WQMF Trivia: WQMF came into existence in 1981. Previously the frequency belonged to WQHI. WQMF's first owner was Frank "Bo" Wood, whose family owned WEBN in Cincinnati. In the 1986, WQMF sold for around $5 million to Otting Broadcasting. WQMF is licensed to Jeffersonville, Indiana. WQMF had a sister station, 105.9 WQNF, a Class A FM licensed to Valley Station in Kentucky.

Off The Wall

Can anybody listen to these two guys every morning
without being offended? Probably not.

By Mary Dieter
Photographed by Gary S. Chapman

They're raucous and rowdy, outrageous and bawdy, occasionally offensive and faintly foul-mouthed.

They're also funny, and quite the rage among listeners to morning radio in the Louisville area.

Ron Clay and Terry Meiners, the new dukes, ah, dorks of Louisville, undoubtedly offend any number of people who happen across WQMF-96 on the FM radio dial. But a sizable, loyal group of listeners finds Clay and Meiners' irreverent brand of humor hilarious. They tickle the most sensitive funny bones, poke the most tender of ribs and trod heavily on many toes. They have little sense of decorum, few limitations and no sacred cows.

No one escapes their satire; every human foible is fodder for their humor. They make fun of their boss, their competitors, their listeners, their critics; they laugh at ethnic groups, minorities, religious people, homosexuals, even themselves.

"We hit every ethnic group. There's nobody left we haven't done - except Filipinos," Clay said.

"And that's only because we don't know any," Meiners added.

Clay continued: "I think we are racist, but it's every race. There's no sacred race. If anything, we make whites look bad. If we're sexist, it's a reverse sexism, where we make men look bad."

Added Meiners: "Of course, I am [sexist and racist]. Everyone is, to a degree. It's all contingent upon your personal environment -- the way you were raised. But we mean nothing malicious whatsoever. We make fun of ourselves the most. We're always the dupes."

"We're back live!" Meiners says to the fictitious studio audience. Silence.

"How about this one? In 17 minutes, the show will be over!"

There is uncontrolled cheering, howling and applause, courtesy of one of the dozens of sound-effect tapes used on the show.

For every Culture Corner, for which the most ancient ethnic jokes are dragged out; for every Fagnet, in which gay detectives parody the old Dragnet television show; for every derogatory or demeaning reference to women, there are dozens of jokes in which Clay and Meiners are the butts. That may not satisfy sensitive listeners, but it apparently has appeased thousands of others, whose allegiance has made Clay and Meiners' "The Show With No Name" the second most popular radio program in the morning in the Louisville area. The show is on from 6 to 10 a.m. weekdays, and about 116,600 people tune in sometime every day.

"No one escapes. That's why I think their show is fine," said John Page Otting, president and general manager of WQMF -- or "the big old funky Q," as Meiners calls it. "Race, color, creed -- nothing escapes."

Otting said he receive "a few complaints," mostly from people who've tuned in for the first time, because "you have to listen to show a little bit to realize that" everybody and everything is subject to satire.

Even Otting, dubbed "Diamond John" by Clay and Meiners because of his penchant for wearing diamonds, is frequently the butt of jokes.

"Mr. Diamond John Otting has dubbed us the New Dorks of Louisville," Meiners intones indignantly.

Otting ordered 10,000 business cards for Clay and Meiners, or so the story goes, that were to call them the New Dukes of Louisville, a would-be slap at rival Bill Bailey, better known as the Duke of Louisville. But the fictitious cards came back imprinted with "the New Dorks of Louisville."

Indignant about the slight, Clay blames Otting, "a guy who takes his pants off, gets on the station's moped and drives around the community here."

"They make tremendous fun of me," Otting said. "1 don't know if I always appreciate it. The fact of the matter is I never say anything about it because the only people who ever complain [are those who] get their toes stepped on. Consequently, when they make fun of me, I think I have to be like everybody else. I just kind of laugh along with them."

In that vein, Otting refuses to set arbitrary limits on the material Clay and Meiners use. "I don't think you can do that with creative people. Some people do, and I think what happens is they wind up blowing a lot of that creativity. I feel part of my job is to enhance it."

That doesn't mean he's not occasionally shaken by what he hears on the program. "I've almost cut my throat about 10,000 times shaving in the morning."

Clay and Meiners are complaining about the latest guest appearance of the Knurd Brothers, Floyd and Ernie, on their show. Actually, they play the Knurds on tapes.

Clay: "Do we have to do this? These guys are stupid."

Meiners: "These guys are stupid; they live with their mom -- and they're in their 30s.... They apparently have pictures of Mr. Diamond John Otting, the station manager. They have pictures of him in some precarious position, and they gain whatever they want."

Clay: "It's not going to help us in ratings, you know."

Diamond John was probably bleeding again.

Irreverent, zany and off-the-wall, their shticks feature larger-than-life characters, double-entendres and bizarre situations. They can be of questionable taste, even juvenile, but Clay and Meiners said they work within self-imposed boundaries of good taste.

They regularly conduct celebrity deathwatches, which relay the latest health condition of a well-known figure. When Soviet Premier Konstantin Chernenko died, they asked their listeners to call in suggestions for a more resilient leader.

They name their characters using plays on words -- and get away with saying words on the air that aren't fit to print in a family newspaper. They took the family situation comedy "Leave It to Beaver" and transformed it into a 41-episode drama that had June Cleaver skiing with the pope and the Beaver accidentally taking drugs.

They mock the heavy-metal music played on their station, as well as the people who program it. (Off the air they imply that they don't even like the music.)

When newsman Jim Douglas left the station several years ago, they claimed he was leaving to have a sex-change operation. When his replacement, Tanna Guthrie, came, she went along with the gag by using the name "Jamie Douglas."

When Clay accidentally plays a song twice within 10 minutes, they blame Jeff, the engineer, who doesn't really exist.

Meiners: (Yells to "Jeff") "And that's the last time, OK? You're taking money again from the Bryan Adams people, aren't you? (To the fictitious studio audience) We leave the room one minute, we play the new Springsteen thing off the USA for Africa album and the engineer sneaks in and throws on the same Bryan Adams tune he played 10 minutes ago."

Clay: (Shouts to "Jeff") "Congress is going to be looking into your career, Jeff"

Meiners: "This payola thing left the radio in the '50s buddy."

Clay: "They don't do that anymore."

Meiners: "Our apologies to you folks who are sickened by Bryan Adams records."

"Here is something you ought to know about this show," Meiners said one morning. "Everything on this show is a lie, except for the time and weather forecast. That's the best disclaimer I could give this show."

Meiners, left, says of his association with Clay, "We aren't friends; we're business associates."

Clay and Meiners have an uncanny rapport on the air. They finish each other's sentences, complete a thought with an ad-lib comment that's right on the mark. But their voices, their sizes, their appearances, their lifestyles couldn't be more different.

"Ron and I have absolutely nothing in common except this show," Meiners said. "We aren't friends; we're business associates. Our philosophies on comedy are 180 degrees apart. It puts a lot of strain on this relationship and this show."

If their styles were rated the way movies are, Meiners' humor might earn a PG, Clay's, an R -- a difference that sometimes causes friction. "Occasionally, we'll have a conflict about a routine..., and occasionally that comes to a head, and we'll just drop something."

So what are these two zanies like off the job? Very different from their on-air personas, according to their wives and close friends. They're funny, those people said, but they're less animated at home than on the show. And each has a serious side.

Meiners is tall, blond and, at 28, balding. His clothes are of the preppy variety: plaid shirt, red tie, khaki slacks and suede saddle shoes.

"If you look up 'straight' in the dictionary, his picture is next to it," said Deborah Keesee Meiners, 34, his wife since Dec. 22. "He is a very, very witty person," she said. "But the people who know him very well would also probably tell you he's an extremely serious person. He's very serious about life. He's very goal oriented. He's extremely conservative in his political views…

"I think in some respects he is constantly embarrassed that [as he puts it] he doesn't have a real job. This is not a valid job. I think that comes from his background and his Catholic upbringing."

Meiners is the fifth of 14 children born to Mel and Norma Meiners of Louisville and probably developed his "smart aleck" personality as "kind of a defense mechanism in a large family," Deborah Meiners said. He loves basketball and plays almost daily. He'd rather attend a church picnic or Boy Scout dinner than go to a bar, and he attends church fairly regularly, said his wife, a systems analyst at Capital Holding Corp.

"This kind of occupation just fits real well with his personality," said Mike Kremer, Meiners' best friend since elementary school. "It's his way with people. He's just always enjoyed meeting a lot of people, getting to know them."

Clay, 35, is smaller than Meiners, and his shaggy brown hair and short beard make him look more the part of a disc jockey. Except for the brown, suede high-top moccasins, his clothing is monochromatic: dark-gray jeans with white stripes, a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled, a dark vest and tie.

"I think sometimes people tend to see him as being just a fun-and-'let's party' type guy," said Sonia Clay, 32, Ron's wife for 15 years. "Really, he's very much a family man and a respectable member of the community."

He is quiet, kind and an observer. "He enjoys people-watching, and he has a tendency to just sit back and take things in," said Mrs. Clay, a homemaker. He is also a "wonderful father" who spends a lot of time with their two daughters, Kasey, 9, and Kori, 6, she said. "He's not the type who goes out bowling, goes to the bars, goes to the discos." In the 19 years they've known each other, "I don't think I've ever seen him dance."

On the show, Clay's character has been married six times, and he often talks about his wives. "At one time, he mentioned his first wife," Mrs. Clay said, "and I have asked him to please not do that any more because I consider myself his first wife and the five after that don't bother me."

The Clays are into metaphysical study and attend a meditation session nearly every Sunday night. Jim McCarty, who leads the session, said Clay became interested in studying "the larger perspective -- major questions and philosophical issues" -- about four years ago. He had interviewed two members of the study group for a humorous segment on the air and was intrigued.

McCarty said that Clay injects humor into the study group, important when philosophical questions get heavy.

Terry Meiners and Ron Clay will say almost anything so long as it's tasteless,
tactless and offends almost everyone. No wonder so many listeners love them.

Clay and Meiners first teamed up at WLRS-FM in March 1982. Clay had come to the station in 1978, Meiners in 1980.

Both had been in radio, tired of it and quit. Clay, who learned radio from his father, had worked in California and Missouri, but returned to his native New York "to sort of recuperate" from the grind. While there, he was offered a job at the same small station in Binghamton, his home town, that had given him his first job in 1972.

"1 went in there, not really caring whether I succeeded or not, so as a result, with that kind of attitude, I was doing some crazy things," Clay said. "I was using the sound effects and playing around, being disrespectful to everything. It seemed to work."

In two months, he made a tape in response to an advertisement from WLRS for a DJ to experiment with humor. He got the job.

Meiners became interested in radio while a student at St. Xavier High School. He met Coyote Calhoun, now a DJ at WAMZ in Louisville, who invited him to the station and taught him the business.

Meiners spent four years at WKQQ in Lexington, starting while a University of Kentucky student. He was expelled from his dormitory just before Christmas of his second year when he accidentally broke a water pipe that flooded the dorm and put 300 young men out of rooms dining finals week. He quit school, but stayed at the station, where "they let me start playing around a little bit, exercise my sense of humor."

Tired of radio, he managed an Indianapolis grocery store owned by a brother. But after two armed robberies at the store and "four months of no sleep, I decided radio wasn't such bad idea after all."

Meiners didn't want to be on the air, and he returned to the business as production director at WLRS. But he relented, filling in for absent DJs and later going on full-time.

Meanwhile, WLRS was experimenting with partners for Clay and eventually turned to Meiners. "It was real apparent that, before it could work, there had to be some chemistry," Clay said. "Terry was probably about the craziest person on the staff other than me. So they put us together as an experiment, and it really worked."

They got little direction from the station. "It was just basically up to us," Clay said. "But the chemistry worked, and there was real good interplay right from the start, because we both have kind of warped ideas of reality."

Ten months later, in January 1983, Clay and Meiners were hired away by rival WQMF in Jeffersonville, Ind. Clay said that they had asked for a written contract and a pay raise when the morning ratings rose, but WLRS "procrastinated us out the door." Otting offered a raise and a contract -- and they accepted -- on Jan. 5. They started a show on WQMF the next day, a Friday, only to be yanked off the air by a court order.
Clay and Meiners were allowed back on the air on Monday, but weeks later a judge ruled that the show couldn't be called "Morning Sickness." "The Show With No Name" was born.

Clay and Meiners have generated complaints and controversy, but they remain popular with listeners.

"The people I know who listen to them range in age from 22 to 35," said Dale Miller, 31, of Clarksville, Ind., who works for Storer Communications. "They don't listen to the music. They're probably channel switchers."

They've developed "almost a cult following," he said. He thinks they're funny but said some of the humor is "close to character defamation."

Candi Kempf, 16, said she's not offended by the humor, nor are her classmates at Jeffersonville High School. "You've got to take it with a grain of salt," she said. "I think they're neat."

Wayne Perkey of WHAS-AM, who has the top-rated morning show in the Louisville area, said Clay and Meiners are "sort of underground going legit."

"There's a place for Ron and Terry, sure," Perkey said. "They do what they do very well." But he believes, "you don't have to do things that are vulgar and in bad taste and blue to be funny."

Coyote Calhoun, Meiners' mentor, said, "I'm real proud. I think Terry's excellent on the air.... If somebody's offended by it, they don't have to listen to it."

Clay said that a man once told him that he had been unable to communicate with his teenage son for several years before they started listening to the show together, giving them something in common.

Meiners recalled the time he and Clay helped patch up a faltering marriage by arranging a conference call between the estranged husband and wife. "It was tremendous," he said. "I felt like I was 10 feet tall.... That one day, I felt like the whole three years of this nonsense was worth it because we actually did something worthwhile."

And even one of their victims, former Jefferson County Commissioner Carl Brown, laughs at the two, who made fun of him after he experienced a very public manic episode in Central Park in February 1983.

Before that, Brown had frequently visited the show and made on-the-air plugs for his congressional candidacy. Because of that, Meiners said, the team couldn't ignore Brown's well- publicized troubles.

"They're entitled to do that," Brown said. "That's done in good humor, if poor taste. I believe that you should kick a politician when he's down. I wasn't bothered by that at all."

But critics of Clay and Meiners, including Courier-Journal television and radio critic Tom Dorsey, took them to task. "That sort of unfunny stuff and some other sick jokes are a rotten example for a station that openly caters to teen-agers," Dorsey wrote. "If getting an audience depends on preying on the unfortunate, WQMF ought to reconsider whether it's worth the rating."

Said Brown, who again appeared on the show in April to plug his judo classes at the YMCA: "I appreciate the intention of Mr. Dorsey, but I don't mind being laughed at. There's an awfully big need for the kind of irreverence and refreshing good humor those two bring to everything."

Mary Dieter is chief of the Courier-Journal's Southern Indiana Bureau. Gary S. Chapman is on the Magazine staff.

Raunch radio is running a little scared these days and backing down a bit.

The back-pedaling comes after renewed attacks by the Federal Communications Commission on what it terms "indecent" programming by so-called shock jocks. The FCC action is not just all talk either.

The ax came down on WFBQ-FM in Indianapolis a few weeks ago, when the FCC fined the station $10,000 for broadcasting offensive material.

The FCC's unofficial position about off-color material on regular broadcast radio and TV is that controversial material is available to adults through other sources, such as cassettes and cable. Raunch doesn't need to be on stations over which parents have little control.

The commission said four broadcasts of WFBQ's "Bob and Tom Show" between 1987 and '89 fit squarely within its definition of indecency. The FCC, which didn't detail the offending words, said only that the morning drive-time broadcasts "contained lewd and vulgar language on depictions or descriptions of sexual organs and activities."

Some stations thought it was unfair of the commission to review 3-year-old shows in assessing fines. They argued that the FCC is making new rules and applying them to old programs.

A few listeners in the Louisville area have written the FCC in the past complaining about morning drive-time programming on WQMF, but the station says it knows of no current FCC investigation or complaints.

However, WQMF is very much aware of the FCC's actions and appears to have toned down Ron Clay's routines on his "Morning Asylum" show. "We are always concerned when it comes to the FCC," said Bill May, who took over as program director this summer.

"The trouble," said May, "is that they don't define any of the rules whatsoever and don't give us any guidelines as to what they consider indecent." He said that Clay's act is a far cry from the Indianapolis station's show.

"They ('The Bob and Tom Show') walk a fine line, right on the edge with every show," May said. "They really push it, far more than we ever would."

WQMF-FM's Ron Clay appears to have toned
down his "Morning Asylum" Radio Show

May acknowledged that Clay's jokes and conversation are "a little risqué at times. He said he was surprised when he arrived in Louisville this summer to take over at QMF and "heard another station (WLRS) doing a show called 'The Bitch and the Boy.' That seems to be in pretty bad taste," he said.

May agreed that the FCC's actions have had an effect on what Clay is doing. "We're being a little more careful," he said. "We understand which direction the wind is blowing on this issue. We're not taking any chances because we're in the business of staying in business and, if you don't have a license, you can't do that."

The Indianapolis fine followed an FCC vote to extend its ban on indecent material to 24 hours a day. Previously the commission had said certain "adult materials and shows" could be broadcast from midnight to 6 a.m.

The agency has been threatening to take action against raunch radio for a long time. Its reputation as a toothless tiger tempted stations to push the limits, especially on the very competitive 5-9 a.m. drive time radio shifts so popular with youngsters and teen-agers.

Many students listen to those stations on the car radio on the way to school. That's how the foul-mouthed fellows were introduced to many parents, who saw red when they heard the blue material.

It didn't take many letters to members of Congress and the commission to turn up the heat. The word went out about two years ago that the FCC was on the warpath. Some stations took the hint by cleaning up their acts and muzzling their personalities. Others apparently though the FCC was bluffing.

The problem is that the FCC is the judge, jury and executioner. It allows just five, politically appointed commissioners to be the sole arbiters of what is indecent and unacceptable.

Obscenity has always been as difficult to define as the "community standards" the U.S. Supreme Court is always wrestling with. What is harmless entertainment to one person is pornography to another.

Some people say the only way to protect the First Amendment right to free speech is to look the other way. They argue that there's no controlling censorship once it gets started. However, the commission, the Congress and most of the public have always considered children a separate area to be protected. Even the Supreme Court, in its long and controversial debate over obscenity, has held that children should be sheltered.

Junior high school students in general have always thought crude humor hilarious. The jokes and words are nothing new to most of them. Most soon outgrow the immature smut. To argue, however, that nothing is out of bounds is to say that anything goes - a standard that few parents are willing to tolerate.

Government decree about anything the media does is a deplorable and dangerous way to handle such problems. Raunch radio has gone too far, though, and most of the stations know it.

WQMF radio personality Ron Clay - who, as "Uncle Ron" on Louisville's airwaves, was known for his often outrageous, raucous, occassionally offensive and faintly foul-mouthed antics - died yesterday. He was 41.

Clay died of lymphatic cancer at Humana Hospital-University of Louisville. He had completed chemotherapy this spring without missing a day of work with his radio partner, Troy Roebuck, until late June.

The Binghamton, New York native started in the Louisville market in 1978 at WLRS-FM, after performing his routine in Kansas City, St. Louis and Long Beach, California.

Clay was a second-generation DJ, following in the footsteps of his father, Tom Clay, who was a radio personality in Detroit and Los Angeles. For the past three weeks Tom Clay had been a stand-in for his son at WQMF.

It didn't take long for the younger Clay's reputation to hit listeners' ears in Kentucky and Southern Indiana.

Bu 1982, Clay had teamed with Terry Meiners to host the popular "Morning Sickness" show on WLRS. Together they were the airwaves' resident wise guys, playing a kind of can-you-top-this game of one-liners between records.

Their act was irreverent and zany. Their shticks featured larger-than-life characters, double-entendres and bizarre situations. Clay and Meiners gained a young cult following who listened to shows such as Celebrity Deathwatch, Maniac of the Day and Psychic News.

In 1983, Clay and Meiners defected from WLRS to the rock station's archenemy, WQMF. The defection landed them in Jefferson Circuit Court, and the matter was later resolved with the team prohibited from using material they developed at WLRS.

After three years as a team, the two bad boys of radio split. Meiners left for WHAS, and Clay stuck with WQMF. Clay took a California job in 1986, but returned to WQMF after a few months with a morning show called "Uncle Ron's Asylum."

John Page Otting, president and chief operation officer of WQMF, called Clay one of the country's top morning DJs.

"He was regarded by his peers across the country as one of the great morning men in America," Otting said yesterday.

"His style was unique. I was reading a book recently where his name was mentioned among the top five names, with the likes of Howard Stern and Rick Dees. In one word, he was brilliant."

Clay also was known to be very generous with his time - if in comical ways.

In 1988, Clay - mimicking Orson Welles' theatrics - managed to get handcuffed and hauled off to the Clarksville Town Hall after telling a joke that was unflattering to Indiana police. The well-planned arrest and subsequent statements by WQMF station officials and police were so realistic that hundreds of listeners called to offer support for Clay and money for his defense.

It turned out to be a hoax. Clay had staged the stunt to help raise money for the Spouse Abuse Center in Louisville.

Clay said it didn't bother him to have his three children hear him tell his gross jokes on the air.

"I don't do anything I'm not comfortable with," Clay said. "I have no qualms about my kids listening to the show. They've heard all those words at school and they even bring home a few new ones I haven't heard."

Clay is survived by his wife of 21 years, the former Sonia Cleary; two daughters, Kasey and Kori; a son, Kenneth; his father, of California; his mother, Rose Marie Phillips of New York; and four sisters, Candy Basey, Becky Wilfong and Kim Quinones, all of California, and Chris O'Dea of New York.

A private funeral will be held; the body will be cremated. Willhite-Ballard Funeral Home is handling arrangements.

Expressions of sympathy or donations can be sent to L/L Research, P.O. Box 5195, Louisville, Kentucky 40205.