Opie and Anthony

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Opie and Anthony

Opie (Gregg Hughes, May 23, 1965 - ) and Anthony, (Anthony Cumia, April 1961 - ) are the hosts of the XM Satellite Radio program 'The Opie and Anthony Show.' The show is based in New York City and airs on XM channel 202. The show was previously on WNEW-FM in New York and WAAF-FM in Boston (whom they obsessively insult) previous to that.

The show airs on XM Satellite Radio channel 202 "High Voltage" live from 7-11 AM ET with replays throughout the day.

Background

Gregg (Opie) Hughes and Anthony Cumia were both raised in Long Island, but did not know each other as kids. Opie attended Geneseo College. After working as a DJ in a local bar, he was awarded a radio gig spinning records in Long Island at WBAB. Anthony, who did not attend college, began performing songs with his brother Joe. Joe remains a constant supporter of the Opie and Anthony Show. In August 1994, Opie received an entry during an OJ Simpson parody song contest. The song was entitled “Gonna Electric Shock OJ,” by a local band known as Rotgut. Anthony was in this band. The song became a hit on Opie’s show, and he invited Anthony and Joe to the studio to play live. This sparked many further appearances, where Ant & Brother Joe jumped at any airtime opportunity available. Soon after, Opie and Anthony became the creative and dynamic radio team that listeners enjoyed.

O&A were fired in April 1998 from WAAF in Boston for an April Fool's Day prank involving Mayor Thomas Menino. O&A promised they would return to Boston and get revenge. O&A were back on the air on WNEW by June 1998. O&A gained popularity, as the show "spread like a virus", a term often used by O&A and their fans when describing the show. O&A were the #1 Afternoon Drive Show in New York by 2000. By 2001, O&A were syndicated to 22 markets around the country, including WBCN in Boston, a rival of the station that fired O&A earlier. Within a year, they were #1 in several markets, Boston included. They were then joined by Jim Norton, a comedian who toured with Andrew Dice Clay. After their show was cancelled in 2002 for the Sex For Sam 3 stunt, O&A were forced to wait for their contract to expire for two years. They announced in August 2004 that they had signed with XM Satellite Radio, where they are not subject to FCC guidelines. They began broadcasting on October 4, 2004 with Norton(beef tits) as the third member of the team.

About the Show

Opie and Anthony's cringe style of entertainment has received massive support from listeners. Their style has also earned them the sobriquet of "shock jocks." Friends and regular guests on the show include Jay Mohr, Adam Ferrara, Brian Regan, Robert Kelly, and hack comic Rich Vos who sometimes sits in for Jim Norton. Other frequent guests include Colin Quinn, Patrice O'Neal, Carlos Mencia, and Ben Bailey. Comedians such as Andrew Dice Clay, Jim Breuer, and Lewis Black were also regular guests on the Opie and Anthony Show. Neither Clay, Breuer nor Black appear on the XM version; Breuer does not because of his contract with Sirius Satellite Radio, which does not allow him to appear on any XM programming. On the show, Anthony is known for his impressions of people such as Andrew Dice Clay, Tom Brokaw, Ronald Reagan, Mike Tyson, Tony Danza,Pat Battle,Christopher Reeve,Robert Reid and Howard Stern. O&A's style and jokes target the males in the 18-35 age range, although they have broken both constraints and have taken over in markets when syndicated and the city already had a show geared toward that style.

The pair signed a contract with XM on August 5, 2004 and started broadcasting October 4th of the same year on "High Voltage" channel 202, at a premium cost of $1.99 a month. In April 2005, "High Voltage" became part of the basic XM subscription.

Their move to XM Satellite Radio took place over two years after their previous show had been cancelled (see below), and they had remained off-the-air during that time as Infinity Broadcasting, their previous employer, held them to their contract as well as their non-compete clause. On XM Satellite Radio, O&A are no longer bound by FCC regulations regarding language and content, thus politically incorrect humor is common on their show.

Radio Show (High/Low)lights

  • Most famously, they created Whip'em Out Wednesdays (WOW) in May 1995, where they encourage women to flash motorists who have a WOW bumper sticker. In the absence of a bumper sticker, Opie and Anthony have suggested writing WOW on their dirty cars using their hands. Eventually, WOW applied to any day of the week ("Whip'em Out Whenever").
  • Opies great abs
  • They also invented the Tuesday Night Hummer Club where they encouraged their female listeners to perform fellatio on their significant others.
  • Among their frequent bits include "What Did We Learn", where the listeners call in during the last few minutes of the show and say what they learned from the shockjocks that day.
  • They were fired in Boston after they pulled an April Fool's Day prank, telling their listeners the Mayor of Boston (Thomas Menino) died in a car accident (1998) while the mayor was away vacationing in Florida and was unable to be contacted. The station WAAF suggested that to remedy the situation the "shock jock duo" have pies thrown at them while being held in townsquare stocks. The idea was summarily dismissed and the duo were later fired.
  • Several members of their crew (including frequent guest Lewis Black and star of the show, Lil' Jimmy"Norton and then producer Rick Delgado) were arrested for being on the see-through "Teen" Voyeur Bus where six young women were "flashing" all over Manhattan (2000).
  • Today is Lil Jimmy's Birfday.
  • The addition of PAT BATTLE to their show
  • Early in their tenure for WNEW, they held, "Homeless Shopping Spree" wherein a dozen of New York's homeless were given a stipend and taken to the posh Short Hills Mall, in Short Hills New Jersey. The mall's reaction was to close down many of the nicer stores and eventually force the 12 homeless men and the growing crowd out of the mall.
  • While on WNEW O&A made a rare professional friendship with Ron and Fez of "The Ron and Fez Show." Ron and Fez followed O&A on WNEW. O&A frequently appeared on the Ron and Fez Show. These came to be known as the AFRO Shows (Anthony-Fez-Ron-Opie). With the inclusion of Norton as a third member, the acronym has changed to AFRON or NAFRO or just Norton & some other guys.
  • They are professional enemies of Mancow, Tom Leykis, Rocko, Howard Stern who steals material from them, Don and Mike and many others.
  • Every member of the show hates Steve; despite being a cozier bear than most
  • One of the more popular in-studio contests was "The 55 gallon drum challenge" wherein women dressed in bra and panties were placed in 55 gallon drums and had various food products and non-human waste materials dumped on them.
  • From 2001 - 2002 the duo was syndicated on WJFK in Washington D.C., where they took the #1 rated timeslot down to 18th place in one book but in the subsequent books became #1 in males 18-35. When "Sex For Sam 3" happened they were removed from all of their markets, including Washington.
  • They are most widely known for being the "Wacky D.J.'s Who Had The Sex in The Church Stunt." This stemmed from an annual Sex For Sam contest, where listeners would perform sexual acts in different places around New York City at specific famous landmarks or tourist attractions for points, the winners being awarded a trip to Boston, MA and a party hosted by Jim Koch at the Sam Adams brewery.
  • When "Sex For Sam 3" took place on 2002-08-15, Opie and Anthony were suspended for the remainder of their contract (more than 2 years), and the show was cancelled. WNEW and Infinity Broadcasting were in danger of losing their FCC license over an incident where a couple allegedly had sex at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Opie and Anthony claim they were within the FCC guidelines for that day and claim that FCC rules are subjective and dynamic. This was one of the first instances of the FCC cracking down on TV/radio broadcasts due to susposed indecency.
  • On 2004-10-04, Opie and Anthony returned to the airwaves via XM Satellite Radio, where they control an entire XM Channel, XM202 High Voltage.
  • When Howard Stern announced that he was going to be going to Sirius Satellite Radio, he planned a November 2004 rally where he handed out free systems with forklifts to move them. About 300 O&A listeners attempted to crash the gathering of more than 1,000 Stern supporters, armed with placards and bumper stickers.
  • Since returning to radio, they often like to make fun of Scott Peterson, Andrea Yates, Terri Schiavo, and other allegedly tragic criminals and victims in the media.
  • During December 2004, Opie and Anthony re-appeared for the first time on commercial FM radio since they were fired from WNEW. WAQX in Syracuse, New York was the first station to bring O&A back to commercial FM radio. The show on WAQX was a rebroadcast of the previous day's show on XM and was edited for content. It aired in the Howard Stern show's morning time slot while he was on vacation.
  • On May 19, 2005, as part of their "Assault On The Media" campaign, where listeners are encouraged to get free advertising for the show by holding up signs during live news broadcasts, one of the show's interns, Nathaniel, stepped behind CBS 2 reporter Arthur Chi'en holding an Opie and Anthony poster. He was joined, through sheer coincidence, by Crazy Cabbie of the Howard Stern show, who flipped off the camera. After finishing the last syllable of his report, Chi'en turned to Nathaniel and yelled "What the fuck is your problem, man?" before the studio could cut to the pre-recorded segment of the report. The obscenity was aired live, and despite his apology, Chi'en was fired later that day.
  • Opie and Anthony refer to their avid fans as "pests", acknowledging their readiness to get under the skin of O & A enemies through assaults on the media, phone, and internet attacks (most recently on the Philips Phile show). The purpose of these assaults is to harrass rival radio shows by flooding their telephone banks with O&A fans, preventing legitimate callers from being able to connect. In addition, the prank callers will frequently attempt to use vulgarity during their calls; since broadcast radio shows cannot air such language, the host is forced to dump large portions of the show, effectively ruining the normal flow of a broadcast. The Philips Phile 'attack' recently was concluded with some fans renting a billboard to memorialize their 'victory'.
  • O&A claim to hate the name of their XM channel, "High Voltage" and are trying to get it changed to something else. Internet rumors claim that they have suggested "The Virus" or "Nortons pals" or possibly "The Monster Rain Network" starring Jimmy Norton.
  • XM Channel 202 "High Voltage"'s official tag line is "Good Luck Bro."
  • Beginning September 12, 2005 Ron and Fez will broadcast weekdays from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. ET exclusively on High Voltage (XM Channel 202), with encores TBD.
  • O&A have stated that, because of the Sex for Sam 3 incident, their contracts with XM Satellite Radio are renewed yearly (they are renewed through October 2006). They have also stated that if they were doing as bad as their detractors on terrestrial radio claim they are, XM would have not renewed their contracts for 2006.
  • August 2005 thier arrest in the brambles of Central park for "hugging in the nude"
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