The Fifth Hour: Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: Signed, Sealed & Delivered, Check the Inbox & more! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kabbooms.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto Cutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse Wow. The Clearinghouse of
Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour

(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now in.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
The air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Mahler
and Danny g Radio will join me over the course
of the weekend. He is producing this podcast today, but
we are locked in the pod studio early on this
Friday morning, back at it after a few rare and

(00:51):
appropriate days away back in the podcast sweatshop, and on
this podcast we've got signed, sealed and delivered and check
the inbox and some other surprises along the way. But
we begin with this. So we are recording this live
on digital tape, as we like to say, later than normal.

(01:12):
And the reason that we are doing that is because
Uncle Benny did not want to disturb his nieces that
we're sleeping right next door to the remote studio where
we do the overnight show from occasionally and also do
this podcast. There is an adjacent bedroom which has a

(01:33):
very thin wall with bad insulation, and that is where
much of the audio magic comes from on this side
of the wall. We didn't want to disturb the people
on the other side of the wall. As much as
I wanted to get in here and bark early in
the morning, would have caused a great disruption to the
beauty sleep and did not want to upset my twenty

(01:57):
something nieces. So nevertheless, here we are. Now the big
news of the week. Well, I took a couple of
again rare inappropriate days away from the radio show. There
was no holdout, There was no hashtag, there was no drama,
there was no hostage video that was released. There was

(02:18):
no I want to be traded to some other team
that did not happen. No, just a pen, a paper,
maybe some docu sign new a multi year deal, done
the way things used to be done. Quietly. You know.
I realized I am in the talk radio business and

(02:40):
that we liked the contract holdout in pro football because
it's good for business. However, my business done on the
down low, the DL, as we used to say, So
we did not announce that there were extension talks going
on on this podcast or the talk show. In fact,

(03:03):
technically I was working without a contract for a couple
of weeks. My contract had run out, so at that
point I was a free agent, even though I was
still getting the microphone time at Fox Sports Radio. But
we did not leak the news to a trusted source,
not that there's many of those people left trusted sources.

(03:25):
There was no campaign on the gram featuring my dog
Moxie wearing a T shirt saying pay me. There was
none of that. No, no, we signed this new multi
year deal. We did it behind closed doors, under the
cover of darkness, which, if you know the Malor brand

(03:49):
over the years, that's about as on brand as it gets.
And so let's be honest here now, there was a
point where we thought this would not be happening, where
it all might come tumbling down like a wobbly Jenga
tower tipping over and hitting the floor, pieces flying everywhere.

(04:11):
So let's go back on the hot tub time machine
to a sad moment on the history of the show
and in a moment where at the time I was
at the very top I thought of the mountain. Let's
go back to November mid November twenty twenty four, I
had returned from a very brief trip to Cansa City,

(04:34):
had returned from Kansas City after a VIP weekend. They
rolled out the red carpet, had a penthouse, hotel room,
the airfare, everything taken care of courtesy of the landing
in Liberty, Missouri, the home of the Ben Mallard Chicken
fingers and my friend Bob Fesco, the big morning star

(04:57):
at the fan in Cansa City. I went in there
and you guys showed up from all over the Upper Midwest.
We had people come down from Iowa, Nebraska, obviously Missouri
where we were doing the broadcast Kansas which is right
across the way there, and it was awesome. I had
a great turnout. People were very kind. And then I
got back and I walked into an audio bloodbath. The

(05:21):
company had whacked the great Eddie Garcia steamboat. Willie, my
longtime Update anchor, partner in crime after more than two
decades at Fox Sports Radio. That's it now. As you know,
for all of us, the experience of you a listener

(05:41):
me doing the show that was a major, major gut punch,
the kind of sudden move that makes you realize yet again,
how fragile these gigs really are, the fragility of the
business that I have chosen my life's profession. You see,
there was no golden watch that was handed out. There

(06:04):
was no farewell tour. I don't like those anyway, just
a thanks for everything. It's not you, it's us. And
then a vanishing act of Eddie that reminded everyone who's
involved in the business that you're only secure until you're not.

(06:27):
And listen, we have built a freakishly loyal cult audience,
which hopefully you're part of. You're listening to the Fifth
Hour podcast and I think you're in that. It's my opinion,
but you're listening to the radio show and the Witching Hours.

(06:47):
However you consume this stuff, it doesn't matter. Right, We
started to wonder if our number was next. My deal
was up in the summer, just a couple of weeks ago,
in July of twenty twenty five. So you do the
math on that. You say, well, Eddie and Eddie got
let go in November and then my deal is up,

(07:10):
and okay, you put two and two together. You're like, well,
this isn't good. That's not good. And if Eddie could go,
I certainly could go. I'm not giving a lifetime contract
or anything like that. So one thing about getting into
the industry at a pretty young age you learn at

(07:30):
an early point in life that not only life is temporary,
but the business you have chosen is temporary. This is
not something that you normally do for a long time,
certainly not in one place, which makes what has happened
to me in my situation even more outrageous and more

(07:53):
crazy and all that stuff. Radio, especially talk radio, does
not offer long term leases. It does not you You're
always month to month, at best your month to month.
And while these jobs are hard to get, they're even
harder to keep. And if you manage to stick around,

(08:15):
as I like to say, you age in dog years,
a decade on the air is really like seventy seventy
years on the air. Like the format shifts, the executives change.
I have had in my time at Fox Sports Radio,
I think I've had three or four different bosses. If

(08:36):
I did the math on that, yeah, I've had four bosses,
four people that could have whacked me at any time.
So I've had four executives that I've had to deal with.
And then what ends up usually happening is it's not
even the executives that you deal with. It's one day
some middle manager from San Antonio tells you that your

(08:57):
P one numbers are strong, but your P two numbers
are soft. The quarter hours just aren't really working out
for us anymore, and suddenly you find yourself only doing
a podcast, which listen, eventually, I will only do a
podcast at some point. That is the way it's going
to go. But the point is you're only doing a podcast,

(09:18):
and then you're doing ads for a lawnmower blade replacement company.
And that's fine. You try to avoid that as long
as you can. And we survived for now all yet
again and listen were locked in financially for a couple
of years to the company. And we're still calling the shots,

(09:40):
still sitting in the catbird seat, the watch tower of
the overnight, still commandeering the overnight airwaves, like the one
man navy, writing the monologues, the bullet points of the monologues,
putting the things together for the show as a one
man op. But why do we enjoy those crazy nighttime hours?

(10:06):
Because for all the pressure, capital pee pressure, the late
night slot comes with something that no amount of drive
time Molah can buy you freedom. Freedom with a capital F.
And we talk about this from time to time, But

(10:28):
no one's breathing down my neck at three in the
morning to get me to do something that they think
needs to be done. Meaning there's no brand consultants that
are yelling at you about your tone of that monologue
or the pacing of that particular segment, or you left

(10:50):
that guy Jed who fled on too long. She was
on the air for too long. There's no zoom calls
filled with big buzzwords with things like synergy in platform adjacency.
I don't even know what that means. Right, you don't
have that. So those are all positive things. Those are
all positive things. You don't have to deal with the

(11:14):
rigamarar that a lot of those other shows have, where
there's people in management that often feel the need to
do something to justify their existence, which often means busy
body work. We don't have that. We don't have that.
They've given me the freedom of the overnight to go

(11:35):
in there and just get weird. Right, you get to
be weird, you get to be real, get to talk
with yes, you the listener, the audience. You don't have
to talk at anyone. I don't have to talk at you.
I don't have to sit like I'm on some mountaintop
that I'm better than you. And one thing you learn

(11:58):
also is that the people listening at the hour where
you should be sleep and nothing good happens after midnight,
the phrase one or two in the morning, whatever it is.
But the people that are listening, the insomniacs, the truckers,
the security guards, the cops, the robbers, the fast food workers,

(12:19):
the night owls, a few lost souls mixed in there.
You're not flipping around, You're not hey, you're not dabbling,
You're locked in. You listen. Many of you listen for
the entire four hours of the show, or you'll listen
for an hour. Most people in daytime radio, you're lucky

(12:41):
if you get them for seven or eight minutes. Very
rare that they listen that long. And the difference also
is you listen overnight and you call in, you become
part of the show. You become a character on the show.
I go out and do these meet and greets the
different towns. I've been all over the United States, from

(13:03):
from Maine all the way to Seattle and all over
South Carolina. We did one last year in Charleston, in
southern California, all over the place. And always somebody will say, hey,
what's so and so like, And it's a caller to
the show. They're like, Hey, what's that person like? And

(13:23):
so that's one of the reasons you don't leave something
like this. And sure could I have jumped to a
morning show somewhere or afternoon drive and made a lot
more money. Absolutely, I'm not getting rich doing this. I'm
not and doing a zany show, a zoo show with
goofy animal sound effects and giving away wads of cash,

(13:48):
or a car wash in Temecula, you know, like I
used to do at the mighty six ninety in San
Diego back in the day. We could have taken this
audience and tried to rebuild something somewhere else. Very difficult
to recreate that. We've had opportunities over the years. I've
been offered radio jobs in many cities, well three to

(14:12):
be exact, since I've been at Fox Sports Radio. But
fun equals funds, right because radio at night, and we
have preached the bully pulpit, from the bullie pulpit, this
and I continue to say this radio at night just
means more. It connects deeper, cuts deeper, It sticks in

(14:33):
your soul longer. It builds community in a way that
daylight radio cannot touch. It just can't. There's a lot
more people awake during the day, but there's a lot
of options, and people are busy and they're listening with
half an year. At night, there's less going on and

(14:54):
you're more locked in. And that is why the Malard
Militia as we've called it, thanks to Jahattis John and
Michigan who came up with that name, the Malard Militia
isn't just a catchy name. It's a movement, right, It's
the movement is it's a small movement. It's a movement.
Got a bunch of diehards across every time zone in

(15:18):
the United States. We have an international reach, but we've
got people at truck stops and people listening during the
day while I'm sleeping in office buildings who treat me
like a friend in the room, not just some random
voice in the box. What's in the box right? Not that?

(15:42):
And what kind of bond? You don't throw that away
for some tea time. I'm not even a golfer a
golf once a year if I'm lucky. You don't throw
that away for some tea time at nine or ten
in the morning, and then a What's trend segment? No,
So we stayed. We stayed with Premiere Networks, which is

(16:05):
still the top of the food chain in syndicated radio.
There is no one that does it better than the
Premiere Networks. And I recall them my younger days. I
was like, that's the gold standard. You want to work
in radio and you want to do syndicated radio, you
work for a Premiere. They were called Premiere Radio Networks
when I started. Now they're just called the Premiere Networks.

(16:27):
And then with Fox Sports Radio having started shortly after
the network launched, and remember being on and only markets,
the test markets. We were doing beta testing at Fox
Sports Radio in the early days, and I was the
first weekend overnight host on Fox Sports Radio. They were
playing recorded programming overnight and they gave me the Friday

(16:51):
and Saturday overnight shift. I was, I believe twenty five
years old or something like that. I got the overnight
show at Fox Sports Radio on the weekends, and we
were doing beta testing in Binghamton, New York, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
and there were a couple of other small markets, but
we were only on in like four or five cities.

(17:13):
To start Fox Sports Radio, we had to work out
the kinks. We had to give the customer a product.
At that time, ESPN Radio was the gold standard. Everyone
had listened to that they were at the very top
of the food chain. And now you look all these
years later, and Fox Sports Radio is the gold standard.

(17:34):
It's been that way for years in national syndicated sports
talk radio. And so they've given me this stage with
a microphone, a moon, and a man on a mission.
And so the audio penthouse stays occupied and the show
we're not coasting along. We're evolving. We're getting bigger and

(17:56):
louder and stranger and hopefully better. Of course you'll be
the judge of that. So we may soon be entering
our year twenty five. Now I'm a little behind Fox
Sports Radio. Fox Sports Radio's birthday is August twenty eighth,
is when the network launched in two thousand. So I

(18:18):
have to wait. I haven't done the math on this.
I haven't done the math on this. I'm sure alf
or ferg Dog or someone will do the math. So
I'm six months in twenty six days. Actually seven months
in twenty six days behind that because I started about
a month after the network started, so I'm about eight
months behind. So I guess the summer. If my math
is correct, the summer of twenty twenty six will be

(18:42):
my twenty fifth anniversary at the company. But in talk
radio terms, that's something like, you know, twenty five years
is like eighty two and a half. I did the
math on that. The legs still work, the voice still
cuts decently, still cuts decently. Occasionally I get my vocal

(19:03):
cord shredded from talking so much being a one man
act on the overnight. By the end of the show,
some of you guys still laugh, some of you still
enjoy the show. And more importantly, that red on air
light that flashes outside the studio it still means something
to me. I was raised on radio. My parents worked

(19:24):
crazy hours. My mom ran her own business, and she'd
always have the radio on. A little fat Benny would
tag with my mom after school and she'd make her
deliveries to post offices or whatever, and I was with her,
and she always had the radio on. It always meant
a lot to her. She always would turn it up
for certain segments on the radio. My dad was the

(19:44):
same way, grew up listening to Art Bell through Coast
to Coast late at night. But my mom, both of
them loved, loved radio, and she would turn on in
the afternoon at five point thirty. There was a guy
named Jim He who did a sports show in LA
and she knew I liked sports, and so she turned

(20:05):
that on and he had all these goofy sound effects
and so I listened to that and I loved it.
And there's just something magical about doing it live. Performing
live the grid of the overnight, you don't get that
same vibe. Not that I don't love doing the podcast,
but you don't get that same vibe. And you don't
get many second acts in this business. You don't. And

(20:27):
so we were able to secure a third or fourth.
I don't even know what we're on now. So remember
to turn out the lot. But the party's not over.
The party's not over. And you leave that radio on
and you download the podcast, you listen to that, you
give us a good review, and you help keep this

(20:48):
show going as long as we can go. And we'll
just keep doing it and doing it and doing it
and doing it and doing it. And I have no
plans on stopping as long as the health is good
and life is great and I loved it. We've survived
a freaking pandemic together. We can survive just about anything. Now,

(21:10):
turning the page on that, you gotta check the inbox.
What's in the box? You gotta check the inbox? So
he announced your pronouns. He emailed me a few weeks back.
His name Will Will the thrill from oh Glaholma, so

(21:32):
he said HEREM. I almost didn't open the email. I
get inundated. This is a person named blind Scott who
is one of my crazy friends. I've known Blind Scott
since a man the early days. He was one of
the original people that fell in love with the Overnight
Show and his many service dogs. Now he can't have

(21:55):
a service dog anyway. Scott and I go go way back,
and he sends me literally hundreds of emails a week,
and as a result, I have to like get rid
of him, and it's hard to go through the email.
It's a whole flugezy thing. So I get this message

(22:15):
from Will from Oklahoma, and as I said, I almost
didn't open it, because you know, spam is everywhere other
than blind Scott, and I am not in the market
for some kind of malware by opening some email I
don't recognize, or trying to have someone sell me a
discounted timeshare or some off brand pharmaceutical products that will

(22:40):
promise to regrow my hair. I'm good on that. I
have a nice hat collection. But something in the subject
line caught my eye and I'm not sure what it was.
I don't think he said longtime listener, first time visitor,
although he could have said that. It turns out that
Will wasn't just another overnight zombie. No, this was a

(23:04):
card carrying member of the Malor militia, a real one,
authenticated and essentially from before he was even a teenager.
So he said he had been listening to the show
since he was the tender age of twelve years old.
So at age twelve he found the show. Let that

(23:26):
marinate in your brain for a second. For me, I
was like, that kind of reminds me of me. I
fell in love with radio around that age. I think
I started listening. I was a little younger than Will,
but right around that age, and I loved it. I loved.
I was an introvert and the radio talked to me.
It spoke to me, and I didn't have to deal

(23:48):
with anyone. I didn't have to talk back to it.
It just talked to me. And if I wanted it
to shut up, I just turned it off. It was wonderful.
So I've always said, and I said this earlier thing
dog years and all that. So using that analogy that
we used earlier in this fifth Hour podcast, that would
make this kid about sixty in radio terms. All right,

(24:14):
So he grew up in southern California, my stomping grounds,
and would sneak a transistor radio or probably a phone
with the iHeart app. You know, I don't know, I'm
old under the covers and listen to this overnight circus
that we've created. His dear old mom, he said, would
scold him for staying up too late to listen to

(24:37):
that gas bag. I don't know. His name might start
with a B. Maybe that would be me, and hey, listen,
I've been called worse. Now. Will told me sadly that
his mom had recently passed away from cancer, and now,
at twenty one years old, all grown up and married,
he was coming back to town. Wanted to visit the

(25:01):
studio just to kind of hang out, and I gave
you say thanks and all that, just to see the
place where this odd little cult show is brewed, a
nice warm brew every night. Like the bizarre stew of
many hot sports takes and Mallard monologues, goofy sound effects,

(25:22):
all the lunacy, all the nonsense, all the wacky callers,
all of that. Now you should know that we've had
a few bumps in the road with visitor requests. I
love opening our doors. I think that's the coolest thing.
I still get a kick out of walking into the
radio studio now again, I guess I'm getting old boomer,

(25:46):
not a boomer. I just feel the energy. I feel
the vibe of the microphones and all the legends that
have worked in that building. We're in the old Rush Limbaugh,
Steve Harvey compound. Just amazing people in broadcasting, some of
the greatest of all time, who entertained millions and millions
of people, and they sat in those same studios, slaving

(26:08):
away in the mic over the microphone. Casey Casem his
old studio is down the hall. It's our podcast studio.
Like this is just amazing, you know, the ghost of
that building, if they could talk. So I want to
let you guys in, if your friends, if I know
you from the show, and you're called in and see
that's one of the things Will told me as a

(26:30):
kid caller, and I had forgotten. But he went back
to the iHeart archive and sent me the clip that
Will had been a kid caller, that he'd fallen asleep
as a little kid on the air, and I'd forgotten that,
and Will sent me the audio and I kind of
refreshed my memories. There you go. So I was like,

(26:51):
I kind of let this guy in, come on and so,
but we did have some issues now with the visitor request.
I don't want to name anyone. However, Mike Leprechaun, you
know who you are, Mike. Mike gave us all a
mild case of PTSD. I mentioned earlier in this podcast
that my contract was coming up in the summer. And

(27:14):
about a month before the contract comes up, I get
all these messages from management complaining that one of my
rogue listeners had shown up into the building and violated
the security protocol and you know, going nuts on me.
So I say, oh boy, this is not good. So

(27:36):
again a little bit of PTSD. We don't need to
go in any more detail on that, but let's just
say you get burned once by Eleprecaun, you think twice. Still,
something about Will's story felt genuine and felt authentic, and
so we told him. I said, listen, I don't want

(27:56):
to be a douche. You can stop by briefly. It's
gonna be a long drive for you. If you're that motivated,
you can do it. He said his uncle. His uncle
was the guy who had indoctrinated him into the cult
of the Overnight Sports Radio World when he was twelve
years old. So we said, hey, listen, bring the uncle.

(28:19):
Just don't bring a posse, right, don't bring an overnight bag,
don't bring a pillow. Don't show up at noon for
the midnight visit, or you're going to get pepper sprayed.
So Will was raised properly, not by wolves. His mom
did a good job. So he followed our instructions. He
showed up with Uncle Josh, polite, normal middle aged human being,

(28:45):
not wearing a cape or asking to speak to the
ghost of Genie and Medford or see if he could
channel Jimmy Ray from Tampa Bay. No he didn't. So
we gave them a very brief walk behind the scenes tour.
And I say very brief because it was in the
middle of a stop set and I had to get

(29:05):
back behind the microphone. Nothing glamorous unless you consider the
stack of ancient show rundowns off to the side or
some stale vending machine leftovers on the Smurf kitchen glamorous.
So he met the crew. He and Josh met the crew,
saw the magical on air light and the various buttons

(29:26):
and gadgets in the studio. We snapped a few photographs,
We chatted for a couple of minutes, and then that's it,
he laughed. That's it. That was the visit. It wasn't long,
it was short. It was sweet. It did stick with me, though,
because here's this kid, and he's not a kid anymore.
He's all growing up. Who stayed up late with a

(29:50):
cheap in my head, a cheap radio and just go
with my version of the story and listen to me
ramble into the void of the darkness night. And now
he's all grown, he's working the dreaded day shift in Oklahoma.
He's still listening, still connected and granted he's a podcast guy.

(30:11):
He told me he listens to the podcast, which is understandable. Nevertheless,
still loyal and that's awesome. And people think no one
listens to the overnight radio. Why did he do the
Overnight show? They think it's the like a graveyard shift,
a wasteland of insomniacs and weirdos yelling at the clouds.

(30:32):
And while we get a lot of that, we get
a lot of the angry old guy like Jerome and
Charleston who just calls up to complain about everything, and
so some of that is true. Every once in a while, though,
one of those weirdos turns out to be just a
cute kid who's growing up and wants someone to listen to,

(30:53):
something to listen to, and finds the show and it's
a companion as a background soundtrack in this case to
his life. Now, did it make me feel a little bit,
a little bit and a little like the godfather of
this strange nocturnal family, the mal Or Militia that we

(31:14):
have built up over the years. So to Will, thank you, pal,
it was great to meet you. Will wants me to
do a Malor meat greet in Oklahoma. I've been to
Oklahoma City before. Now Will lives in a small town
in Oklahoma and not in Oklahoma City. So if I
do end up there, will I promise we'll do a
malor meat greet. But I did want to think you're

(31:35):
not just for listening, but for reminding me yet again,
why this thing we do in the middle of the night. Well,
ninety nine point seven percent of the population of sleeping
other than Alf and ferg Dog and mister nice guy
and a few others still matters right now again, Will

(31:56):
you got to get some sleep during the nighttime hours
because you work the dreaded day shift. You've got a
family to support. You're all married, So welcome to adulthood,
and thank you, thank you, thank you. Will and on
that we will put the baby to bed. We'll have
some new podcast all weekend and get you caught up

(32:18):
on the schedule for next week as well. So thank
you for listening and supporting in the podcast. You can
email me if you get this in by tonight, you
can email me a question for the mail bag and
send that in care of what that would be the
Real Fifth Hour Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com

(32:41):
and put name and city, name and city in the
headline on that Real fifth Hour at gmail dot com,
and your comments and questions we'll be read in the
Sunday mail bag, but we'll have new pods all weekend.
Have a wonderful, wonderful rest your Friday. Thank you for

(33:04):
allowing me to put this up a little bit later.
It's an afternoon podcast on a Friday, but that's all good.
That's all good, So we'll catch you out tomorrow and
aloha all that wonderful stuff. And as Danny says later,
skater now asta pasta, gotta murder, I gotta go