35 YEARS ON AIR
KEZ host celebrates 35 years on the air
KESZ-FM (99.9 KEZ) morning radio host Beth McDonald, who lists her occupation as “morning funster,” is celebrating a milestone in Phoenix broadcasting.
Beth McDonald’s business card lists her occupation as “morning funster.” ❙ Sounds about right. ❙ Sure, it could say “morning radio-show host” or something pedestrian like that and be perfectly accurate, but “morning funster” more closely fits her on-air persona — she never takes herself too seriously.
And it’s worked. McDonald, the host of “Beth and Friends” on top-rated KESZ-FM (99.9 KEZ), is celebrating her 35th year on the air this month. In a business so notoriously transient, that’s remarkable. ❙ “It’s just gone so fast, it really has,” McDonald said as she was seated in the KEZ studios, surrounded by knickknacks. “You turn around and go, ‘35 years, what happened?’ I don’t think about it a whole lot, but occasionally it strikes me.”
It’s a particularly successful run when you consider that this isn’t the way it was supposed to work out.
“When I first moved here, I was a reporter,” McDonald said. “I had a journalism degree from Indiana University, and I thought I was going to write. And then I decided I wanted to be in radio. So I moved here and started working for KTAR as a city hall reporter in Maricopa County. And I remember hearing these guys that had been here a long time — Preston Westmoreland and Bill Heywood and Pat McMahon — and thinking, ‘Wow, what it would be to be one of those guys?’”
She laughed.
“And I guess I’m kind of one of those guys.”
Kind of. Radio isn’t known for an abundance of women morning hosts. McDonald said she didn’t suffer any particular discrimination, but acknowledges that there is room for a lot of improvement, particularly on the morning-show front.
“There aren’t a whole lot of them, especially right here in Phoenix,” she said of women morning hosts. “We have to make more room.”
McDonald is very much her own person on her show. The dial is crowded with morning-show shouters begging for your attention. McDonald is different, more like visiting with an old friend who stopped by with some cookies and a little choice gossip.
Clearly, listeners like it. And while ratings cure a lot of problems in this business — “a of problems,” McDonald said with a laugh — they’re also the be-all, end-all factor when it comes to deciding who stays and who goes. Radio is notoriously cutthroat.
You have to believe McDonald’s onair persona, friendly and unassuming, has a lot to do with her success.
“It’s a long, good run, which continues,” she said — indeed, KEZ was the top-rated station in the Phoenix market the first week of September. “I think I’m just a nice girl from the Midwest, and I think people kind of identify. I live the same life they do. I just happen to be on the radio. I think that comes through.”
“Bill always called it kind of clunky, and he liked that. I agree. There are times when it’s still clunky. Whatever happens, happens.”
Bill is Bill Austin, McDonald’s longtime co-host — the show was “Beth & Bill” then, and it was a big hit right out of the gate. He retired in February 2010, and died a few months later. McDonald has talked before about how his words of encouragement as he was dying helped her go it alone.
“He said, ‘Beth, you can do this.’ And so when he said that I said, ‘OK, Bill’s got confidence in me.’ So I thought, I can do it. I just need to have more confidence in myself. I just need to move forward and do it.”
The ratings remained good, but McDonald acknowledges that it took some time for her to find her footing, to develop a new rhythm. Austin’s death also forced her to think about herself.
“It gave me a new look at me, at what I could do alone,” she said. “The show still worked. I guess the biggest fear was ‘Beth & Bill,’ Bill isn’t here anymore — what if they don’t like me? And it turned out, I guess, that they kind of liked me, so they stuck around.”
So what about the next 35 years?
McDonald laughed at that. She has two years remaining on her contract, but she isn’t eyeing the exit.
“I still like what I do,” she said. “I’m still having fun. So as long as it’s like that, I’d like to stick around, as long as we can all agree that we’re having fun and it’s working for everybody.”
So far, after 35 years, so good.