KSSK’s "Perry & Price Show" has been the top-ranked morning drive radio show in Honolulu for nearly three decades. It was launched 29 years ago last week, the same day that Kilauea began erupting on Hawaii island — Aug. 9, 1983.
I sat down with Michael W. Perry and Larry Price to find out what accounts for their success.
Perry: We’re one phone call from greatness. We’re hoping for that one call that will cause a cascade of other calls and opinions.
Price: That’s what it takes in the radio business. The big trick with the phone calls is not to talk to the people who want to talk. You want to get the people who don’t want to talk to talk. There are 100 people waiting to call us on a Monday morning and tell us what they think about something, for some hidden agenda they may have or someone they want to support. That’s not the person you want to talk to.
Perry: Normal people, catching them off guard, giving you an honest description of what’s happening in traffic, where they can’t believe what’s going on. And they tell you like they’re talking to their best friend. That’s the best radio there is.
Price: The KSSK "Perry & Price Show" is a team thing. We’d be dead without our team. Our staff is kind of an "Action Line." People call with everything from lost wallets to potholes to medical questions. We have a list of every phone number to help people. Mike knows every website known to man.
Perry: Our filter for which calls to put on the air is, Is this going to be universally appealing? That’s the one thing — will it be interesting to everybody else? It usually comes down to a few things: traffic, health, simple or perceived evils — that’s great radio.
Price: The Posse started out with lost pets. A caller told us his cocker spaniel was missing in Makiki. We’d ask the public to keep an eye out, and we’d get calls, "Yeah I saw him on Wilder Avenue." We went from lost pets to lost Alzheimer’s patients.
Perry: Our first posse bust was our best. This guy called in from a Fast Stop. He left the car running and went in to buy cigarettes. He came out; the car was not there anymore. He can see it heading down King Street. He calls "Perry & Price." Whatever made him call I have no idea. We never did find out.
Price: What kind of car is it, we asked? Toyota. License plate number? A few minutes later a caller said he was right next to him on King Street. Pretty soon we had a group of people literally flanking this guy. They followed him all the way to a pool hall on Ala Moana. The cops busted him two minutes later.
Perry: There is now a Pet Posse, in conjunction with the Hawaiian Humane Society. The website is www.petposse.org. It’s a new, technological twist on an old concept.
If there’s a hurricane, earthquake or other emergency, Perry and Price head to the studios.
Price: Fourteen straight hours is the longest we have been in the studio during an emergency. We cancel all the commercials — they want us to cancel, and then we try to make it up to the advertisers in the rest of the month.
Perry: If there’s an emergency, that’s when we can actually do a job people care about. All we’re trying to do is put people’s fears to rest. "Don’t panic, no, no that’s not true. It’s going to be OK," we tell people.
Price: The tsunami in Japan was the latest emergency. That was an all-nighter that affected mostly the boat harbors and streams, but nobody knew what to expect. At least with tsunamis we had time to shower and dress better than for the earthquake or the power outage. I raced to work on earthquake Sunday with dirty shorts and an old Hawaiian Air T-shirt.
We’re information brokers. Here’s where you can go if you need help, just take it easy.
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Bob Sigall, author of the "Companies We Keep" books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
