gig on the radio and taking equipment back to the car. Our drummer’s mom said we had decided I was going to be one of introduced our songs and did the talking. And his mother said, Steve, you sounded really good introducing the songs. And that was all I needed, you know, that was encouragement, yeah,

Nestor Aparicio  17:51

tape recorder and like, oh, that way,

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Steve Rouse  17:53

yeah, yeah,

Nestor Aparicio  17:53

everything. I never wanted to be in radio, dude. That’s the craziest thing. Like, I vision myself being, no, I definitely envision myself television. I envision myself being maybe. John Buren, okay, Chris Thomas, certainly. Chris Thomas, but no, well, the radio thing just happened because Kenny Albert came to me and said, Nestor, I’m doing a New York style sports radio show. Do you want to you know a lot about sports? Come here. I don’t know enough. Baltimore, you guys did the skip jacks. We did the skip jacks. That’s correct. And that sort of began the whole,

Steve Rouse  18:26

yeah, maybe this is okay, right? Well,

Nestor Aparicio  18:29

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you know, it speaks maybe to your radio side of the corporate thing, where the first time I went on the radio, I had a great boss. Jack Gibbons is responsible for me. And I tell him, I love him every time I love him every time I see him, but keep inviting him after the show. He should come out here. Do show me. But Jack was, you know, I worked at the paper, and I was a kid, and I didn’t belong there, but I belong I worked hard enough to make myself belong there, but, like, I didn’t have a degree, I was, like I was and I looked 12. I was the young kid in the corner. Do anything they asked me to do, and I could write. And then once I wrote, the more I wrote, the more encouragement they gave me. And but

Steve Rouse  19:04

isn’t it? I mean, when you think back on that, and I do the same thing for me, I was the guy who just loved it so much. I was there all the time. I

Nestor Aparicio  19:14

paid right, right, exactly in the sports department, yeah, taking phone calls and being with sports people. This

Steve Rouse  19:20

life has never been about money, you know, really, because I just love to do it. I would have done it for, well, I did do it for practically nothing for a long time,

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Nestor Aparicio  19:28

right, right, right, until you made so. So give me that pathway out of New York to, like, where, well, got a gig and you went on the radio train, which is what it was for every, everybody I’m mentioning, all the grease mans and all that grease man was doing Jackson. I mean, everybody was trying to get a gig at the bigger city, yeah, much like from a newspaper standpoint, if you worked at the Dundalk Eagle, you were trying to get to the Towson times, to get to the Columbia flyer to maybe one day the sun would bring you on, yeah. You know, there was a step ladder about all of that. Yeah, and in the radio business, or the newspaper or the media business, you know, Marty bass is in Paducah, Kentucky. Mark Viviano told me stories about being in a Watertown Iowa, like, you know, the that was the pathway to that industry. I’m sure you before you landed mid days at 92 star, you were in Buffalo or something. Where were you?

Steve Rouse  20:22

I was places a lot smaller than buffalo, believe me. I mean, Baltimore was my first big market. I mean, I worked probably 15 years, you know, Elmira, New York. I was in the Finger Lakes of New York state for a long time. I mean, I stayed in Governor for about four or five years, because eventually, you know, I got to be the Program Director in the music director. Now that that was like, wow, how? Because it was the only station in town, but you’re 24 it’s a big thing. But the good thing about it was starting at a station like that, you do everything you know. You do sports. I did play by play

Nestor Aparicio  20:56

racing, those eight

Steve Rouse  21:01

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tracks you know, you do engineering, you’re on the air, you do news. You do, you know, so you get a real great foundation to take off from. But you know, I was in Charlottesville, Virginia for a while. I was in Elmira Finger Lakes. And before Baltimore, I was in Bangor, Maine so and in Bangor is where I had my, what I always call my come to Jesus meeting, where here I was. I was like, 33 years old up there. And, you know, you’re a transient radio guy, yeah, living paycheck to paycheck. I have no money. I can barely make it. I have a girlfriend who actually is bringing home road kills. So we have dinner, you know, true story and or we’re going down on the rocks, on the water to cut, cut shellfish off, the muscles off from the stone rocks to have for dinner. I mean, by the time I got to Baltimore, I don’t think I had a muscle for like, 17 years, get crabs here. Thank God.

Nestor Aparicio  22:00

I’m glad to ask you all this, because you know you’re a legend in Baltimore already. I don’t think anybody knows that you starved in Bangor Maine.

Steve Rouse  22:07

Oh, my God. So I had my my come to Jesus meeting with myself. I literally went out into the woods and sat down and went through a very emotional thing where I’m yelling, I’m crying, I’m laughing, I’m apologizing to people that I felt I didn’t do right by over the course of these 15 years. And what am I going to do? You know, I just I can’t continue like this. So what are my alternatives? So I’m thinking of different alternatives and stuff. But I loved to be on the air, and love to be in radio. So out of that come to Jesus meeting came. I just, I got to get to a bigger place where I can make some money, you know, and, and so I worked on an air check, you know, back then, that’s how you got a job. You had your resume and made a tape of your best bits, or talk ups, or whatever it was you did. I

Nestor Aparicio  22:57

had clips in the newspaper business. My best story, put a novel, put a resume together. Deal followed up with a phone call, polite talk to HR. They had a thing, right, you know, deal

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Steve Rouse  23:07

and so I sent out to Baltimore, Charlotte and Milwaukee. Why

Nestor Aparicio  23:13

those three, I think, was there an industry sheet that had,

Steve Rouse  23:17

well, you know, back then, you had different publications that would have

Nestor Aparicio  23:22

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called editor and publisher was the name of the book. It came every month, and had all the job postings in the back. I was a junkie. All I ever wanted to do was work somewhere else. Like I said, I got written up at the sun for writing too many resumes out on the Xerox

Steve Rouse  23:35

machine. I was 19, and of course, one night you left one I got

Nestor Aparicio  23:40

offered two jobs. Anchorage Alaska offered me a chance to come up and cover the anchorage hockey team. Okay, university Alaska anchor would have been cool, and I had a chance to cover the Packers at the Appleton State Journal in Appleton, Wisconsin, all right, it was a pay cut. Live in Wisconsin. Did you do it? No, hell no. I’m still here. But, you know, I wonder what would happen. I almost took a gig with the Memphis Commercial Appeal as their pop music critic. I mean, I went down the road of trying to get, yeah, to be a transient newspaper guy. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to get the dolphins beat in West Palm Beach. Like, that’s what I wanted, right? Like, and you’re 33 and you’re screaming like, you’re on Ayahuasca trip in the middle of woods, right? Yeah. And so Baltimore calls and like, who’s the boss at 92 three? At that

Steve Rouse  24:30

92 stock, 92 star was Gary Mercer. They were owned by UBC United Broadcasting Company, and they’re playing like, Barry Manilow, that right there. Like that, yeah. Lionel Richie, yeah. And really, you read cards. There was no personality. When I got to the about halfway through my three years, stand, there were your cards, well, it’d be like your scratch off here, you know, you’d have a pile already, yeah, already. There was a writer. It’d be like Lionel Richie, Barry Manilow and. And the Beach Boys all coming up next a 92 star. That was it.

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Nestor Aparicio  25:06

So I got to interject, because, like, when I’m with a radio dude, Steve rouse is here. We’re at Costas. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery. Well, I got to get to that with you the second segment, buddy, rug out and all that stuff too. But I was doing radio. I started radio in December 13, 1991 got mount show 92 show 92 since this is 1999 I’ve been on the air in seven years. Seven years I had filled in at one on one sports for to get a nationally syndicated gig out in it. This was my corporate radio experience, right? I went out to Northbrook, Illinois, one on ones for one on one sports flash. So I went out, and I did fill in gigs, and I had my own radio station, and I had my own gear, and I had my own SDN line, and they liked me. And all of a sudden, when anybody would get sick or it was be Christmas Day, they’d say, you want to fill a shift. Pay 500 bucks, fill a shift, fill a shift, fill a shift. I said, Yes. Always. I said, Yes, always. They finally hire me. Yeah, they hire me. I did sports radio for four and a half months and and they said they brought me into the office out in Chicago, like, Hey, we’re launching a new show. It’s going to be called NFL monster Monday, and it’s going to be up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey NFL films. You’re going to do this with Steve Sable, Brian Baldinger, Ron jawarski, Merrill Hodge, they’re gonna be so you get to get your car and drive up to New Jersey every Monday for a moment for Baltimore, okay, and and do the show. And I’m like, This is great. They we’re gonna have you go up and meet Brian Baldinger. And a man named George Krieger. Came from television. George Krieger. You can google him. He’s the guy who hired Terry Bradshaw that what you know is the fox NFL team. Hire Kenny Albert. He hired Joe Bucha. He hired all of the Fox team. Half I’m still here. George got canned at Fox f you know, five years and went to run one on one sports. So here’s this television executive that comes in. I know George a little bit. George. Like me. I like George. We go upstairs at Sporting News, or not Sporting News at NFL films, and we’re about to do our first show first week, and George is sitting where Eddie’s sitting over there, and he’s writing cards out. He’s writing out note cards. Yeah, I’ve been on the air 10 years. I’ve been doing a show every day for months for this network. And I get there and he started writing me what you know to be normal, right? I never seen nothing. I interned for Scott Garceau and Mary Beth. I worked at television. I never seen anybody write note cards to tell Mr. Reporter guy, anchor guy, what to say on the air. I swear to you, he labored for an hour writing me an open right? Yeah, I did. I probably had 10,000 hours. What do you think of that? He, he, he’s my boss, so I’m sitting there Baldinger thinks this is normal, because he worked for him in television, and Krieger hands me this thing. And now I’m starting to sweat a little bit, like, I gotta read this, and he’s practicing with me, like it was like, really, like, pig vomit. Wow. He was totally like, pig WNBC. So he hands to me, and I’m like, hello friends. I’m nasty. Nestor Aparicio, and this is Brian Baldinger, my NFL, legendary partner, and we today will begin a series of new I’m playing a nasty theme song, and it

Steve Rouse  28:44

doesn’t sound like nasty to me. And

Nestor Aparicio  28:46

I, I’m like, take this job and show it. I work here. No, well, but I’m like, I got burned off. I mean, I’m 30 years old, so I’m a different guy than I am today. Now I’d laugh at the old man and say, give it to it to me. I’ll read it just the way you want. You know, I would do it that way, but to be funny. But yeah, I remember that. I remember making me itch a little bit and like there was no creativity, no. And that’s you. You thrived in creativity,

Steve Rouse  29:16

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yeah, well, and I was doing mornings in Bangor so. But let me just point this out a couple of things. One thing that you hit on, I’m going to say this before I forget it. You were willing to do anything at that point. And when I came to 92 star, they did a lot of promotions, and it was a pretty good station, really. And I did nobody else on the staff. And this is the way it was that a lot of stations, the On Air talent, hated to go out and meet the public. They just didn’t want to. They were introverts. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So many of them are that you wouldn’t realize are but, but I was willing, man, to do I don’t think in three years I was there, I don’t think I ever had just a regular base paycheck, because. Yes, I did stuff. You did read, live reads, well, all that, but just outside appearances, a lot. They did a lot of promotional stuff

Nestor Aparicio  30:07

in the world. To me, if you worked for me, and you wanted to meet our Oh, yeah, you wanted to be in cost. And I did all wanted to sit at the bar for one, but not seven, yeah, if you worked for me, you know, to me to do seven, yeah? Sometimes, yeah. I mean, we all did, but, you know,

Steve Rouse  30:21

but the other thing was, when I came from bang, I mean, I was, I was a little afraid, you know, this was a big city. I had never worked in a big city. I was intimidated a little bit. As a matter of fact, the first night I got here, I stayed at, I think it’s in the econo lodge now, actually, out here in York Road, next to Chick fil A, whatever, that little motel is there, and I went in the office to pay for the room. It was my girlfriend and I, at that time the roadkill queen. And there was a Sunday sun because it was on the weekend. And the Sunday Sun magazine was inside the Sunday sun in those days. And on the cover of that Sunday sun, do you know Tony Hill, sure, all right. Was Tony Hill, who was the overnight guy, a 92 star. And it was old story, a 92 star. The front picture was Tony Hill, a middle of night with with a shot of him, but behind him were the were the penthouse windows overlooking the city. And I looked at that, and I went, Holy shit, it’s a big, big job. This is and that’s where, that’s where I’m going to be, right? But I was, yeah, it was exciting, but it also was

Nestor Aparicio  31:29

when I flew to Northbrook, Illinois to do my first fill in at 7am on a Saturday morning, and I saw that clock and I saw the light, it was like I’d never done radio my life, and I’ve been on every day for seven years. But when you’re like, one, 808 77, what’s the number again? Yeah. But yeah. I mean, I’m like, and it was a it was a cockpit when I went in there. I mean, I worked a little W, i, t, h, with rock and Robin and Allen field and those guys in 1992 and I learned all of those radio skills of Bucha, racing, cutting, like I did, oh

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Steve Rouse  32:05

yeah, 1992 Yeah, when you edited back in those days, it was not little

Nestor Aparicio  32:11

Kenny Albert was also, like the son of legendary broadcaster, but Kenny’s a grunt. To this day, Kenny’s a grunt. You know, Kenny is a hands on. Kenny’s a worker. I mean, obviously, right? I mean, but like having that in you, no matter whether you’re making a million dollars a year, whether you’re starving a banger, right? That that wants that

Steve Rouse  32:31

one. Yeah, that’s the

Nestor Aparicio  32:32

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whole dope. So you get here, you’re at 92 you’re doing a mid days, where is the legend of good time, oldies and 1057, and you stepping into that cockpit with that ensemble that, well, won awards, it made a lot of money, and we still remember a generation

Steve Rouse  32:48

later, yeah, well, Sean Casey was the morning guy at 92 star. You know Sean, he’s at CBM now, yes, he got that. That’s how long he’s been at CBM. He got that job, and so they moved me into mornings, and so you could do a little bit more in the morning. Wendy Corey was my partner, was a news lady then, and so that was pretty good, but that went on for about a year and a half, and it was just like, I, you know, I’m kind of done with this. But you looked around the skyline of Baltimore and the different morning shows like work. Where can I go? I mean, you’ve got all these big there were a lot of big shows at that point in time. At mix at 98 Rock B, 104, I listen

Nestor Aparicio  33:28

to Greece man. And he’s a one, oh, he was a DC. I mean, you were competing with

Steve Rouse  33:33

DC, right, of course. So you had all these and so I’m sitting there going, I really want to stay in bowl. I loved Baltimore. I love this city. I mean, six months in, I was 1885

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Nestor Aparicio  33:44

right? The COVID just left. The blaster a big thing. Yeah, Orioles are on fire. All right, yep. And Harper’s coming to life, right? Power plant was huge. Fish Market,

Steve Rouse  33:56

man, hammer Jacks coming on, yeah, yeah. And, and I just, I just felt like I fit, you know, this was, this was my town. I just there was a connection almost immediately. And after the first six months, I really felt because I was out, I was all over the place and everything, I really felt that I knew the town just as well, if not better, than most of the residents, because I was everywhere, and I was learning, and I was meeting people like crazy.

Nestor Aparicio  34:21

That’s all you ever wanted to do, right? Yeah, yeah,

Steve Rouse  34:24

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exactly. So anyway, I’m sitting at 92 star, and I’m like, I don’t even, I wouldn’t even know where to apply, because all these are pretty entrenched morning shows and stuff. And then out of the blue, a guy by the name of Buzz hike, and who was a sales manager at 92 star, had gone to QSR, and he said, You want to have lunch? And I said, Sure. And he said, I’m going to invite a couple people. Carl Brenner, who owns WQs are, he was a, I think he was the last individual owner, you know, other than you, I guess that owned a station before it was corporate deal. And so I’m thinking. And what the hell you know? Because they had a show called Lou and Linda. It was Linda Sherman and Lou Krieger, and they did pretty well.

Nestor Aparicio  35:07

So they were oldies even then, right? Yeah.

Steve Rouse  35:11

So anyway, we had the lunch, and there was some interest in talking to me about coming over. And I was like, wow. Okay, so that’s, that’s pretty cool. I can’t remember exactly how that in I think I had another meeting with Steve Cochran, the Rock and Roll

Nestor Aparicio  35:26

doctor, man, I love Steve. Now, Steve of me,

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Steve Rouse  35:29

yeah, and guy, he was a great guy. He

Nestor Aparicio  35:33

hired me to DJ down at bohegers Again, late, great. Steve cock,

Steve Rouse  35:36

yeah. So anyway, one thing led to another. We worked out a deal, and all of a sudden from where I didn’t think there was anywhere to go, there was somewhere to go. And that was, that was in September of 88 where I started a Qs. So you did, 17 years. 17 years? Yep, exactly.

Nestor Aparicio  35:55

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I asked you what made it great, and you said, the callers, the people that your connection with people, I think the music, the joy in the music. I think I want to see your face. I think the turtle Singing Happy Together, or I think I love you more today than yesterday. Spiral stairs and the great

Steve Rouse  36:11

songs. And talking of the intros was huge.

Nestor Aparicio  36:15

I would just say, I want to ask you this, and then we’ll break because I want to come back talk about more crap when we come back. But when I went on the air in 1991 92 had a guy named Jim Ward who was a he and Paul capelli had done radio, and they were trying to instill something different. And Jim Ward said, if you call yourself nasty Nestor the radio, you better damn well be nasty. That was what he said. He’s a Philadelphia guy, you know, I would say when I went on the air, because you asked me 30 minutes you were interviewing me about, like, getting on the air and taking phone calls and all that I’m doing live Mike, I had no, no songs to spin,

Steve Rouse  36:52

right? Yeah, it was just, that’s why you’re so good at this. I think, yeah. I mean, it was

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Nestor Aparicio  36:56

just carrying it on, reading the paper, reading highlights, making funny observations. At the end of every shift, I’d write down everything I said that was funny, that made me laugh. I wrote down everything I said that I thought was compelling or interesting, or, you know, or what Rudy martsky might pull out and want to put in the paper, what Ray Frazier, Milton Kent would hate me for at the time, you’re trying to get publicity right in that way. And after listening to the grease man for all those years and what Stern was trying to do and was doing and getting fined by the FCC and all of that, there was such nervousness about how far to take a dick joke, or how far to take anything that had to do with sex, yeah, drugs, politics, to some degree, violence, even then, you know, greaseman famously got fired over a racial joke, you know, like, where, what, what Andrew Dice Clay could get away with and what he could get away with on your show. And the 730 words, we all know the Carlin, those are the things we couldn’t do, right? But, man, the envelope was getting pushed in a lot of ways. And I wonder how often somebody who’s trying to be, I mean, you said before, the first things you said to me here was something we made a Justin Tucker, sort of a funny, funny off the air. And I’m thinking, you’re a funny MFR, but I don’t know how that would have played on QSR in 1988 versus 1998 versus the day you got fired because the errors of what, yeah, you could or couldn’t wear that, right? But I mean a morning show, guy of your stature, with your ratings, nasty Nestor got away and pissed off people in various ways, but I had rules too, right? Yeah, just a general not just the fact that I had integrity. My mother was listening every day, and I never lie to this day. I’ve never conjured anything thought, what’s gonna get ratings, or what’s gonna people think I’ve I stir things up, and I’m like, that’s a dumbest if you said that about me, you’ve never met me. I’ve never conspired in that way. But I never had to build a show either. I never sat around and had to do stick come up with bits things that you were demanded to do, right? And then where the edge of that line is of where the punch line is, where? Man, you had some older women. You had religious at all. Well,

Steve Rouse  39:15

it’s interesting. You bring that up. You

Nestor Aparicio  39:17

don’t want to get those you don’t want the boss getting angry. No, no, you know.

Steve Rouse  39:21

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And a few times he did, you know worse. But our my rule was always, and it seemed to work was you go up to the line and you leave it sort of open. Where’s the line? Well, but you go up to this line that you feel is safe, but close your line, yeah, but close and you let the listener fill in the answer, fill in the end, let them, let them write their own punches. Go with it. Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s basically what we did a lot, I think, yeah. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  39:52

I made a massage reference when he got here. Set you up if you want, if you want to use your life.

Steve Rouse  39:57

Remember, what is it was mold. I don’t. You remember what I said? It was funny.

Nestor Aparicio  40:01

I had a special massage technique done to me, and you found that to be rather humorous in the air of Justin Tucker and so, yeah, whatever. But obviously he did. It’s not humorous at all. But no, but there’s the point, right? Yeah, somebody dare you, my wife’s a messiah. My wife was abused by Justin. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know where, what, exactly where the line is. Now, I own my FCC license. I am my own boss. I fired myself several times. Didn’t work out at all but, but that that in the modern era, curio wellness is my client. Now, if you made a I was getting high last night joke, but you could play, you would have been fired. You were set on the air. I got high last night at a concert, but Paul Simon could go behind and smoke himself a j in a song that you would play next to me.

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Steve Rouse  40:49

And like, so like, well, you just have to. I was always

Nestor Aparicio  40:54

worried for guys like you, that you were, well, it

Steve Rouse  40:57

really helps when you’ve done it for a few years, because you know your audience, you know you can’t,

Nestor Aparicio  41:04

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and we were slip up, man, silly, you know? I

Steve Rouse  41:08

mean, I swore. I swore a couple times on the air. Just did you, yeah, totally accident, you know, and did you seven second it? Or we, I hate to say this, but we didn’t have any delay, no delay on that show. Wow,

Nestor Aparicio  41:24

weren’t managed by me. Oh,

Steve Rouse  41:28

I wish I’d known that I would have called interview time.

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Nestor Aparicio  41:34

I’ll say this to make you laugh, because you’re a real radio you know, Jr was has been my executive producer since 1998 Did you know Dwight Weller? Did you ever get to know Dwight? Dwight passed away. Dwight was my first engineer. So God bless Dwight. Weller. Lost him a long, long time ago. I mean, I broadcast from his mother’s shed over here, behind the row fo off Timonium, right the other side of here. We broadcast the whole summer in his mother’s shed, summer 93 when we were building the studio, and people come out and mow the lawn, and we’d have to shut the shed. I’d shut the shed on the air. I know I would. No, it didn’t have one of those. Yeah, you pulled the damn thing. Yeah? I mean, I’m telling you, six blocks from here, we do that. So Jr, you built this whole thing. And the seven second delay had the big red button, yeah, had a red button on it. And there were, there were people so obsessed with making jokes about my mother or telling me to go fornicate myself at various points, that when the seven second delay would dump, it would take a couple of minutes to

Steve Rouse  42:32

catch back up, right? So we at

Nestor Aparicio  42:35

various points, we had a one two punch where somebody would call in and say, I’m going to drop an F bomb. You’re going to be the next caller. You drop another one too. Ray Bachman, you’re a saint for catching

Steve Rouse  42:48

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so the second one would get on. Of course it would get on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I was filling in a 98 rock obviously, that they actually blipped me out a couple of times where I was thinking, I thought this was I probably would have said this on my show, so I don’t you know who know? Well,

Nestor Aparicio  43:05

that’s why I asked you about it, because there really is an invisible line, yeah. And for guys like you, in that seed of being the number one morning show guy, you were, it was incumbent that you’d be funny. People hated you and loved you, because that’s the nature of the thing. And 1f up and you know, they were gonna try to come and get you, you know, well,

Steve Rouse  43:24

most of the time we got in trouble for pranks. Yeah, that’s what I mean. You know, we would pull some stuff off, like on our boss couple. He was, he was a big traveler. Bill Pasha is the Wake Up Calls. Everybody says, Hey, we loved your wake up calls that wasn’t us, we never or the birthday wake up call that wasn’t us, but we call like, like, Bill, funny bill, he’d travel. He was in London once, and so we and he would never tell us where he was staying, because he knew trust us, you know, well, but we would find out always somehow, and he never knew how, but we did, like, one time we we ordered, you know, called as him and said, you know, we’re having a celebration in our room. And we would like, this is funny, your most expensive bottle of champagne that you have, you know, it would be a in house bar, some orange juice to mimosa, fresh base, and you can just put it on my bill. And so he, when he got back, he didn’t even real, he didn’t even look at his bill. But he thought, Geez, that was pretty expensive, I guess. And so when we told him, We how is the champagne? He was like, what? And the next day he came in, he goes, that bottle of champagne costs more than my room for the week.

Nestor Aparicio  44:36

You get this on the air, you know, just work

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Steve Rouse  44:38

related. Well, you’ll love this. One another time, another time. He was, I think he was in Montreal, and so we called up and said he, you know, I’ve got this crazy, I get this crazy allergic reaction to towels, you know, linen, I don’t know might be what they’re washing. I don’t know what it is, but I would like you to take all the towels out of my room. Them. And if you could replace it with paper like paper towels, that would be great. And so he and his wife would come back, and he’d have, all know it not a towel in the in the bathroom, but but paper towels, you know, take a shower with. And so I would not want to have been your boss. That was the Oh. And then another classic one was when we put posters of his picture and saying he was he, you know, we’re looking for this man for public nudity, you know, he, that was a bad one. Our producer, he didn’t like that Well, our producer, Maynard and Mike. Mike Maynard, yeah, yeah, you know. So they got in a little trouble about that. I was like, I didn’t know about No,

Nestor Aparicio  45:42

I only had one wacky wake up call Mickey Coachella, when he was doing 98 rock early on. I’m laying in bed, and it’s before I was married. I had, I had a Swedish girlfriend. She was down for a week. I’m laying in bed at 628, in the morning, and my phone goes off, and it might have been one of the brick phones back in the late 90s, a cellular one,

Steve Rouse  46:00

yeah, a shoe phone, and I answered it,

Nestor Aparicio  46:06

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and, hey, it’s Mickey. You’re on the air. I’m like, Oh, God, Mickey, you got me. What? What? And I’m like, What stupid things he gonna do? And I just kept waiting for him to

Steve Rouse  46:19

do something. The punch line never came

Nestor Aparicio  46:23

question, or somebody’s trying to get me to settle a bed or something anyway. And I’m like, I was a little disappointed he didn’t break my balls worse than he did, because I thought, I thought this was part of the shtick. And I’m like, that’s all you wanted. I’m gonna go back to bed. It was

Steve Rouse  46:36

interesting. Yeah, it was interesting when I would fill in at 98 rock like, if Josh was out, I would do the news. If Amelia was out, I would sit in for her or sit in for Mickey. But, you know, they would often have porn actresses on the air, sure,

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Nestor Aparicio  46:50

and that’s what I mean, where the edge is, I don’t know

Steve Rouse  46:53

where, right, right? Well, at one point, you know, I’m sitting there, and a girl’s sitting right next to me, and I said, in between, you know, during a break, I said, Yeah, I gotta get some water. And the girl had a bottle of water in front of her. She goes, you can have some of mine. And I was like, how do you answer this question? Right? I might have a call. And she, and she, you know, she called me out, and she was, you don’t want to drink out of my bottle. And I was like, you know, what do you say? No, I don’t give me that, you know, stuff like that.

Nestor Aparicio  47:27

Steve rouse is here. He did morning radio. He’s still funnier than I am. You made me I’m crying a little. I Mickey. I did his podcast couple weeks ago. You did Mickey? Yeah, I did Mickey’s podcast, and Mickey thinks I’m funny, and he’s always encouraging me to do stand up, right, right? And so we’re working on that we’ve been working on for 25

Steve Rouse  47:45

8

years, and he’s got a great theater there. Did you enjoy that theater? Yeah,

Nestor Aparicio  47:51

I saw the hammer Jacks movie in that theater when they Okay, when, when they screened it over there. But I said to Mickey, like, within 15 minutes, I’m gonna be in here crying, and within 15 minutes, I’ve got my glasses off tears. Mickey makes me laugh. Yeah, he just, like, our friendship makes me laugh, yeah. And so I had fun being with him, but, like, I knew you would make me laugh. So thanks for coming

Steve Rouse  48:12

out. It’s been a long time. You know what’s right? Little rusty, you

Nestor Aparicio  48:17

crab cake. Still, I want to ask you about your farm and all that stuff. I want to ask like, where you’ve been the last 20 years. I last 20 years. I want to ask you a couple questions. I want to talk lottery with you and Buddy rugo and all your lottery stuff. Because I told John Martin that was having you out today. And John’s from Ohio got here 15 years ago. Not all that familiar with you, but very familiar with Buddy rugo, right? And I said to him, you were you and Buddy were, like, it was, it was shtick, and, yeah, it was a big part of that so and I feel like whenever I do my stick, especially with John, sort of channeling buddy a little bit, your first ever million dollar winner, that I’m sure you were a part of the radio with him, your wacky Saturday Night Live show you did, too.

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Steve Rouse  48:53

That’s right. How do you remember that? I remember that only lasted like because

Nestor Aparicio  48:58

I was a kid here I idolized morning show host who had 12 ratings. You know that Steve rouse is here. He’s wearing his Baltimore appropriately, a city Connect. Thank you. You know they lose a lot in that, right? No, yeah, they do. Okay, we’re here. Costas is all brought to you by the Maryland lottery, our friends, a curio wellness. You know what they do? Right? Stuff? You couldn’t talk about 30 years ago, but they do wellness, and they do this move product I have is great for my neck and my back, so I’m very appreciative. And they’re based right here at based right here, Timonium. You see Timonium Pikesville up in Elkton as well. They’re sponsoring our 27th anniversary. This guy made it 20 years. About him already. How many years did you make it

Steve Rouse  49:32

20? Well, 17 on the routes to cover years you were here, and then 15

Nestor Aparicio  49:35

before that, that we learned about, yeah, in romantic places like Bangor and Elmira. It was great. My dad was born in Elmira. So another one was he really? Yeah, absolutely 1919, Earl Weaver, Earl Weaver. Elmira. Absolutely a good book, too. All right, we’re gonna come back. We’re gonna do more of this. Is your life with Steve rouse I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore. Positive crab cakes coming next.