Danny Bonaduce at KYSR
Following up on previous posts [1] [2] about Danny Bonaduce, the now-FORMER morning drive deejay at Star 98.7 (KYSR).
His entry into Star 98.7 was stormy:
Last September 15 [1999], listeners to the Alice morning team of Jamie White, Frosty Stillwell and Frank Kramer discovered, to their great displeasure, that the squad had been reduced by two-thirds: Stillwell and Kramer were absent and unaccounted for, and White was in the company of Danny Bonaduce, of Partridge Family fame -- and she didn't seem particularly happy about it....
According to White, her first inkling that Bonaduce was in her future came approximately a year before their pairing, when Stillwell saw a rumor about it on Denver Radio on the Net....White then went to Ken Christensen, vice president and general manager of KYSR/Star 98, the show's L.A. base of operations, to get the scoop. "He told me, 'There's nothing to it. Don't worry about it. It's something that Jimmy de Castro [vice chairman of the board and CEO of AMFM] has thrown around, but we're not going to change the show, because we like it -- and it's doing huge,'" she says....
[Jamie White] put the entire matter out of her mind until June 1999, when de Castro flew to town to meet with her. Over drinks at the Four Seasons, he gave White what she calls "a huge pitch" to partner with Bonaduce....
White's response? "I said no, absolutely no. I'm not going to do that to the boys."...
Why was it good business to break up a radio triumvirate ruling the roost in Denver and rising quickly in Los Angeles?...Christensen claims that "the ratings in L.A. had made progress, but they were flattening out. So we started wondering if there was anybody we could pair Jamie with that could push the ratings even higher. And since Danny was under contract, his name came up -- and everyone thought it was a great idea."...
[White] returned from her summer vacation to discover that Christensen wanted her and Bonaduce to join him for dinner to talk things over. By all accounts, the encounter didn't go well: As White tells it, "I was a bitch, and Danny was a jerk. We hated each other. After it was over, I called Ken's voice mail and told him, 'You can take Danny Bonaduce and shove him up your ass. I quit.'"
It didn't work out quite that way. Christensen was actually encouraged by the way the dinner went: "There was absolutely chemistry there"....
Just how shocked White was by [Frosty & Frank's firing] quickly became a matter of debate....Such theories got a boost when Don Barrett of www.LAradio.com reported that "once she realized that management had made an irreversible decision to bring Danny aboard...she turned her attention to money. Danny is rumored to be under contract for $800,000 a year, and Jamie makes far less. Emphasis on the 'far.' The morning change was delayed while management and Jamie were locked in a bitter financial battle" that ended with White getting a substantial raise, albeit one that left her short of parity with Bonaduce....
Bonaduce didn't get himself overly worked up over either White's mood swings or the intense hatred spewed at him by callers that first week: "I have the one where the caller went, 'Why don't you die of cancer and bring back Frosty' on tape," he says. "I play it on a loop in my house." After all, Bonaduce, who's done radio in Detroit, Chicago and Phoenix (where he was arrested for punching out a transvestite prostitute he allegedly paid for sex), has been through this drill many times before. "It happens in every city. They hate you for a couple of days, and then they get over it and everything works out."
Fast forward to the spring of 2005:
Troubled former "Partridge Family" child star Danny Bonaduce says he's sober after another stint in rehab.
Production on his VH1 reality show, "Being Bonaduce," was delayed in May to allow its star to dry out....
Bonaduce, 45, returned to his co-hosting duties on Southern California's Star 98.7 Monday, E! said.
But not for long:
Danny Bonaduce has lost his morning radio gig.
L-A-Radio-dot-com says he lost his long-time job at K-Y-S-R in Los Angeles. And, the site says he lost it the way many radio people lose their jobs. He was let go when he got off the air Friday morning....
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