“Wake Up With Whoopi” is now more than just a recurring nightmare you’ve been having. Soon, it’ll be a Clear Channel syndicated radio show. The Times is reporting that the Whoopster has inked a deal with the radio super-conglomerate to host a morning show starting July 31st.
Cheap jokes aside, it’s either a sign of either how desperate the radio industry is, or that the radio industry is waking up. On the one hand, Whoopi long ago passed has-been on the road to completely forgotten. On the other, she remains a big-name talent, and her skill set is genuinely suitable for morning radio. One of the reasons Whoopi still has any career at all is that she comes across as sincerely personable, and building a personal connection is what that kind of radio is all about.
And Whoopi is talented. I mean, 15 years of awful movies (then awful TV shows, then awful commercials…) may have erased it from our minds, but she exploded out of the San Francisco theater/comedy scene around 1980 on merit. The Broadway show that brought her to the national consciousness was genuinely funny. And she’s a bright and articulate advocate for the issues she cares about, even if the occaisional outrageousness gets in the way of that.
Color me curious on this one.