October 4, 2022 • 39 mins
This week on Off the Record with Dannie Rogers, she invited one of her favorite on-air hosts to join her inside Detroit Lions media studio. A familiar voice that echoes to 1.8 million people daily, Mojo in the Morning from Channel 95.5 shares his love for the Lions, his start in the industry, how he came up with the infamous War of the Roses segment, and so much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode of Off the Record, I'm featuring a
staple in the Detroit radio scene for the last two decades,
Mojo in the Morning from Channel ninety five. A native
of Chicago who made the Motor City home in nineteen
ninety nine and is currently the longest running morning radio
show host for a singular station. The familiar voice stopped
by the Allen Park Training facility to share his love
(00:22):
for the Lions and his story. I woke up this
morning and your voice was the first one I heard.
It was one hundred percent. I get in my car,
I'm driving here to work, and now you're here sitting
across the table from me, Mojo. So this is insane.
Do you know how flattering that is? I? Well, yes,
how many people listen to the show every day? We
have a lot, we've there's at certain points of the show,
(00:43):
like between like seven thirty and eight thirty, I think
they say that we have like over one point eight
million people that listen because we're on in Detroit, cran
Rapids in Toledo. Yeah, so that's so it is very flattering.
Like anytime anybody ever says, hey, I was listening this morning,
where people will the other thing is people will scream
out to me, like I'll tell a story about, you know,
(01:06):
getting locked out of my house in my underweard, you know,
and people will scream, what underwear are you wearing? Like
they'll scream that to you, like at a Kroger. So
it's very it's always slattering because you're a normal person
once you're off the show. I'm a normal person all
the time. But to me, I'm a normal person that
just so happens to talk to people like in the morning.
So it's it's very cool, and they get to know
(01:27):
so much about you and your family and and the
rest of your co host I feel like I know
you guys extremely well. That's the point. That's what we
as our goal, that's what we hope that we accomplish
that every morning by telling a story that might be relatable,
you know, giving you an opportunity that goes that says
(01:49):
oh Man, I always say, tell everybody my goal with
telling a story on the air or having listeners call
in and tell their dysfunctional craziness is for people to
go my life isn't so bad, you know. I agree
one hundred percent. I relate to a lot of it
there's a lot of things I don't relate to, like
thank God, War of the Roses, which we'll get to,
which we need to talk about some of the segments
(02:11):
that you guys do and how all of these come together.
When did Thomas, though that's your real first name, when
did that become Mojo? So it became Mojo when I
first started doing radio. So it's nineteen when I first
started in radio, and I'm my father's from Cuba, and
it was a kind of a name of a friend
of his and I kind of had that name kind
(02:32):
of off and on me and Mojo, and I was
looking for a radio name, looking for something that was memorable,
and that was kind of the name, you know, that
stuck and worked. So I honestly felt really lucky that
I was able to have a name that was easy
to remember. Yeah, it is one hundred percent, And I'm
just like, how have I not heard another Mojo on
(02:54):
the radio? There's a couple out there. There's actually a few. Okay,
Actually the most honestly, when I first moved to Detroit,
there was the most One of the most famous radio
people was the electrifying Mojo on radio here. He was
on the radio here back in the day on w JLB.
So I was. And at first they didn't want me
to use the name Mojo. And I told him, I said,
(03:15):
you gotta be kidding me, Like I've got the Backstreet
Boys saying they listened to Mojo, you know what I mean?
And so, and I had celebrities that were that said
George Clooney and Matt Damon and people like that, And
I'm like, I got to be able to use Mojo. Yeah,
and so because you because would you record them saying, oh,
I listened to Mojo. Oh my gosh, I knew you
play that on the show. Now you should see all
the like we've had Lions players from from over the
(03:37):
years that I was so sad when the Doomican Sue
wasn't a Lion anymore because my favorite was me trying
to get pronounce the Doomican Sue with him and in
him laughing at us. So I love that you went
to Columbia College in Chicago, which was a communications school,
so you knew from the get go that kind of
(04:00):
radio hosting was what you're going to go into. I
want it. I wanted to be a sports broadcaster really,
which is funny because I wanted I always wanted to
be the play by play guy for the Chicago Cubs,
like that was my ultimate goal. And then, um, having
gotten into radio, in doing what I do, I realized, Okay,
this is a little bit easier to get into, like
(04:21):
I it's easier to find a job. But then over
the years, I've always been fascinated. I talked to Dan
Miller all the time because I listened to the radio broadcast,
because I think Dan Miller's like the best test. He's like,
there's no there's no play by play guy that is
good as Dan Miller. And I'll text him during games
sometimes and just tell him that was incredible that touchdown,
(04:43):
like you know that you called or or disappointing ending
to a game, you know, hit a reaction from him
because he's such a fan. But that was the kind
of He's the exact kind of broadcaster that made me
want to get into broadcasting. Does he know this? Oh yeah,
I tell him all the time. Okay, I'm a little bit.
I actually envied Dan, not just as a broadcaster. He's
(05:04):
an amazing dad, amazing husband. He is I'm mesmerized by
people who have a lot of stuff going on in
their personal lives and you don't know about it unless
you know them personally, and you realize this guy's first off,
which is a real person, but he's he's one of
the most talented people around. He is and he would
(05:26):
like to do it under the radar with no one knowing. Yeah,
that's just how he is. Yeah, he's good. We love you, Dan,
He's the best. More people need to do that, because
nowadays it seems like there are more people that like
the shine of spotlight on the things that are going on.
Look at what I'm doing, Look at I'm doing. Dan's
one of those guys that doesn't. Yeah, he comes and
he's a pro every game. He's a pro that one percent.
(05:47):
So where were the stops in between Columbia and Detroit?
All right? So Columbia got me an internship in Chicago
at being ninety six, got me hired at being ninety six.
And actually my job that I got, my first job
that I got there was because it's you always say
right place, right time. Somebody called in sick five minutes
(06:08):
before their shift, nobody was there to fill in. The
person that could fill in lived in the suburbs of
Chicago was over an hour from getting to the radio studio,
so there'd be an hour without somebody on the air,
and it was hey, you're next up, go on the
air and they say I killed it. I listened back
to to this show. It was awful. Do you still
(06:29):
have it somewhere? I actually have. I have a box.
My wife put together this box for me of every
I have tapes from past shows and then she lets
me save. I say it lets me because otherwise I'd
have so much crap in the house. But I have
like a T shirt or some kind of a thing
from each station that I've been at. So I went
from there Tucson, Arizona, and then Detroit, and so I
(06:52):
worked at a bunch of different radio stations along the way,
like part time doing things, but those were like the
big three for me. My last stop before Detroit, So
a year and a half ago was Tucson, was it? Yes?
Would you do? In two? So I was working for
the football team University of Arizonas football. Oh my god,
there I was a ball? Were you okay? That? What
I'm trying to think was that like the era or
(07:15):
the no I was Teddy Brusky. I was desert storm. Yes,
so I was there for the desert storm, and then
I became I actually Teddy and his wife lived right
by Chelsea and I and my wife and I but
in actually they still live in the similar neighborhood. They
still have a house back there. But lude Olsen became
a friend of mine, Like I got to to live it.
(07:36):
And then, uh, you know Kevin Griggs, who's with the Pistons,
he's there, Pistons media guy. He was actually in the
athletic department at you have at the same time. We
both moved here at the similar time. There's a lot
of former Cats here, so there's a ton and I
didn't really realize it until I got out there. I'm like, oh,
of course you got it's a basketballast Mexican food, ever,
and Tucson. I didn't. Actually, when you're in the football office,
(07:58):
you work about fifteen hour days. I did not get experience.
You don't get to eat at all. Oh no, you
don't really go outside of the building. Okay, so I
didn't get to experience it. What was your favorite part
about twoson though? Besides some Mexican food, Um, it's a
small town Detroit's like this it's a small town that
you can affect people in such a way like people
(08:21):
are like Detroit is like this in the fact that
radio still matters to people in Detroit. There's some cities
like New York in Los Angeles. Even Ryan Seacrest will
tell this to me. Ryan will say, you know, I
have to like do television. I have to do you know,
big projects for people to kind of notice things, when
in reality, I'm on the radio every single morning talking
(08:43):
to more the bigger population. But the problem is that
it doesn't matter as much to them, Like Detroit still
looks at TV and radio people as they're kind of
like cool and you know, no, I agree. That's how
Tucson was. Tucson you were you would get front row
tickets to a Cat's game if you were on the
radio or on television there. I love that. Go Cats.
(09:07):
They're doing okay. Football team is doing okay right now.
They're on the up. So we're excited about that. You
got to Detroit in nineteen ninety nine. You've held this
position ever since, so the longest running I tout this
because I was just given this piece of history. I'm
the longest running single person on a radio morning show,
(09:31):
hosting a morning radio show on one signal like SO
five Channel nine five in Detroit. I've been on the
air there for twenty two years, going to be twenty
three years, and there has not been I guess anybody
that's been at one station in the mornings doing it longer,
which honestly, I don't know if it's a good thing
or a bad thing. I think it's it's longevity. Longevity
(09:54):
just being able to sustain at such a high level
I think is like that. Jason Hanson, Yeah, yea of
the radio crew. I guess mister reliable always evolved with
Jason Hanson. Like a year ago, A buddy of mine's
friends with him, and he's a really good golfer and
he had his worst golf game the day I golfed
with him, and he was He's a very like religious
(10:17):
nice man, you know what I mean. He was not.
He was not feeling it with me that I felt
so bad. I told him, I said, I think it's
me and he goes, no, I'm just horrible today. But
he's that was a guy that I think about. What
you know, you always look at the kicker and go
what a job? I mean, this guy doesn't have to
do a great job. You don't have to like do anything.
But Jason Hanson was so automatic. I mean, you're also
(10:39):
a big fan of Barry Sanders, and he was what
one of the first people you met when he got
So I was a Bears fan when I first moved here. Yeah,
growing up in Chicago, yes, But which is funny because
you're from Monroe, right, you could have been a Browns fan. No, No,
I would never let that happen. So I did. I
did a charity event with Barry Sanders. It was right,
(11:00):
you know, in nineteen ninety nine, so I was fairly
close to right after Barry said he wasn't gonna play,
and he wasn't doing very much at that time. A
matter of fact, nobody saw him. And I got to
host this event just because the charity asked me to
host it, and I got lucky and I got to
meet the legend. And there's no better, you know, ever
running back than Barry Sanders. And I think that meeting
(11:22):
him personally made me realize how big of a fan.
And then for some time I would go my buddy
used to do an open gym at our Lady of
Refuge and Orchard Lake and Barry would play basketball, and
his you know son would play basketball, so you'd see
him every now and again, and that made me and
(11:44):
then I our Calvin Johnson and then honestly, Dominic Raol
I coached. I coached Dylan Rayola in basketball. Do you
know a story about Dylan Rayola. Dylan Riola has as
a sophomore in high school or junior in high school.
Now I think he's a junior signed as a sophomore
(12:04):
with Ohio State. He's he's his age group. He's the
number one recruit college recruit for his age. He's gonna
he he looks like Patrick Mahomes playing football. He has.
Dom Riola's like just grit and kind of a can
you swear on this or no? No being being kind
(12:27):
of a you know, a jerk out. Dom was OK
and he's as sweetest can be. So I coached Dylan
and Domola was the greatest dad and you know, always
was real supportive. And it was funny because Dylan was
more excited about Mojo being his coach. Then I was
(12:48):
probably on par with the fact that I was coaching
you know, Dom's son, the Lions. They grew on you,
it made you made made easy to be I became
a Lions fan. Yeah, and it's it's it's hurt a
little bit, It's okay, it's okay. Yeah, we're doing We're
doing five. I know we're on that, We're we are
the Lions, the future of the Lions. And all the
time that I've been a Lions fan, and I know
(13:10):
for a lot of people, I haven't felt this excited
about the future of the team. And in a long
long time. Is it the coaches, the players? What is it?
I think it's well, I mean it starts with Brad
and I think that he gets it. Like like I'm
like looking at what he's done, the moves he's done,
and I'm I'm going, how does he How is he
allowed to make moves like this? And people are allowed
(13:31):
Letty are doing this? Um? And then Dan, you know,
how do you not like Dan Campbell? How do you
not look at that guy and go like that guy
would be if you were to have a morning radio
show and he were the host, he would he would
be number one, Yes, because he says stuff that you go,
that's all I want to listen to what he's doing.
(13:52):
You know, Yeah, I watched his press conferences online just
to get sound bites. There are great sound bites. Yeah, yeah, no,
is it exactly how he is in front of a camera,
is how he is off of it? That's great, He's hilarious.
He can be serious when he needs to be just
great human. So I'm I want to know how many
stars he has on his Starbucks app because he drinks
so much Starbucks. They say that that's what he said, Yes, like,
(14:15):
does he does he use his stars? Does he use
his stars to get a free coffee? I'll write that
down on a piece of paper in questions a little
box outside his office? All right, if he had one,
we'll get him one. We'll get him a box and
we'll ask him how many stars you have? Okay, you
said about one point eight million people watch or listen
to your show at peak time in the morning, which
is insane. And then with that talk about watch ye
(14:37):
social media wise, m I think that we're right up
there as far as in Detroit with you know, maybe
Dave and Chuck the Freak. With the amount of social
media followers that we have insane. So it's good. Yeah,
we're very blessed. When did that, like when did it
start peaking at like one point eight million people. Well,
honestly before COVID and then after when nobody was working
(15:01):
and do anything it then it turned to podcasting. Yeah,
and because of you know, I Heart Radio was so
smart years ago to create its own app. That helped
us a lot. You know. We uh, we've been really lucky.
I mean, honestly, there are other radio shows in the
country that have struggled to get people to come back
(15:22):
to listening to radio consistently. Um, Detroit, those been really good.
You know, we've been really blessed with that. But we
have to give him something to listen to all the time.
Like it's tough. You can't phone it. You can't phone
it in, and there are days when you feel like
you're phoning it in. But um, people are are into it.
We have some passionate p ones, you know. Yeah, your
(15:44):
co host, you've got Spike, You've got Shannon, Mike's up
there and Green Rapids. You got Megan mickdown in Toledo. Uh.
When did that kind of group assemble. It's it's been evolving,
you know. We started with a whole different group back
in two thousand and then we got a whole different
group in two thousand and five, and then got a
(16:05):
whole different group in two thousand and eight, and then
a whole different group in two twelve. We've the alumni.
We have as many alumni and our group than the
Lions have probably in their alumni group. And I think
you have to do that as a show, like you
have to have a very similar core, and we've kind
of kept that together. But my goal is to surround like,
(16:27):
our audience is you. You know, I'm fifty two years old.
How old are you? Twenty six? All right, you're our audience.
You're exactly the audience. So we try to appeal to
a twenty five to thirty four year old female and
as a fifty two year old, you know, married guy
with sons that my son is your age. My oldest son,
Joe is your age. You know. I try to surround
(16:51):
myself around people that are your age that can so
it doesn't sound like I'm a creepy fifty two guy
talking about things that are interesting you. I sound like,
you know, a person that is interested and intrigued by
what people do. People sometimes will say to me, you're
how old? Like if I talk about my sons like
(17:13):
I talk about my kids so much. I thought your
oldest one was older than twenty six, did you? Yeah? Okay, yes,
it's funny because of Joe is actually two. Always told
it in twenty six. He's twenty seven. He turned he
was born in nineteen ninty five. But my youngest is seventeen,
and so I still kind of hold on a little
bit too, knowing what a seventeen year old is interesting.
(17:34):
But and our goal is we've given people the opportunity
that you know are coming up, an opportunity to be
on the radio. And my goal is to never hold
anybody back. I'd love them to go get their own show,
like my son Joe, Jed and Ashley is two partners.
Everybody came through our morning show and are doing things.
And then there's like five or six other people around
(17:55):
the country that have been are working different shows of
their own. Left our show. Wow. Um, now that we've
gotten into the characters that are a part of the show, Um,
I have to give you my just like description of
the show's personalities and you can tell me if it's
accurate or not. All right, go ahead, Okay, I'll start
with my girl Shannon Um, because she's the go obviously,
(18:18):
I love what I love like what she brings to
the show, her different points of view. I mean, you
guys talk about personal stuff all the time. Um, so
Shannon to me is she's a cool mom, but she
can also be very fiery with a lot of passion
in there, and she is like probably one of the
most open minded people. Am I am close? Yeah? Okay, Um, Spike,
(18:42):
I saw what I what I hear this two days ago?
Spike is Spike from a caller? Was it yesterday? That
was yeah, yeah, Like, so give Spike is Spike? I asked.
The caller complimented Shannon and said to Shannon how beautiful
she was and then said Mojo, you're you know, you're
great looking or something like that. And then I said
what about Spike And they're like, well, Spike is Spike.
(19:03):
They said something like Spike looked like pebe Herman. But
they did say that self deprecation. We love you guys,
crush it with that. Everybody and even Shannon, who you know,
if you look at Shannon's Instagram, it's like there's never
a thing out of place. It seems like, yeah, and
you know, I always sit there and go, God, if
I could take a picture that's one of Shannon's bad pictures,
I would be like it would be a good day. Um,
(19:27):
but yeah, we're pretty good at that. So Spike is
what um Spike is say it, come on, don't no, No,
I'm thinking of the I'm thinking of phone scams because
I love his phone scams. They're hilarious. I'm gonna say, like,
I want to say persistent, yeah, just in all facets
(19:48):
because he has those quirky, weird backs that he always knows.
He's very persistent at making it. People have always said
Spikes and know it all. So Spike, Spike is like
the guy I would say persistent, know it all, then yeah,
find them. Spike is definitely He's one of those guys
like he's the he's the use like an analogy from nowadays.
(20:09):
He's the guy that is um that always you know
you can you can sit there and go yeah, so
I was watching the Lions game yesterday, And even if
he doesn't know anything about the Lions game, he'll like
pretend like he's watched the Lions game, like he definitely,
but heine ten times he's actually right with some of
with this. Yeah, no, and the phone scams are hilarious.
(20:30):
I am like, these are so annoyingly funny. Yeah, I'll
listen to him every day though. Um, Megan, we live
like fifteen minutes apart, so if you want to let
her know that and like we can do at drinks,
that'd be great. Um. Tolio, by the way, is for
Lions fans. To you're talking about being a Lions fan.
I joked with you about being a Browns fan, just
because occasionally we'll get Browns fans that Toledo. People from
(20:52):
Toledo are the best. They are Toledo. They they believe
that Toledo is the greatest city in the world and
don't question it. And you know what, it's a great city.
It gets crapped on a lot, but it's it's It's
like Detroit. I always say that Detroit and Toledo are
got that same kind of vibe because Grand Rapids is
like nice, really cool, it's cool. You know, there's cool
(21:13):
stuff going on there Toledo and Detroit. You gotta like
search for the coolest stuff. But when you find it,
some cool stuff going some really cool stuff. I lived
in Toledo. My first job in local sports was Toledo.
So Tolto's very close to my heart. But Megan is
very unapologetically herself. Yes, she's hilarious about it too. People
when they say, I say to Megan, this is the
greatest compliment, when they say I'm I'm like Megan, you know, yeah,
(21:35):
you say I'm like Megan, because Megan doesn't understand that
there are a lot of people that that look up
to her. Like you called Shannon, would you say, call
her goals or would you say the goat? Goat? Yeah,
say the goat. So in a lot of women will
say Shannon's goals, you know what I mean, Like Megan
says that, I think that Meghan's goals. Yeah, because Megan
(21:56):
is She's so I always tell people, and she'll hate
me for Sanna's She is the female me If I
would if I were, you know, thirty years old and
single and hanging out, you put away at me on Megan,
put awaken some nice makeup and hear this like I
can just I can just hear her like crying voice
right now. Yeah, she's gonna why are you sitting? No,
(22:18):
she say I hate you? That would be her thing.
She's great. Um, Mike's a dad. That's all. Yeah, money, Yeah,
he's the biggest Lions fan out of anybody on the show.
He is the biggest Lions He goes to more Lions
games than anybody and he lives in Grand Rapids, which
is funny because that's the thing with the Lions need
to be so excited about their fans travel. They love it.
(22:40):
He go. He went to the Lions you know game
last year in LA because he was the you know,
he was big fan and actually, um you know, the
staffords were cool to host him, so he was able
to you know, because he's not and we're not all
wildly rich, but he was able to go out there
because they gave back and they helped our breaking entering
(23:00):
Christmas charity and stuff. So that's that's lovely. Um KP
is new. She's new and she's actually twenty three from
Lake Orion. She's a TikTok phenomenon too. That's how actually
how I found her. We were talking about one of
the newscasters that just is going viral and that's how
you get jobs now, and it's it's crazy, Yeah, it's
(23:22):
I wasn't prepared for this. Your social I know, it's
funny because I am not huge personally on social media,
like I throw pictures up so my sisters can see
their you know, niece or their nephews, you know, doing things.
But nowadays you have to be like huge, your social
game has to be huge. And if you don't, if
you miss the boat, like it's literal like money you're
(23:44):
missing out on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I
don't know if I hated it. And players are like
that too, Like honestly, it's it's funny with fantasy football
if you're not if you're if your viral game is
not big, yeah, I mean you even though you will
get you know, score points for people in fantasy football.
People like like my son drafts the personalities to be
(24:05):
on his team. Okay, if this is I would love
to talk about some of the topics that you guys
have on our show how they come together, because if
you're listening to the show, you're like, how did you
come up with these random topics? And it sounds like
everyone kind of just brings their own topics maybe presents
them every night. Every night, okay, we have to turn
in a diary, a topic diary, and so every night
everybody has to turn in one to two things that
(24:28):
happen to them that day, okay, And what we do
is we compile the list of everything that's going on
in people's lives and then myself in KP go through
it and say, all right, this is how we're going
to do it, and we try to put a good
mix of things. When they're parents listening with their kids
(24:48):
in the car, we try to keep away from some
of the more controversial stuff, right, and then once the
kids are dropped off at school. I mean, it's anything goes,
you know. It's talking about lots of stuff that you
do talk about on this podcast. By the way, this
is the longest I've gone without swearing except for on
the radio. Yeah, maybe the only podcast I have never
(25:09):
had a swear word on. So we appreciate plus editing
for meds. Are happy with me, right, Um, yeah, we
need that. If this is my most toxic trait, then
I'm okay with it. But I religiously listened to War
of the Roses segment on your show. Yeah, and it's
that's horrible of me to look forward to that. Do
(25:31):
you know how that segment started? No, So it started.
I was in Arizona working in one of the seventh
character actually the show that took over for me, John
Jay and Rich. They still started doing it when I left. Yes,
So it started because there was a survey that said
that if you had a choice, if a guy had
a choice of who he would send it doesn't free,
(25:53):
doesn't roses to, who would he send the roses to?
It was a Cosmos survey, I still remember that, and
majority of the guys said that they would send it
to their mom or their girlfriend. So it started with
me and the two people that I worked with in Tucson,
Betsy and Jeff who is my producer, calling girls, boyfriends
(26:17):
and husbands to see where they send flowers to, just
to get the reaction of what it would sound like
if you sent it to the your mom. And you
started catching them and we caught one. We caught one cheater,
my gosh, and then that one cheater turned into let's
do this again and yeah, and it turned into to that.
So and how different it is now because now it
(26:40):
used to be one of those things where you could
do and you know, you could do it live and everything.
Now we have to tape them and we got to
get permission to run over all that. Yeah, So I
happened to live in Tucson here wore the roses, and
I just assumed every radio station was doing that. It's
kind of they A lot of them did it, and
a lot of them have trademark ter anything. Thanks. I
(27:01):
appreciate you so much for what are we doing. I'm
not very good. You want to retire. So not only
am I a social media failure, I am a trademark failure.
I did trademark phone scams though, so you did? Did
we trademark phone scams? We actually have. So we have
like war the Roses trademark, but it's a trademark here,
so it's not nationally. But I will tell you this,
(27:22):
this is actually interesting thing. Ryan Seacrista's Ryan's Roses and
was going to call it Warre the Roses, but actually
made a comment that the reason he did not call
it war the Roses because he didn't want to call
it the same thing that we called it. Thank you,
Thank you Ryan. Not only is he beautiful and rich,
but he's a kind man, very kind. How often so
(27:45):
do people just email you guys? They call you? They're
like high I think for everything that we do, so
we do a bunch of things. If you listen to
our show, we do phone scams, we do five lies,
tell your mom, we do six on sacks. We do
a bunch of different things. We'll solicit through the show,
or we solicit on our social media or on our
website mode on the Morning dot com. Do you want
(28:07):
to be a guest on this? And people will send
it into us, and then what we do is we
have people like Lydia, one of our associate producers, goes
through and then she'll call the people, talk to them
and you know, get the story. Some stories we won't do.
We try to stay away from anything that like we
(28:28):
used to do a lot of ones where like she's
pregnant with a baby and thinks that he's cheating. We
used to do those, but then we've realized that, like
we're possibly causing health risks for her, and we're like,
you know, we just want to get involved. Not that
you know, her finding out if her spouse is cheating
(28:50):
while she's pregnant isn't valuable. It is valuable for her,
like she wants. It's peace of mind. But we don't
want to get involved in anything that potentially could be harmful.
So oh, my god. Yeah, so they're certain ones will
stay away from that's crazy. Do you have little kids
calling up? We've had little kids calling so here's here's
one for you. We've had little kids that have entered
(29:11):
I think my daddy is cheating on my mommy, or
I think my mommy on social media. No, they've entered
like text messages to us. Like they'll send a text
in the morning to zero, or they'll even like on
a social media thing, make a comment on a social
media post or dm us and say that to us.
And you know, although it's extremely compelling, yes, it would
(29:36):
be really bad to do. Crazy. Do you think that
you're helping more people or or harming more people? You know,
if we ask the listeners that, I think the majority
of them probably say helping. I think so too. I
think in many cases it's a mixture of both. So
we can we could technically help somebody by exposing that
(29:56):
one of you know, their you know, their spouses being unfaithful, um,
which is definitely not a great thing. But then eventually,
in the long run, you know, we hope that we're
able to give them advice through having a counselor help
them out or we've had. We have a divorce attorney
that gives legal advice for free, so so you will
(30:17):
hook them up after that and make sure that yeah
taken care of well. Yeah, I listen to it religiously.
I don't catch it on. If I don't catch it live,
it's on the podcast. It's like our biggest fan. I
love this. It's crazy. I want to work for us.
We were looking for somebody. Okay, I have a proposal
for you, but let me ask you an honest question
like this, because it's funny. I've had people like media
(30:39):
people in media. I know sports is obviously like the thing,
but local media people will come and fill in for us,
like fill in for Shannon or fill in for Meggan
or filling for me. I've never heard that when I'm gone,
Like we've had like um back in the day, like
Karen Drew from Local four, or Marie La Flame it
(31:01):
was on a Channel seven, Like they would come in
and do stuff with us. When they come in, they
get so excited over the freedom that you have to
be able to talk like you sometimes get have to
talk in segments, right, so you get x amount of
time to be able to do something in radio It's
kind of like you have to break a twelve after
it's you know, yep, top of the hour, you got
twelve minutes to talk this a long time, UM, would
(31:23):
you ever be interested in doing that? So I and
I thought about so I really started listening to I've
listened to you guys all twenty six years and well
technically twenty two years of my life because if you
guys got on ninety nine. UM, I was not listening
to you guys when I was a baby. I take
that you're a fetus fetis when I was listening now
and you were kicking in your mom's womb when I
when I heard when I heard Mojo's voice, exactly when
(31:46):
you heard the war the grosses, which is horrible. UM.
I really started listening to you guys religiously twenty twenty
during the almost during the pandemic, because towards the end
of that, so this was almost two years ago. UH
sports shut down. I had transitioned from doing local sports
in Toledo, Ohio to kind of going out on my own.
I'd been able to secure some commercials and stuff. I'm like,
(32:07):
oh cool, there's things on the horizon, and then the
world shut down and sports shutdown, so I was out
of work for about six months, so I had to
go nanny. I had to go dry forty five minutes
up to an armor and nanny for about three or
four months. You guys were on my radio in my
car every single morning, and I'm like, oh my god,
this is really different because at that point you're considering
other jobs and whatnot. Thankfully, at University of Arizona, I
(32:29):
had called me in December, so I was like fine,
But it was during football season nanny that I'd go
to football games. And this is only two years ago,
which is insane. But I'm like listening to Shannon, and
I'm like, I hope Shannon retires doing this because this
would be the best freaking thing ever. Yeah, to retire
doing you know that kind of a job. Yeah. Yeah,
it's funny. Back in the day, Heather Catalo, Karen Drew
(32:51):
or let my Go Tos. Yeah. And the only way
I could get them to come in and do stuff
for us was because they were the coming up people. Okay,
so because they were the you know, the two on
their stations that wanted to like make a name, you know,
for themselves. They were willing to wake up early in
the morning and go do it. I will I will
(33:11):
say this to you. The one thing that people don't
understand with morning radio, and this is something for the
lions too, the amount of people that listen to us,
but also our social following and what how active our
listenership is. Like, our listenership is very active. The people
that listen to us. We've been on for twenty some years.
(33:34):
So my listenership stems from people who are as young
as now, high school kids that are coming up right
now that are listening with their or middle school kids
coming up with their parents listening to the car, to
fifty sixty year old people that are listening. So it's
such a wide, you know and vast listenership and it's
(33:56):
predominantly female. That's crazy to me. So it's probably about
seventy percent seventy five percent female, and it's honestly, it's
amazing that. Um. The engagement that we have, Like like
that's the other thing too, is you can have followers,
but if you don't have engagement, first off, you probably
have bots, you know what I mean, Like who knows,
But we have like really amazing engagement, you know, Um,
(34:17):
you know we could post a picture and within five
six minutes we could have five thousand you know, likes
or you know, a couple thousand comments on something. So
it's really cool when when that happens. And then on TikTok,
I mean, I think that, you know, we that game
(34:38):
is growing bigger and bigger all the time, and we're
probably you know, we're probably still learning with everybody else.
But that's something that blows up even more. You know.
It's well, you guys have what probably hundred hundreds of
people calling in every day to the show, uh pretty
much or commenting and you know, through text or I
(34:58):
would say you gonna start texting into the show? You should?
You should definitely actually you know what, you do that
and I'll save your number in there because we have
a text board. Oh you do. We have like a big,
big screen board and it's got names up there and
it will say, you know, um, misfit Nicole, and it
will say your misfits, it will say you know, Danny
will say like whatever, and then you know who it
(35:19):
is because you see the comment, and then we'll go, oh,
you know, let's call it. Yeah. I did not know
there was a board. Yeah, I thought you guys just
kind of like it's you know, it's kind of cool.
It's like a it's it's our text scoreboard, so to speak. Yeah,
I love that. Um okay, we have to I feel
like we've touched on everything. Um, but I do, I do.
I said, You're like, oh, you want to come host
(35:41):
for us. I'm like, oh, I have a proposal. I
literally have a written down in here, like here your
proposal and what you want. I literally have my proposal
written DOWNNY. All right, good, it's right here on this thing.
When you guys go out for the summer and I
have to listen to reruns of the show, Okay, let
me do it for you. All right, we can do that.
Just think I have to clear give you I actually no,
(36:01):
we would, honestly, we would love you to do it.
Just you have at number now, I don't have to
clear it. I not talked to the bosses listening. You
gave me presents. I got like, I got you know, swag,
I got lined gear. Yeah. I was like, this is
like cool. I'm challenging. We take care of every other
team in this town. Bring it on, bring it. Yeah.
(36:21):
I'll talk about you as much as I possibly. Can
I know. I was listening to you guys talk about
some Hard Knocks topics and stuff, and I'm like, oh gosh,
they don't know how big was Hard Knocks for you guys?
Were that the biggest thing ever? Honestly in the building
because I'm in the building. It was very low key.
Really when you when they say you do not see
them or hear them, you really don't, Okay, And there's
about forty Hard Knocks crew members walking around at all times.
(36:44):
All right, it was very low key for us, I'm
not gonna lie, But to the masses, it was like
it was huge. It was behind and they got some
really good, really good storylines and people learned a lot
a lot about the lines. But for us, you see
all those hits in practice and and the coach speaking
of it. We hear it, We've we've already heard it.
It's like we were hearing it. Can you because this
is my thing? I want to go. Can I go
(37:04):
into the auditorium where you know aiden you know, was
singing like you will show me? Will you give me
a tour? We might be able to do that. They're
at practice right now, are they really like, yeah, do
a little mining. I went a couple of years ago.
I got to go on a road trip with the team.
I told you this before week, and it was the
cool first off, it was like the greatest way to travel.
(37:25):
I will never so I'll give you an example of
what I was wowed by. I was wowed by the
fact that I got to go show up and there
was like the guys getting out of their cars and
stuff like that, with their bags and on. And then
we ate beforehand. So we went into the cafeteria and
got to eat, and it was like wild to see
all these big linemen, you know, large grabbing food and
(37:47):
then going to um uh the airport and getting on
a charter flight and we sat. I sat in the
back of the plane same which is honest like the
best place to sit because you're sitting by you know,
Dan Miller, and oh yeah, you get off, you get
on the plane, you get off of it first whenever.
(38:09):
But I'll never forget that they walk around with like
the flight attendants walk around with like food and all
this stuff. But it was the coolest to go to
a road game and pull up with a police ascort.
And that's the thing with hard knocks, like when you
see that, like you see the police ascort with the
buses we went to So I went to New England
and watched them play the Patriots. Yeah, and fans were
(38:30):
throwing things at the bus you drive through like a
like a local little town. It was honestly the coolest
thing ever. Like NFL football to me is the greatest
of any entertainment around. But it's even cooler behind the scenes.
Like the game on the field is one thing, the
behind the scenes stuff is what makes it so cool.
(38:53):
It's it's not only is it the humans who are
the most athletic invest at what they do on the field,
but like off the field, it's also like top tier
the best. Yeah, the best people who are are the
best at their jobs are in my opinion, a lot
of them are working with NFL teams. Yeah, yeah, it's
very impressive the humans in this building. Can you tell
whoever does the merch for the Lions that this year
(39:13):
they stepped up their game, Like the merch has been
better than ever. It's amazing. Yes, yeah, it's so great.
Appeals to everyone. That's cool. You just listen to another
episode of Off the Record with the Danny Rogers. A
new episode drops every Tuesday.
On this episode of Off the Record, I'm featuring a
staple in the Detroit radio scene for the last two decades,
Mojo in the Morning from Channel ninety five. A native
of Chicago who made the Motor City home in nineteen
ninety nine and is currently the longest running morning radio
show host for a singular station. The familiar voice stopped
by the Allen Park Training facility to share his love
(00:22):
for the Lions and his story. I woke up this
morning and your voice was the first one I heard.
It was one hundred percent. I get in my car,
I'm driving here to work, and now you're here sitting
across the table from me, Mojo. So this is insane.
Do you know how flattering that is? I? Well, yes,
how many people listen to the show every day? We
have a lot, we've there's at certain points of the show,
(00:43):
like between like seven thirty and eight thirty, I think
they say that we have like over one point eight
million people that listen because we're on in Detroit, cran
Rapids in Toledo. Yeah, so that's so it is very flattering.
Like anytime anybody ever says, hey, I was listening this morning,
where people will the other thing is people will scream
out to me, like I'll tell a story about, you know,
(01:06):
getting locked out of my house in my underweard, you know,
and people will scream, what underwear are you wearing? Like
they'll scream that to you, like at a Kroger. So
it's very it's always slattering because you're a normal person
once you're off the show. I'm a normal person all
the time. But to me, I'm a normal person that
just so happens to talk to people like in the morning.
So it's it's very cool, and they get to know
(01:27):
so much about you and your family and and the
rest of your co host I feel like I know
you guys extremely well. That's the point. That's what we
as our goal, that's what we hope that we accomplish
that every morning by telling a story that might be relatable,
you know, giving you an opportunity that goes that says
(01:49):
oh Man, I always say, tell everybody my goal with
telling a story on the air or having listeners call
in and tell their dysfunctional craziness is for people to
go my life isn't so bad, you know. I agree
one hundred percent. I relate to a lot of it
there's a lot of things I don't relate to, like
thank God, War of the Roses, which we'll get to,
which we need to talk about some of the segments
(02:11):
that you guys do and how all of these come together.
When did Thomas, though that's your real first name, when
did that become Mojo? So it became Mojo when I
first started doing radio. So it's nineteen when I first
started in radio, and I'm my father's from Cuba, and
it was a kind of a name of a friend
of his and I kind of had that name kind
(02:32):
of off and on me and Mojo, and I was
looking for a radio name, looking for something that was memorable,
and that was kind of the name, you know, that
stuck and worked. So I honestly felt really lucky that
I was able to have a name that was easy
to remember. Yeah, it is one hundred percent, And I'm
just like, how have I not heard another Mojo on
(02:54):
the radio? There's a couple out there. There's actually a few. Okay,
Actually the most honestly, when I first moved to Detroit,
there was the most One of the most famous radio
people was the electrifying Mojo on radio here. He was
on the radio here back in the day on w JLB.
So I was. And at first they didn't want me
to use the name Mojo. And I told him, I said,
(03:15):
you gotta be kidding me, Like I've got the Backstreet
Boys saying they listened to Mojo, you know what I mean?
And so, and I had celebrities that were that said
George Clooney and Matt Damon and people like that, And
I'm like, I got to be able to use Mojo. Yeah,
and so because you because would you record them saying, oh,
I listened to Mojo. Oh my gosh, I knew you
play that on the show. Now you should see all
the like we've had Lions players from from over the
(03:37):
years that I was so sad when the Doomican Sue
wasn't a Lion anymore because my favorite was me trying
to get pronounce the Doomican Sue with him and in
him laughing at us. So I love that you went
to Columbia College in Chicago, which was a communications school,
so you knew from the get go that kind of
(04:00):
radio hosting was what you're going to go into. I
want it. I wanted to be a sports broadcaster really,
which is funny because I wanted I always wanted to
be the play by play guy for the Chicago Cubs,
like that was my ultimate goal. And then, um, having
gotten into radio, in doing what I do, I realized, Okay,
this is a little bit easier to get into, like
(04:21):
I it's easier to find a job. But then over
the years, I've always been fascinated. I talked to Dan
Miller all the time because I listened to the radio broadcast,
because I think Dan Miller's like the best test. He's like,
there's no there's no play by play guy that is
good as Dan Miller. And I'll text him during games
sometimes and just tell him that was incredible that touchdown,
(04:43):
like you know that you called or or disappointing ending
to a game, you know, hit a reaction from him
because he's such a fan. But that was the kind
of He's the exact kind of broadcaster that made me
want to get into broadcasting. Does he know this? Oh yeah,
I tell him all the time. Okay, I'm a little bit.
I actually envied Dan, not just as a broadcaster. He's
(05:04):
an amazing dad, amazing husband. He is I'm mesmerized by
people who have a lot of stuff going on in
their personal lives and you don't know about it unless
you know them personally, and you realize this guy's first off,
which is a real person, but he's he's one of
the most talented people around. He is and he would
(05:26):
like to do it under the radar with no one knowing. Yeah,
that's just how he is. Yeah, he's good. We love you, Dan,
He's the best. More people need to do that, because
nowadays it seems like there are more people that like
the shine of spotlight on the things that are going on.
Look at what I'm doing, Look at I'm doing. Dan's
one of those guys that doesn't. Yeah, he comes and
he's a pro every game. He's a pro that one percent.
(05:47):
So where were the stops in between Columbia and Detroit?
All right? So Columbia got me an internship in Chicago
at being ninety six, got me hired at being ninety six.
And actually my job that I got, my first job
that I got there was because it's you always say
right place, right time. Somebody called in sick five minutes
(06:08):
before their shift, nobody was there to fill in. The
person that could fill in lived in the suburbs of
Chicago was over an hour from getting to the radio studio,
so there'd be an hour without somebody on the air,
and it was hey, you're next up, go on the
air and they say I killed it. I listened back
to to this show. It was awful. Do you still
(06:29):
have it somewhere? I actually have. I have a box.
My wife put together this box for me of every
I have tapes from past shows and then she lets
me save. I say it lets me because otherwise I'd
have so much crap in the house. But I have
like a T shirt or some kind of a thing
from each station that I've been at. So I went
from there Tucson, Arizona, and then Detroit, and so I
(06:52):
worked at a bunch of different radio stations along the way,
like part time doing things, but those were like the
big three for me. My last stop before Detroit, So
a year and a half ago was Tucson, was it? Yes?
Would you do? In two? So I was working for
the football team University of Arizonas football. Oh my god,
there I was a ball? Were you okay? That? What
I'm trying to think was that like the era or
(07:15):
the no I was Teddy Brusky. I was desert storm. Yes,
so I was there for the desert storm, and then
I became I actually Teddy and his wife lived right
by Chelsea and I and my wife and I but
in actually they still live in the similar neighborhood. They
still have a house back there. But lude Olsen became
a friend of mine, Like I got to to live it.
(07:36):
And then, uh, you know Kevin Griggs, who's with the Pistons,
he's there, Pistons media guy. He was actually in the
athletic department at you have at the same time. We
both moved here at the similar time. There's a lot
of former Cats here, so there's a ton and I
didn't really realize it until I got out there. I'm like, oh,
of course you got it's a basketballast Mexican food, ever,
and Tucson. I didn't. Actually, when you're in the football office,
(07:58):
you work about fifteen hour days. I did not get experience.
You don't get to eat at all. Oh no, you
don't really go outside of the building. Okay, so I
didn't get to experience it. What was your favorite part
about twoson though? Besides some Mexican food, Um, it's a
small town Detroit's like this it's a small town that
you can affect people in such a way like people
(08:21):
are like Detroit is like this in the fact that
radio still matters to people in Detroit. There's some cities
like New York in Los Angeles. Even Ryan Seacrest will
tell this to me. Ryan will say, you know, I
have to like do television. I have to do you know,
big projects for people to kind of notice things, when
in reality, I'm on the radio every single morning talking
(08:43):
to more the bigger population. But the problem is that
it doesn't matter as much to them, Like Detroit still
looks at TV and radio people as they're kind of
like cool and you know, no, I agree. That's how
Tucson was. Tucson you were you would get front row
tickets to a Cat's game if you were on the
radio or on television there. I love that. Go Cats.
(09:07):
They're doing okay. Football team is doing okay right now.
They're on the up. So we're excited about that. You
got to Detroit in nineteen ninety nine. You've held this
position ever since, so the longest running I tout this
because I was just given this piece of history. I'm
the longest running single person on a radio morning show,
(09:31):
hosting a morning radio show on one signal like SO
five Channel nine five in Detroit. I've been on the
air there for twenty two years, going to be twenty
three years, and there has not been I guess anybody
that's been at one station in the mornings doing it longer,
which honestly, I don't know if it's a good thing
or a bad thing. I think it's it's longevity. Longevity
(09:54):
just being able to sustain at such a high level
I think is like that. Jason Hanson, Yeah, yea of
the radio crew. I guess mister reliable always evolved with
Jason Hanson. Like a year ago, A buddy of mine's
friends with him, and he's a really good golfer and
he had his worst golf game the day I golfed
with him, and he was He's a very like religious
(10:17):
nice man, you know what I mean. He was not.
He was not feeling it with me that I felt
so bad. I told him, I said, I think it's
me and he goes, no, I'm just horrible today. But
he's that was a guy that I think about. What
you know, you always look at the kicker and go
what a job? I mean, this guy doesn't have to
do a great job. You don't have to like do anything.
But Jason Hanson was so automatic. I mean, you're also
(10:39):
a big fan of Barry Sanders, and he was what
one of the first people you met when he got
So I was a Bears fan when I first moved here. Yeah,
growing up in Chicago, yes, But which is funny because
you're from Monroe, right, you could have been a Browns fan. No, No,
I would never let that happen. So I did. I
did a charity event with Barry Sanders. It was right,
(11:00):
you know, in nineteen ninety nine, so I was fairly
close to right after Barry said he wasn't gonna play,
and he wasn't doing very much at that time. A
matter of fact, nobody saw him. And I got to
host this event just because the charity asked me to
host it, and I got lucky and I got to
meet the legend. And there's no better, you know, ever
running back than Barry Sanders. And I think that meeting
(11:22):
him personally made me realize how big of a fan.
And then for some time I would go my buddy
used to do an open gym at our Lady of
Refuge and Orchard Lake and Barry would play basketball, and
his you know son would play basketball, so you'd see
him every now and again, and that made me and
(11:44):
then I our Calvin Johnson and then honestly, Dominic Raol
I coached. I coached Dylan Rayola in basketball. Do you
know a story about Dylan Rayola. Dylan Riola has as
a sophomore in high school or junior in high school.
Now I think he's a junior signed as a sophomore
(12:04):
with Ohio State. He's he's his age group. He's the
number one recruit college recruit for his age. He's gonna
he he looks like Patrick Mahomes playing football. He has.
Dom Riola's like just grit and kind of a can
you swear on this or no? No being being kind
(12:27):
of a you know, a jerk out. Dom was OK
and he's as sweetest can be. So I coached Dylan
and Domola was the greatest dad and you know, always
was real supportive. And it was funny because Dylan was
more excited about Mojo being his coach. Then I was
(12:48):
probably on par with the fact that I was coaching
you know, Dom's son, the Lions. They grew on you,
it made you made made easy to be I became
a Lions fan. Yeah, and it's it's it's hurt a
little bit, It's okay, it's okay. Yeah, we're doing We're
doing five. I know we're on that, We're we are
the Lions, the future of the Lions. And all the
time that I've been a Lions fan, and I know
(13:10):
for a lot of people, I haven't felt this excited
about the future of the team. And in a long
long time. Is it the coaches, the players? What is it?
I think it's well, I mean it starts with Brad
and I think that he gets it. Like like I'm
like looking at what he's done, the moves he's done,
and I'm I'm going, how does he How is he
allowed to make moves like this? And people are allowed
(13:31):
Letty are doing this? Um? And then Dan, you know,
how do you not like Dan Campbell? How do you
not look at that guy and go like that guy
would be if you were to have a morning radio
show and he were the host, he would he would
be number one, Yes, because he says stuff that you go,
that's all I want to listen to what he's doing.
(13:52):
You know, Yeah, I watched his press conferences online just
to get sound bites. There are great sound bites. Yeah, yeah, no,
is it exactly how he is in front of a camera,
is how he is off of it? That's great, He's hilarious.
He can be serious when he needs to be just
great human. So I'm I want to know how many
stars he has on his Starbucks app because he drinks
so much Starbucks. They say that that's what he said, Yes, like,
(14:15):
does he does he use his stars? Does he use
his stars to get a free coffee? I'll write that
down on a piece of paper in questions a little
box outside his office? All right, if he had one,
we'll get him one. We'll get him a box and
we'll ask him how many stars you have? Okay, you
said about one point eight million people watch or listen
to your show at peak time in the morning, which
is insane. And then with that talk about watch ye
(14:37):
social media wise, m I think that we're right up
there as far as in Detroit with you know, maybe
Dave and Chuck the Freak. With the amount of social
media followers that we have insane. So it's good. Yeah,
we're very blessed. When did that, like when did it
start peaking at like one point eight million people. Well,
honestly before COVID and then after when nobody was working
(15:01):
and do anything it then it turned to podcasting. Yeah,
and because of you know, I Heart Radio was so
smart years ago to create its own app. That helped
us a lot. You know. We uh, we've been really lucky.
I mean, honestly, there are other radio shows in the
country that have struggled to get people to come back
(15:22):
to listening to radio consistently. Um, Detroit, those been really good.
You know, we've been really blessed with that. But we
have to give him something to listen to all the time.
Like it's tough. You can't phone it. You can't phone
it in, and there are days when you feel like
you're phoning it in. But um, people are are into it.
We have some passionate p ones, you know. Yeah, your
(15:44):
co host, you've got Spike, You've got Shannon, Mike's up
there and Green Rapids. You got Megan mickdown in Toledo. Uh.
When did that kind of group assemble. It's it's been evolving,
you know. We started with a whole different group back
in two thousand and then we got a whole different
group in two thousand and five, and then got a
(16:05):
whole different group in two thousand and eight, and then
a whole different group in two twelve. We've the alumni.
We have as many alumni and our group than the
Lions have probably in their alumni group. And I think
you have to do that as a show, like you
have to have a very similar core, and we've kind
of kept that together. But my goal is to surround like,
(16:27):
our audience is you. You know, I'm fifty two years old.
How old are you? Twenty six? All right, you're our audience.
You're exactly the audience. So we try to appeal to
a twenty five to thirty four year old female and
as a fifty two year old, you know, married guy
with sons that my son is your age. My oldest son,
Joe is your age. You know. I try to surround
(16:51):
myself around people that are your age that can so
it doesn't sound like I'm a creepy fifty two guy
talking about things that are interesting you. I sound like,
you know, a person that is interested and intrigued by
what people do. People sometimes will say to me, you're
how old? Like if I talk about my sons like
(17:13):
I talk about my kids so much. I thought your
oldest one was older than twenty six, did you? Yeah? Okay, yes,
it's funny because of Joe is actually two. Always told
it in twenty six. He's twenty seven. He turned he
was born in nineteen ninty five. But my youngest is seventeen,
and so I still kind of hold on a little
bit too, knowing what a seventeen year old is interesting.
(17:34):
But and our goal is we've given people the opportunity
that you know are coming up, an opportunity to be
on the radio. And my goal is to never hold
anybody back. I'd love them to go get their own show,
like my son Joe, Jed and Ashley is two partners.
Everybody came through our morning show and are doing things.
And then there's like five or six other people around
(17:55):
the country that have been are working different shows of
their own. Left our show. Wow. Um, now that we've
gotten into the characters that are a part of the show, Um,
I have to give you my just like description of
the show's personalities and you can tell me if it's
accurate or not. All right, go ahead, Okay, I'll start
with my girl Shannon Um, because she's the go obviously,
(18:18):
I love what I love like what she brings to
the show, her different points of view. I mean, you
guys talk about personal stuff all the time. Um, so
Shannon to me is she's a cool mom, but she
can also be very fiery with a lot of passion
in there, and she is like probably one of the
most open minded people. Am I am close? Yeah? Okay, Um, Spike,
(18:42):
I saw what I what I hear this two days ago?
Spike is Spike from a caller? Was it yesterday? That
was yeah, yeah, Like, so give Spike is Spike? I asked.
The caller complimented Shannon and said to Shannon how beautiful
she was and then said Mojo, you're you know, you're
great looking or something like that. And then I said
what about Spike And they're like, well, Spike is Spike.
(19:03):
They said something like Spike looked like pebe Herman. But
they did say that self deprecation. We love you guys,
crush it with that. Everybody and even Shannon, who you know,
if you look at Shannon's Instagram, it's like there's never
a thing out of place. It seems like, yeah, and
you know, I always sit there and go, God, if
I could take a picture that's one of Shannon's bad pictures,
I would be like it would be a good day. Um,
(19:27):
but yeah, we're pretty good at that. So Spike is
what um Spike is say it, come on, don't no, No,
I'm thinking of the I'm thinking of phone scams because
I love his phone scams. They're hilarious. I'm gonna say, like,
I want to say persistent, yeah, just in all facets
(19:48):
because he has those quirky, weird backs that he always knows.
He's very persistent at making it. People have always said
Spikes and know it all. So Spike, Spike is like
the guy I would say persistent, know it all, then yeah,
find them. Spike is definitely He's one of those guys
like he's the he's the use like an analogy from nowadays.
(20:09):
He's the guy that is um that always you know
you can you can sit there and go yeah, so
I was watching the Lions game yesterday, And even if
he doesn't know anything about the Lions game, he'll like
pretend like he's watched the Lions game, like he definitely,
but heine ten times he's actually right with some of
with this. Yeah, no, and the phone scams are hilarious.
(20:30):
I am like, these are so annoyingly funny. Yeah, I'll
listen to him every day though. Um, Megan, we live
like fifteen minutes apart, so if you want to let
her know that and like we can do at drinks,
that'd be great. Um. Tolio, by the way, is for
Lions fans. To you're talking about being a Lions fan.
I joked with you about being a Browns fan, just
because occasionally we'll get Browns fans that Toledo. People from
(20:52):
Toledo are the best. They are Toledo. They they believe
that Toledo is the greatest city in the world and
don't question it. And you know what, it's a great city.
It gets crapped on a lot, but it's it's It's
like Detroit. I always say that Detroit and Toledo are
got that same kind of vibe because Grand Rapids is
like nice, really cool, it's cool. You know, there's cool
(21:13):
stuff going on there Toledo and Detroit. You gotta like
search for the coolest stuff. But when you find it,
some cool stuff going some really cool stuff. I lived
in Toledo. My first job in local sports was Toledo.
So Tolto's very close to my heart. But Megan is
very unapologetically herself. Yes, she's hilarious about it too. People
when they say, I say to Megan, this is the
greatest compliment, when they say I'm I'm like Megan, you know, yeah,
(21:35):
you say I'm like Megan, because Megan doesn't understand that
there are a lot of people that that look up
to her. Like you called Shannon, would you say, call
her goals or would you say the goat? Goat? Yeah,
say the goat. So in a lot of women will
say Shannon's goals, you know what I mean, Like Megan
says that, I think that Meghan's goals. Yeah, because Megan
(21:56):
is She's so I always tell people, and she'll hate
me for Sanna's She is the female me If I
would if I were, you know, thirty years old and
single and hanging out, you put away at me on Megan,
put awaken some nice makeup and hear this like I
can just I can just hear her like crying voice
right now. Yeah, she's gonna why are you sitting? No,
(22:18):
she say I hate you? That would be her thing.
She's great. Um, Mike's a dad. That's all. Yeah, money, Yeah,
he's the biggest Lions fan out of anybody on the show.
He is the biggest Lions He goes to more Lions
games than anybody and he lives in Grand Rapids, which
is funny because that's the thing with the Lions need
to be so excited about their fans travel. They love it.
(22:40):
He go. He went to the Lions you know game
last year in LA because he was the you know,
he was big fan and actually, um you know, the
staffords were cool to host him, so he was able
to you know, because he's not and we're not all
wildly rich, but he was able to go out there
because they gave back and they helped our breaking entering
(23:00):
Christmas charity and stuff. So that's that's lovely. Um KP
is new. She's new and she's actually twenty three from
Lake Orion. She's a TikTok phenomenon too. That's how actually
how I found her. We were talking about one of
the newscasters that just is going viral and that's how
you get jobs now, and it's it's crazy, Yeah, it's
(23:22):
I wasn't prepared for this. Your social I know, it's
funny because I am not huge personally on social media,
like I throw pictures up so my sisters can see
their you know, niece or their nephews, you know, doing things.
But nowadays you have to be like huge, your social
game has to be huge. And if you don't, if
you miss the boat, like it's literal like money you're
(23:44):
missing out on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I
don't know if I hated it. And players are like
that too, Like honestly, it's it's funny with fantasy football
if you're not if you're if your viral game is
not big, yeah, I mean you even though you will
get you know, score points for people in fantasy football.
People like like my son drafts the personalities to be
(24:05):
on his team. Okay, if this is I would love
to talk about some of the topics that you guys
have on our show how they come together, because if
you're listening to the show, you're like, how did you
come up with these random topics? And it sounds like
everyone kind of just brings their own topics maybe presents
them every night. Every night, okay, we have to turn
in a diary, a topic diary, and so every night
everybody has to turn in one to two things that
(24:28):
happen to them that day, okay, And what we do
is we compile the list of everything that's going on
in people's lives and then myself in KP go through
it and say, all right, this is how we're going
to do it, and we try to put a good
mix of things. When they're parents listening with their kids
(24:48):
in the car, we try to keep away from some
of the more controversial stuff, right, and then once the
kids are dropped off at school. I mean, it's anything goes,
you know. It's talking about lots of stuff that you
do talk about on this podcast. By the way, this
is the longest I've gone without swearing except for on
the radio. Yeah, maybe the only podcast I have never
(25:09):
had a swear word on. So we appreciate plus editing
for meds. Are happy with me, right, Um, yeah, we
need that. If this is my most toxic trait, then
I'm okay with it. But I religiously listened to War
of the Roses segment on your show. Yeah, and it's
that's horrible of me to look forward to that. Do
(25:31):
you know how that segment started? No, So it started.
I was in Arizona working in one of the seventh
character actually the show that took over for me, John
Jay and Rich. They still started doing it when I left. Yes,
So it started because there was a survey that said
that if you had a choice, if a guy had
a choice of who he would send it doesn't free,
(25:53):
doesn't roses to, who would he send the roses to?
It was a Cosmos survey, I still remember that, and
majority of the guys said that they would send it
to their mom or their girlfriend. So it started with
me and the two people that I worked with in Tucson,
Betsy and Jeff who is my producer, calling girls, boyfriends
(26:17):
and husbands to see where they send flowers to, just
to get the reaction of what it would sound like
if you sent it to the your mom. And you
started catching them and we caught one. We caught one cheater,
my gosh, and then that one cheater turned into let's
do this again and yeah, and it turned into to that.
So and how different it is now because now it
(26:40):
used to be one of those things where you could
do and you know, you could do it live and everything.
Now we have to tape them and we got to
get permission to run over all that. Yeah, So I
happened to live in Tucson here wore the roses, and
I just assumed every radio station was doing that. It's
kind of they A lot of them did it, and
a lot of them have trademark ter anything. Thanks. I
(27:01):
appreciate you so much for what are we doing. I'm
not very good. You want to retire. So not only
am I a social media failure, I am a trademark failure.
I did trademark phone scams though, so you did? Did
we trademark phone scams? We actually have. So we have
like war the Roses trademark, but it's a trademark here,
so it's not nationally. But I will tell you this,
(27:22):
this is actually interesting thing. Ryan Seacrista's Ryan's Roses and
was going to call it Warre the Roses, but actually
made a comment that the reason he did not call
it war the Roses because he didn't want to call
it the same thing that we called it. Thank you,
Thank you Ryan. Not only is he beautiful and rich,
but he's a kind man, very kind. How often so
(27:45):
do people just email you guys? They call you? They're
like high I think for everything that we do, so
we do a bunch of things. If you listen to
our show, we do phone scams, we do five lies,
tell your mom, we do six on sacks. We do
a bunch of different things. We'll solicit through the show,
or we solicit on our social media or on our
website mode on the Morning dot com. Do you want
(28:07):
to be a guest on this? And people will send
it into us, and then what we do is we
have people like Lydia, one of our associate producers, goes
through and then she'll call the people, talk to them
and you know, get the story. Some stories we won't do.
We try to stay away from anything that like we
(28:28):
used to do a lot of ones where like she's
pregnant with a baby and thinks that he's cheating. We
used to do those, but then we've realized that, like
we're possibly causing health risks for her, and we're like,
you know, we just want to get involved. Not that
you know, her finding out if her spouse is cheating
(28:50):
while she's pregnant isn't valuable. It is valuable for her,
like she wants. It's peace of mind. But we don't
want to get involved in anything that potentially could be harmful.
So oh, my god. Yeah, so they're certain ones will
stay away from that's crazy. Do you have little kids
calling up? We've had little kids calling so here's here's
one for you. We've had little kids that have entered
(29:11):
I think my daddy is cheating on my mommy, or
I think my mommy on social media. No, they've entered
like text messages to us. Like they'll send a text
in the morning to zero, or they'll even like on
a social media thing, make a comment on a social
media post or dm us and say that to us.
And you know, although it's extremely compelling, yes, it would
(29:36):
be really bad to do. Crazy. Do you think that
you're helping more people or or harming more people? You know,
if we ask the listeners that, I think the majority
of them probably say helping. I think so too. I
think in many cases it's a mixture of both. So
we can we could technically help somebody by exposing that
(29:56):
one of you know, their you know, their spouses being unfaithful, um,
which is definitely not a great thing. But then eventually,
in the long run, you know, we hope that we're
able to give them advice through having a counselor help
them out or we've had. We have a divorce attorney
that gives legal advice for free, so so you will
(30:17):
hook them up after that and make sure that yeah
taken care of well. Yeah, I listen to it religiously.
I don't catch it on. If I don't catch it live,
it's on the podcast. It's like our biggest fan. I
love this. It's crazy. I want to work for us.
We were looking for somebody. Okay, I have a proposal
for you, but let me ask you an honest question
like this, because it's funny. I've had people like media
(30:39):
people in media. I know sports is obviously like the thing,
but local media people will come and fill in for us,
like fill in for Shannon or fill in for Meggan
or filling for me. I've never heard that when I'm gone,
Like we've had like um back in the day, like
Karen Drew from Local four, or Marie La Flame it
(31:01):
was on a Channel seven, Like they would come in
and do stuff with us. When they come in, they
get so excited over the freedom that you have to
be able to talk like you sometimes get have to
talk in segments, right, so you get x amount of
time to be able to do something in radio It's
kind of like you have to break a twelve after
it's you know, yep, top of the hour, you got
twelve minutes to talk this a long time, UM, would
(31:23):
you ever be interested in doing that? So I and
I thought about so I really started listening to I've
listened to you guys all twenty six years and well
technically twenty two years of my life because if you
guys got on ninety nine. UM, I was not listening
to you guys when I was a baby. I take
that you're a fetus fetis when I was listening now
and you were kicking in your mom's womb when I
when I heard when I heard Mojo's voice, exactly when
(31:46):
you heard the war the grosses, which is horrible. UM.
I really started listening to you guys religiously twenty twenty
during the almost during the pandemic, because towards the end
of that, so this was almost two years ago. UH
sports shut down. I had transitioned from doing local sports
in Toledo, Ohio to kind of going out on my own.
I'd been able to secure some commercials and stuff. I'm like,
(32:07):
oh cool, there's things on the horizon, and then the
world shut down and sports shutdown, so I was out
of work for about six months, so I had to
go nanny. I had to go dry forty five minutes
up to an armor and nanny for about three or
four months. You guys were on my radio in my
car every single morning, and I'm like, oh my god,
this is really different because at that point you're considering
other jobs and whatnot. Thankfully, at University of Arizona, I
(32:29):
had called me in December, so I was like fine,
But it was during football season nanny that I'd go
to football games. And this is only two years ago,
which is insane. But I'm like listening to Shannon, and
I'm like, I hope Shannon retires doing this because this
would be the best freaking thing ever. Yeah, to retire
doing you know that kind of a job. Yeah. Yeah,
it's funny. Back in the day, Heather Catalo, Karen Drew
(32:51):
or let my Go Tos. Yeah. And the only way
I could get them to come in and do stuff
for us was because they were the coming up people. Okay,
so because they were the you know, the two on
their stations that wanted to like make a name, you know,
for themselves. They were willing to wake up early in
the morning and go do it. I will I will
(33:11):
say this to you. The one thing that people don't
understand with morning radio, and this is something for the
lions too, the amount of people that listen to us,
but also our social following and what how active our
listenership is. Like, our listenership is very active. The people
that listen to us. We've been on for twenty some years.
(33:34):
So my listenership stems from people who are as young
as now, high school kids that are coming up right
now that are listening with their or middle school kids
coming up with their parents listening to the car, to
fifty sixty year old people that are listening. So it's
such a wide, you know and vast listenership and it's
(33:56):
predominantly female. That's crazy to me. So it's probably about
seventy percent seventy five percent female, and it's honestly, it's
amazing that. Um. The engagement that we have, Like like
that's the other thing too, is you can have followers,
but if you don't have engagement, first off, you probably
have bots, you know what I mean, Like who knows,
But we have like really amazing engagement, you know, Um,
(34:17):
you know we could post a picture and within five
six minutes we could have five thousand you know, likes
or you know, a couple thousand comments on something. So
it's really cool when when that happens. And then on TikTok,
I mean, I think that, you know, we that game
(34:38):
is growing bigger and bigger all the time, and we're
probably you know, we're probably still learning with everybody else.
But that's something that blows up even more. You know.
It's well, you guys have what probably hundred hundreds of
people calling in every day to the show, uh pretty
much or commenting and you know, through text or I
(34:58):
would say you gonna start texting into the show? You should?
You should definitely actually you know what, you do that
and I'll save your number in there because we have
a text board. Oh you do. We have like a big,
big screen board and it's got names up there and
it will say, you know, um, misfit Nicole, and it
will say your misfits, it will say you know, Danny
will say like whatever, and then you know who it
(35:19):
is because you see the comment, and then we'll go, oh,
you know, let's call it. Yeah. I did not know
there was a board. Yeah, I thought you guys just
kind of like it's you know, it's kind of cool.
It's like a it's it's our text scoreboard, so to speak. Yeah,
I love that. Um okay, we have to I feel
like we've touched on everything. Um, but I do, I do.
I said, You're like, oh, you want to come host
(35:41):
for us. I'm like, oh, I have a proposal. I
literally have a written down in here, like here your
proposal and what you want. I literally have my proposal
written DOWNNY. All right, good, it's right here on this thing.
When you guys go out for the summer and I
have to listen to reruns of the show, Okay, let
me do it for you. All right, we can do that.
Just think I have to clear give you I actually no,
(36:01):
we would, honestly, we would love you to do it.
Just you have at number now, I don't have to
clear it. I not talked to the bosses listening. You
gave me presents. I got like, I got you know, swag,
I got lined gear. Yeah. I was like, this is
like cool. I'm challenging. We take care of every other
team in this town. Bring it on, bring it. Yeah.
(36:21):
I'll talk about you as much as I possibly. Can
I know. I was listening to you guys talk about
some Hard Knocks topics and stuff, and I'm like, oh gosh,
they don't know how big was Hard Knocks for you guys?
Were that the biggest thing ever? Honestly in the building
because I'm in the building. It was very low key.
Really when you when they say you do not see
them or hear them, you really don't, Okay, And there's
about forty Hard Knocks crew members walking around at all times.
(36:44):
All right, it was very low key for us, I'm
not gonna lie, But to the masses, it was like
it was huge. It was behind and they got some
really good, really good storylines and people learned a lot
a lot about the lines. But for us, you see
all those hits in practice and and the coach speaking
of it. We hear it, We've we've already heard it.
It's like we were hearing it. Can you because this
is my thing? I want to go. Can I go
(37:04):
into the auditorium where you know aiden you know, was
singing like you will show me? Will you give me
a tour? We might be able to do that. They're
at practice right now, are they really like, yeah, do
a little mining. I went a couple of years ago.
I got to go on a road trip with the team.
I told you this before week, and it was the
cool first off, it was like the greatest way to travel.
(37:25):
I will never so I'll give you an example of
what I was wowed by. I was wowed by the
fact that I got to go show up and there
was like the guys getting out of their cars and
stuff like that, with their bags and on. And then
we ate beforehand. So we went into the cafeteria and
got to eat, and it was like wild to see
all these big linemen, you know, large grabbing food and
(37:47):
then going to um uh the airport and getting on
a charter flight and we sat. I sat in the
back of the plane same which is honest like the
best place to sit because you're sitting by you know,
Dan Miller, and oh yeah, you get off, you get
on the plane, you get off of it first whenever.
(38:09):
But I'll never forget that they walk around with like
the flight attendants walk around with like food and all
this stuff. But it was the coolest to go to
a road game and pull up with a police ascort.
And that's the thing with hard knocks, like when you
see that, like you see the police ascort with the
buses we went to So I went to New England
and watched them play the Patriots. Yeah, and fans were
(38:30):
throwing things at the bus you drive through like a
like a local little town. It was honestly the coolest
thing ever. Like NFL football to me is the greatest
of any entertainment around. But it's even cooler behind the scenes.
Like the game on the field is one thing, the
behind the scenes stuff is what makes it so cool.
(38:53):
It's it's not only is it the humans who are
the most athletic invest at what they do on the field,
but like off the field, it's also like top tier
the best. Yeah, the best people who are are the
best at their jobs are in my opinion, a lot
of them are working with NFL teams. Yeah, yeah, it's
very impressive the humans in this building. Can you tell
whoever does the merch for the Lions that this year
(39:13):
they stepped up their game, Like the merch has been
better than ever. It's amazing. Yes, yeah, it's so great.
Appeals to everyone. That's cool. You just listen to another
episode of Off the Record with the Danny Rogers. A
new episode drops every Tuesday.
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