Why Kidd Kraddick's Radio Show Is Doing Even Better After His Death

By Alan Peppard | Staff Writer

By 3:45 a.m., the constellations have begun their fall toward the western horizon. Below them, the people of North Texas are mostly asleep, dreaming 6½ million different dreams. But in downtown Dallas, Alaric Mack, 50, known to listeners of the Kidd Kraddick Morning Show as Big Al, is rising. “They pay me to wake up,” he says. “The rest is free.”

By 4:50 a.m., Mack’s in his summer uniform of knee-length shorts and beach sandals and parking his black pickup in Las Colinas. There, he navigates a maze of windowless halls toward the studio and the daily convocation of the survivors. A year ago, on July 27, Kidd Kraddick, the nationally syndicated radio host, collapsed and died at a Louisiana golf tournament benefiting his charity, Kidd’s Kids. He was 53.

Less than 48 hours later, Kraddick’s four co-hosts, Mack, Kellie Rasberry, Jose “J-Si” Chavez and Jenna Owens, were back on the air. But broadcast executives were quietly assembling to handicap whether the Kraddick show had a future without its frontman. One eyebrow raised in dissent and the plug might have been pulled forever.

“I think they were waiting for us to crash and burn,” says Chavez, an earnest 31-year-old Mexico City transplant, raised in San Diego. “We crashed some, but we didn’t burn.”

Kidd Kraddick had been a morning-radio prophet who delivered the holy demographic: female listeners between 18 and 49. In that key demo, he was ranked either first or second in 75 percent of the markets that carried his show.

SLIDESHOW: Kidd Kraddick through the years

One year after his death, the survivors have achieved a remarkable bit of alchemy. They are currently in first or second place in 95 percent of their markets.

It is 5:58 a.m., and they are at their usual stations, all except Chavez. Though imperceptible to the listener, he now stands in Kraddick’s spot, running “the board” and leading the show.

To his left sits the 30-year-old Owens, a perfectly accessorized brunette who can be enticing and witty in the same sentence.

Across the enormous wood-trimmed table, Rasberry takes her seat with her back to the window. Her signature red hair brushes her shoulders. In the listeners’ minds, Rasberry is the Widow Kraddick. The Kidd-and-Kellie chemistry, their 19 years of bickering wrapped in an aura of mutual admiration, was the show’s heartbeat.

“I spent more time with him than any man in my entire life,” Rasberry says. “People could tell we really loved each other.”

“Kidd told me he would have paid Kellie all the money he had in the world, if she would ever ask for a raise,” Owens says. “That’s how talented he thought she was.”

Behind a glass divider, in-studio producer Shanon Murphy watches a large LED clock on the wall. Dubbed “Psycho” Shanon by Kraddick, she was his third hand, an intern who came on board at 17 and has stayed for 15 years.

I spent more time with him than any man in my entire life. People could tell we really loved each other.”

Kellie Rasberry

With one minute to air, scripts are quietly shuffled, computers are given a last glance.

There is a hushed, workmanlike majesty to this ritual until Mack waves his hands to cast out the grogginess.

At 6 a.m., when Murphy pushes forward four faders, the voices of Rasberry, Mack, Chavez and Owens are raised against the receding darkness in Dallas; Fort Worth; San Antonio; New Orleans; Gulfport, Miss.; Savannah, Ga.; New London, Conn.; Sault St. Marie, Mich.; Bismarck, N.D.; Wichita, Kan.; Bend, Ore.; Yuma, Ariz.; and dozens of other cities across America.

With a victorious inflection, Mack says, “The Kidd Kraddick Morning Show has begun!”