Dave Ryan's Morning Dish

Dave Ryan has been hosting KDWB’s morning show for 16 years. Behind Tom Barnard’s juggernaut at KQRS and the morning show at WCCO, Dave’s show is the third-most-listened-to in town. But among females, especially the coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic, it is the most-listened-to morning show in the Twin Cities. Does Dave rule simply by negation—because his is the only morning show on a station in the female-favored Top 40 format? Or is there something more substantial to his success—a strategy behind the tone and topics he chooses, one that taps into the almost archetypal need women have for a friend who understands them? Because it’s not just teenyboppers who are tuning in—some women have been listening for the entire 16 years he’s been on.

Dave admits that his longevity contributes to the occasional awkward encounter. “It can get a little weird,” he says. “A gorgeous 25-year-old will come up to me at an event and say, ‘I’ve been listening to you since fifth grade!’ It’s great. It’s flattering. But it’s weird.”

At 46, Dave Ryan is old enough to be a father figure to most of the women in his largest demographic. And he doesn’t hide the ways in which he’s out of touch with his audience. He’s used to being uncool because he has a teenage daughter who is dead certain about his uncoolness. He’s a history buff—a nerd who collects General Custer memorabilia in his basement. He doesn’t know any of the songs on his daughter’s iPod. And unlike many morning radio hosts around the country, who would be freaked out by this grim lack of cool, Dave accepts it and, in turn, incorporates it into the show—call it anxiety and vulnerability by design.

One morning, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of The Hills are scheduled to call in for an interview. To many teenage and 20-something girls, “Speidi,” as the couple has been nicknamed, are the Boris and Natasha of the most-watched MTV show ever (The Hills gets higher ratings than any season of Real World or Road Rules ever has). But Steve-O is the only one who seems to be genuinely excited about the prospect of the interview. Lena thinks they’re jerks, and Dave . . . well, Dave just doesn’t buy the hype. “How are they celebrities?” he asks of the reality-show stars. “Do they have any talent?” He muses about dragging out an old radio gag where the host asks a question and then keeps talking himself, never letting his guest get a word in edgewise. He claims to have tortured a few guests in this way, and Steve-O and Lena seem to be game.

But Dave ultimately decides against it. “It’s too mean,” he says during the commercial break. “And the publicists get pissed off and it makes it harder to get guests. But it really is funny.” When they come back from commercial, Speidi comes on, and they are speaking from separate cell phones (maybe even from separate cities). Dave does the interview on autopilot, the way you would make small talk with a neighbor you’re not too fond of or a coworker whom you secretly despise. But for me, hearing Dave’s off-the-air mystification at how these people got to be famous followed by his rote let’s-get-this-over-with tone during the actual interview—the cognitive dissonance begs a question: How phony is too phony for a Dave Ryan in the Morning Show listener? How much real do they want or need?