Early life

Career

The ambitious Leykis decided to turn up his aspirations when he was offered a radio hosting job in Staunton, Virginia making it full-time.

On Monday, February 27, 1984, Tom Leykis Show aired on WNWS in Miami to replace the WNWS night show by talk radio personality Neil Rogers. Rogers, who had previous signed conflicting employment contracts with both WNWS (790 AM) and WINZ (940 AM), had just won permission from a Miami court to take his act to WINZ and hoped his leaving WNWS would be devastating to Leykis' new station. Rogers and Leykis became rivals and in June 1984, just after Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg was assassinated, Leykis told listeners Neil Rogers' real name and urged callers to harass his on-air rival. By January 1985, Leykis had the top-ranking evening talk show in the market. In September 1985, Leykis abruptly left his WNWS job over concern about the pending WNWS-WGBS merger and began broadcasting at Phoenix's KFYI-AM.

Leykis made a turn to Phoenix, Arizona. Being a program director for KFYI station's owner, he constructed a politically well-rounded host lineup inserting himself as a "left leaning libertarian" in the afternoon. Leykis was known for his method of gathering new callers for the station by provoking rival station KTAR. He left in 1987 due to differences with station management. Leykis also spent some time with his own cable television show called Backstage Pass around the same year.

Leykis went to Los Angeles working for KFI where he hosted from 1988 to 1992, as a liberal counter to Rush Limbaugh. His station KFI was hit with a $6,000 FCC indecency fine paid in balance from comments from callers in the time of his show according to Leykis and station general manager. His co-worker Geoff Edwards became suspended then resigned on the incident related to steamrolling a massive collection of Cat Stevens' work rallied by listeners, which was motivated by Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie, as a result of Leykis' show. Edwards hinted the stunt as reminiscent to a Nazi book burning which a historian made clear. Leykis' contract called for $400,000 per year at the station, but management released him due to a business decision.

Leykis then worked for WRKO in Boston. He left the city for a new job in Los Angeles after a publicized fight with wife Susan that occurred at the end of 1993.

He then carried his 1994 show The Tom Leykis Show on national syndication with Westwood One. Production is done in Paramount Pictures studios.

The Tom Leykis Show

The Tom Leykis Show began in 1994 and is currently produced by CBS Radio as part of its Free FM format with the flagship station KLSX in Los Angeles. The show is broadcast Monday through Friday, 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM PST from Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California and is heard in a number of major metropolitan markets on the West Coast of the United States.

It is produced by Gary Zabransky, along with associate producer Dean "Dino" DeMilio, and is engineered by Art Webb.

The cornerstone of the program is the Thursday broadcast of "Leykis 101", in which the program is set-up as an ad hoc lecture and question & answer session, over which Leykis presides as a self-styled "professor". The subject of the "101" segments is how men can spend less money on women, while achieving greater sexual success. Along with general information on life for young men, advice mostly consists of his principles of looking out for yourself and that the institution of marriage is flawed and biased against men. He constantly recommends that young men attend some form of higher education and not to be distracted by relationships or to marry at a young age as he did. The intent of his advice is to replace the father figure which many men lack, earning him the moniker of "Dad". He also denounces what in his words is a corrupt and broken child support system that does not require DNA tests and has forced men to pay money to women who lied before a judge for children these men did not father.

A popular and long-running feature of the show is "Flash Friday" in which men are encouraged to drive with their headlights on and women are encouraged to expose their breasts to such vehicles. The feature began as a one-time bit; while on the air, Leykis recalled a radio host he listened to as a child, who asked his listeners in New York apartments to flash their lights on and off and then to look outside to see how many neighbors were doing the same, as a way to gauge the audience size. Leykis asked his listeners to do the same with their car headlights, and a few minutes later, jokingly suggested that women flash their breasts. A listener called in to report that he saw a woman flashing fellow drivers, and it became a regular feature of the show. Both women and men commonly call during the Friday broadcast to alert other listeners as to their location, and to recount stories of flashing or being flashed, respectively.

The show also uses sound clips which callers generally request after long conversations. Callers make requests to be "taken out" in some style, such as, "could you take me out with a bong hit?" or "take me out Kobe style." The practice of "taking people out" with use of a sound clip dates back to the early days of the show, when Leykis was working at a small radio station in Albany, New York. Leykis would dispose of undesirable or tiresome callers by playing the sound of a toilet flushing while hanging up on them. The station manager found this offensive, and when Leykis refused to stop, he took the cart out of the studio. Leykis retaliated by re-recording the sound on another cart that he purposely mis-labeled as "dog barking", and continued playing it. The station manager became frustrated, and began harassing Leykis about it, so he began blowing callers up, which lead to callers asking for it.

For early 2008, Leykis had announced radio ratings at various angles. Among the 81 radio stations in Southern California the show was #9 overall, #6 in English stations, and #1 for time spent listening. Among men ages 18+, adults ages 18-34, and "the money demo" ages 25-54, the show was #1 in time spent listening with an average of over 4 hours per week, in addition to being #1 in share for men aged 18+.

Notable occurrances

Law suits

On June 25 2003, Marty Ingels, a voice actor, called into Leykis' show and tried to challenge him on moral grounds. Ingels, who was much older than the typical caller to Leykis's show, was subjected to some rude remarks by the call screener who said that he was old too and shouldn't be on the air. But the call did get put through, at which point, Leykis too began to insult Ingels, adding that "you're not just older than my demographic, you're the grandfather of my demographic". Leykis explained that he didn't want older callers because he was selling advertising to the younger demographic, stuff that usually didn't sell to people Ingels' age. Ingels sued the show for age discrimination.

Ingels's first lawsuit got dismissed, by an anti-SLAPP statute (CCP S 425.16) that protected against lawsuits that protects first amendment rights and another judge claimed that the show had the right to control its content. Further, it was noted that Ingels couldn't really complain he was discriminated against because his call was in fact put on the air.

As for Ingels, the actor was ordered to pay $25,000 in attorney's fees.

On-air murder confession

Talkers Magazine analyzing Arbitron data show that Leykis has an estimated listening minimum weekly cume of over 1.75 million for Spring 2007 based on a national sample. For web searches, Lycos reported that Leykis did not make top 20 searched radio personalities for 2007, but he was ranked in at #13 in 2006.

Cease and desist order

Originally when beginning the day's broadcast or returning from a commercial break at the start of a new hour the announcer would introduce the show's studio and location (e.g. "From Paramount Studios in Hollywood, it's the Tom Leykis Show.") Since the "cease and desist" order from Paramount, the new introduction announces the broadcast location in many different ways, satirizing the situation. Some versions replace the words "Paramount Studios" with "the back of the backlot at a movie studio" or "soidutS tnuomaraP" (Paramount Studios, spoken in reverse), and even more simply "a secret location" or the common audio "bleep" normally used for removing expletives.

Naming names

Major media outlets generally and voluntarily withhold names like these due to their adherence to journalism ethics and standards. The policy in practice only applies to alleged victims however, allowing for the release of names of alleged offenders, a policy Leykis disagrees with, and does not follow as he regularly states he is "not a journalist". Leykis contends that either all names in a case (the alleged offender(s) and the alleged accuser) should be protected or all should be public.

The radio show host has caused considerable controversy over the years for his practice of identifying such notorious individuals by name on-air. Other such individuals he has named include:

• Vanessa Perhach, who accused Marv Albert of forcible sodomy (biting) in 1997.
• Angela Song, a woman associated with the Christian Coalition of America who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge in Seattle, Washington.
• An accused child molester in SeaTac.
• Vili Fualaau, the 13-year-old victim of statutory rape by teacher Mary Kay Letourneau.
• Kenneth Pinyan, the Boeing Co. employee dropped off at a Seattle hospital dead from a perforated colon, later found to have engaged in bestial sexual intercourse with a horse.
• Crystal Gail Mangum, alleged victim in 2006 Duke University lacrosse case who accused white members of the Duke Lacrosse team of rape, battery, and sodomy.

Personal life

One marriage was to television reporter Christina Gonzalez who was caught cheating after Leykis investigated some receipts he found. Another marriage, which lasted a year, was with a Seattle woman in 1989, who was a listener of his show.

His fourth wife, Susan Drew Leykis, who first met Leykis at a Los Angeles Kings game, filed a police report against him while they were married and living in Boston in 1993. On December 22 of that year, she alleged that Leykis assaulted and threatened to kill her during a fight after they returned home from a radio station Christmas party. He was subsequently charged with "felony assault and battery and threatening to commit a crime"; a police officer found bruises and scratches on the woman. In March 1994, Leykis was sentenced to a year of probation and a domestic violence class. He completed both, dropping the charge, although Leykis did not admit guilt as part of the agreement; the couple were divorced in April 1994.

In August 2004, Leykis was attacked outside a Seattle bar, causing him to require 17 stitches over one eye, and leaving him with scratches and bruises. The assailant reportedly had an accomplice who accused Leykis of calling him a name and hanging up on him when he called the show, when the other man kicked him in the face.

Notes

External links

• BlowMeUpTom.com - official website
• WestwoodOne.com - affiliate information page for The Tom Leykis Show
• WestwoodOne.com - affiliate information page for The Tasting Room with Tom Leykis
• Blow Me Up Tom Cool Documentary About Tom Leykis