Nothing Could Be Nine-er

A toast then. To nine years! Clink! To nine pretty damn successful years! Clink! To nine years of body-function humor, Henderson jokes, offensive comments, parody songs, blatant sexual innuendo and the unshakable belief that you can't go too far, and did we mention blatant sexual innuendo? A toast to blatant sexual innuendo! Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! To nine big-talking, prank-calling, potty-mouthing, laff-rioting, Styx-song-introducing years in Las Vegas morning radio! Clink! A toast then, to Johnson and Tofte! (Note: Examine your glass carefully before you drink.)(Because with these guys you never know.)

Yep, it's been nine years since the roundish Ken Johnson and the tallish Jim Tofte first deposited their spittle on the microphones at KKLZ 96.3-FM, where they now reign as the city's No. 2 morning show behind the hated Howard Stern on KXTE 107.5-FM. (They'll celebrate with a Feb. 26 bash at Sunset Station.) According to the New York Public Library Reference Guide, the ninth is the pottery anniversary, so consider this story a gift crock.

"If you love a community the way we love this one," Johnson says, attempting to explain the duo's staying power during a commercial break one morning last week, "it's going to love you back -- once they figure it out. You're sort of vindicated for putting in the time." It helps that their nine years coincide roughly with the city's latest boom cycle; what was the 72nd radio market in the country when they arrived is now No. 40.

Radio is a nomadic biz. Nine is an eternity in deejay years -- they'd be candidates for engraved watches and forced retirement if they held real jobs. "It's like 30 years in any other business," Johnson says. If you've lived and listened in Las Vegas for long, you know what an unusual tenure that is (longest in the valley, they say). One naturally wonders what combination of talent, format, weird karma and satanic intervention accounts for such longevity.

"Well, we offer a genuine alternative," Johnson says. "We're genuinely funny, if I may be so immodest. Plus there's tunes! Our show isn't constantly four hours of ego blather" (obliquely referring to the hated Howard Stern).

"All that, and a little bit of luck," Tofte adds. "We've had so many owners, we've lost track." Any of them could have cleaned house at the dip of a ratings point; some, in fact, have seemed as if they were about to. "The last owners were not very supportive," Tofte says. "They made us feel as if we were about to walk the plank."

"When Centennial (Broadcasting) bought the station, they told us, 'Our first priority is to sign you guys,' " Johnson says. "They said, 'Now the handcuffs are off.' "

"Just a few hours before that, we were feeling pretty low," Tofte says.

"They were actually unsigned," General Manager Harry Williams says of Centennial's purchase of KKLZ last summer. "The first thing we did, before we even bought the station, was to get these guys to fall in love with us and get them signed."

They work in a tiny Tropicana Avenue studio. The walls are done up in classic (read: really old) record covers and posters. KKLZ's format is pure radio comfort food, soft chewables by such walker rockers as Foreigner, Bob Seger, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Yawn, Led Zzzzzzzzz ... Their listeners, they say, hardly surprisingly, cross categorical lines, from construction workers to doctors and lawyers -- "they run the gamut of the spectrum," Johnson says.

Along with newscaster, sidekick and fifth-Beatle-like presence Dennis Mitchell, Johnson and Tofte are aided and abetted by a geek chorus of characters, none of whom exist, all of whom are more real than Mark and Mercedes combined. Ed in the Booth, Big Fat White Guy, Little Fat White Guy and others barge into each morning's conversation with comments Johnson and Tofte don't want to mouth themselves, even though, technically, their mouths are saying them. "My testicles are a temple," Big Fat blurts this morning, apropos -- one sincerely hopes -- of nothing.

Nor is that the only time they push the boundaries of good taste: "I think Billy Joel still has a lot of good music left in him," Johnson says at one point. Talk about your shock jocks! Or there's this, No. 1 on Ed in the Booth's list of "Top Five Miracles Not Mentioned in the Bible":

"Moses then parted the red cheeks and let forth a blast which halted the Egyptians in their path!"

"You alienated several groups right then," Mitchell groans on the air.

"I guess the most irresponsible thing we ever did or said," Johnson admits later, "was the one April Fool's Day when we repeatedly told Henderson residents to boil their water and not to go outside (without stating exactly why). When you live in Timet Country, ya take them things serious, and the city got pretty angry." In an act of mild contrition, they ended up in the dunk tank during Henderson Days.

"We sent up an inflatible naked lady, filled with helium," Tofte recalls. The object: The person who finds it wins a prize. "However, it shot up so high we thought it might fly over McCarran. That wouldn't have been good, although the publicity!" (It landed in a Henderson yard.) Or, "There was the guy who ate nearly a whole pack of cigarettes (as an in-studio prank) and he threw up all over Dennis' office. That was pretty funny."

While clearly unafraid to go lowbrow, they can be funny in a way that lets you know they read the papers. Tofte once cracked that Russian political candidates were promising "a chicken in every time zone." This morning, when Johnson accidentally turns on the seven-second delay mechanism, distorting Boston's "Don't Look Back," he finishes with a not exactly obvious ad-lib: "That was the Dr. Mengele edit," he purrs. And somewhere out in radioland, a KKLZ listener looks up from his doughnuts and beer and exclaims, "Huh?" Their humor has been applauded by no less a personage than Soupy Sales, who termed a Johnson and Tofte pie-throwing gag "the funniest thing I've ever seen." No small praise indeed.

The two have had their Arbitron ups and downs, but the latest figures place them a solid second behind Howard Stern in all the right demographics.

"Nine years is an asset," Johnson says, like a brand name, although one undermined by the transitory nature of Las Vegas. "It's hard to keep the awareness going." On the other hand, it gives them a tremendous backlog of old bits they can peddle as fresh material to an unsuspecting new crowd.

"I account for their popularity, pure and simple," Big Fat White Guy grumbles in his gravelly basso. "Check the Arbitron ratings ... their ratings have soared since I joined the show full-time. What can I say? The ladies love me." Ed in the Booth was unavailable for comment.

What's your explanation, Ed in the Booth? "Well, they both have such lovely breasts."

Johnson and Tofte came to town with a short-timer's mentality after losing their jobs to a format change in Kansas City (they've been together 15 years, starting in Peoria, Ill.). "We thought we'd stay for a year or two and then move on to an Atlanta or a San Diego," Tofte says. "Our agent told us, 'Don't ever buy a house, don't get settled, because you're going to be moving every two years for the rest of your life.' "

But they're no longer the same guys they were back then -- nine years of playing "Benny and the Jets" puts a man through many changes. "We're not the least bit antsy (to move on)," Johnson says. For one thing, he loves playing video poker; can't imagine life without it now. And the mountains are pretty. For another, like many normal people, they have homes, kids in school, roots in the community. "Ken even goes to my church," Williams says.

"What normally happens," he adds, "is that people this good constantly move up in market size until they reach a Top 10 market. Fortunately for us, J and T and their families love Las Vegas."

"We're planted, at least until contract time comes up," Johnson says, in what can only be called a quip. So emblematic of the Las Vegas experience have they become that a BBC film crew recently included them in a documentary about the city.

"The offer would have to be tremendous for us to move," Tofte says. (A recent offer from an Atlanta station wasn't tremendous enough.)

Off the air, they insist, they are not the people they sound like they are -- that is, people who, in Johnson's words, "have made disabled people cry."

"Our wives get questioned about that all the time," Tofte says.

Johnson offers a little psych 101: "That part of us that does all the bad things, we get it out four hours a day here. At home, we're quiet and unassuming. You wouldn't know it's us."

"We can't treat our wives the way we treat our listeners," Tofte says. Says Williams, "They're wonderful family guys."

All right, all right, snap out of it -- that's enough crock for one story. Time for a final toast. Not only to family and roots and community and Dennis and Ed and wise management and the enduring love of a good audience, but to that singular quality that makes Johnson and Tofte so happy here, a quality Johnson sums up like this: "We've gotten the standards lowered so nicely here."

Clink!

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