Bob & Sheri reflect on first year at K 104.7 — and what they think of their old station
It’s been a year since 107.9 WLNK-FM unceremoniously dropped “Bob & Sheri” from its lineup and forced the nationally syndicated morning show to find a new home station in Charlotte, which might seem like adequate time for the two co-hosts to come to peace with what happened.
So it might also seem appropriate to ask this: Have they?
“No. No, we’re gonna harbor a grudge, I think,” Bob Lacey deadpans. He swivels slightly to his left to look at his on-air partner of three decades, Sheri Lynch, and adds: ”What would you say, forever?”
She nods. “And then,” Lynch says, as Lacey breaks and lets loose with a laugh, “we’re gonna reincarnate and still be kinda pissed.”
Their banter unfolds like a joke, in the vein of one they might team up to tell on the radio, or on one of their podcasts. But if you spend a couple hours talking with the pair — about the negative professional experiences they’ve had over the past decade and a half, and how those contrast with the overwhelming positive experience they’ve had in the past 12 months at new home station K 104.7 (WKQC-FM) — it becomes clear.
They do, funnily enough, feel some serious resentment toward their old bosses.
Before we dive deeper into that, though, a bit of background:
Lacey has played straight man to Lynch’s cut-up since they went on the air together for the first time in February 1992 at “107.9 The Link.” Over the next 25 years, the comedy duo built a large, devoted, predominantly female following both in Charlotte and in syndication, even as that station burned through several owners, including Jefferson-Pilot (now defunct), Lincoln Financial Group, Greater Media (now defunct) and Entercom (now Audacy).
Then in 2017 — after growing frustrated with, as Lynch puts it, having “to go through 30 levels of corporate committees and decision-making” to get approval to do anything — they re-teamed with the show’s original director of syndication, Tony Garcia, and quietly took their show independent.
Urban One acquired “107.9 The Link” in November 2020, and chose to stop airing “Bob & Sheri” on April 30 of last year. Shortly thereafter, the duo signed a multiyear deal with Beasley Media Group. They debuted on K 104.7 on May 17, 2021.
Since the start of the pandemic, Lacey, 72, and Lynch, 56, have been doing the show remotely, with him primarily based out of his home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and her broadcasting from hers in Charlotte. They continue to be heard on 70 stations across the U.S. Their already-large podcast audience continues to grow.
And they’re bona fide industry legends.
On April 9, Lacey was inducted into legendary Charlotte radio station WBT’s Hall of Fame (that’s where he started his career, in 1972, as one of WBT’s youngest on-air regulars ever); then, last Monday, the trade magazine Radio Ink put Lynch on the cover of its “Most Influential Women in Radio” issue, heralding her as possessing “one of the fastest, sharpest senses of humor you’ll ever run across.”
Just shy of a year into their K 104.7 deal, the pair met with The Charlotte Observer to share thoughts on a variety of topics, from how they really feel about those old bosses to what’s so much better about this new situation — as well as why Lacey has no interest in retiring.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
On their disillusionment with WLNK
Sheri: By 2011, I felt that “The Link” had been so woefully mismanaged, and all the signposts ahead looked like it was gonna be worse. I said to Bob, “I just — I cannot. This is insane.” And I went back to grad school. But you hope. Like, “Oh, well, here comes yet another new ownership group. And yet another new ownership group.” We would say to each other, “You hear good things about these people. Maybe this’ll be different.” And I am not unwilling to tell you, it went from Eh, to bad, to definitely worse.
Bob: I should jump in here and say we’ve never really worked for the current owners, Radio One.
Sheri: Oh no, we’ve never worked for them. I don’t know what’s happening there now.
Bob: So we are not throwing them in this bouillabaisse of disgust. I don’t know who these people are. I wish them luck and all. But the experience that she’s talking about was toxic.
Sheri: Here’s how I would describe it: When Bob and I were in corporate radio, I heard the word fun more than I’ve ever heard the word fun. “We had fun. We’re gonna have fun. We’re about to have fun. Fun is what we have. Fun is what we’re about. Fun is our brand. Fun is our mantra. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.” Then you go in the bathroom and there’s somebody crying. That doesn’t even happen at Chuck E. Cheese. If we’re having so much fun, why am I always holding a sobbing co-worker in my arms?
On why they didn’t decide to just leave
Sheri: Well, conventional wisdom will tell you that a show like ours — a big tentpole show — there’s not a lot of evidence supporting a tentpole show jumping frequencies and having any success. And our business is complicated. We have relationships with all of our affiliate stations, we have relationships with our advertisers, we feel very loyal to the people who work with us and for us, and so a decision to potentially blow people’s lives up was not one we felt we could take lightly. Every decision we make, we look at through the lens of, “Does everyone get to keep their jobs?” And the pandemic was a wild ride. What we didn’t do to make sure that everybody kept their job.
Bob: I think some of it was family, too — you know, children growing up. Mine were older than Sheri’s. Then Sheri’s came up. So you have to say to yourself, “Do I need to now leave Charlotte?” Neither one of us wanted to. We have had opportunities to jump ship and — just because of family issues, both happy and sad —
Sheri: — it was complicated. One of the things that Bob and I have in common is the wild instability of our early lives. We went to a million schools. We never had a hometown. My kids, they have a hometown. That was a precious thing to us, and super-rare in our business, which is very nomadic.
On initially making the switch to K 104.7
Bob: You do hold your breath to a certain degree. But what will tip you off as to whether or not it’s working is all of a sudden there are new clients that they’ve never had before. I mean, you follow the money. If you’re trying to bust a politician or if you’re trying to figure out whether or not a show’s going to work for a radio station, you follow the money. And the money — new money — came into K 104.7. I don’t know how much. But it was substantial.
Sheri: Yeah, we saw advertisers making the shift immediately. And I will speak for both of us and tell you that we have felt so embraced and welcomed by the team at K 104.7. We both had wanted to work with Jack Daniel forever. (Daniel, the station’s current program director, has spent decades on the air in Charlotte and is a former morning-show host himself.)
Bob: The first week we were on, we’re getting notes from Jack saying, “I loved at 8:22 when you did —.” I have never once had a program director come into the studio and say, “I was listening to you guys driving in. That was so interesting, that was so funny, that was so sad.” Not one time. But he does it all the time. So there’s encouragement and appreciation. Part of it is he’s been talent, too, and he’s done OK for himself, too. So he has an understanding of it.
Sheri: He listens to his radio station. I can’t tell you that that’s a given. Trust us. We know. But one of the things that I’ve felt at KQC is there’s still a sense of mission. Like, “This is our radio station, this is our town, these are our relationships.” They treat their clients differently. They treat their employees differently. It was something that we had known, and then we thought it was gone. Because our experience of corporate radio, we could have been making radio, making hot dogs, making widgets. It felt just so soulless and detached — from place, people — that when we went to K104.7, KQC, we were pretty gobsmacked. We found ourselves looking at each other going, “Can you believe this? Like, is this real? This feels like what it used to feel like. This feels so good.” Look, I am the last person anybody expects to go, “Well done, radio management! Well done!” But they really are different.
On Bob working remotely from South Carolina
Sheri: I really supported this move for Bob. Because Bob has been through a great deal.
Bob: She’s referring to the fact that I lost both my sons during the period (at WLNK) that we are talking about. During the worst of it.
Sheri: Then (his wife) Mary had an unholy breast cancer battle. So there just comes a point where you go, “What is the most important thing in life?” And I’m sorry, it’s just not radio. The most important thing in life is that Bob is happy. Besides, from a technological standpoint, it doesn’t matter. I mean, I miss Bob. But my missing Bob is not enough to justify Bob not being able to live his damn life. And here’s another thing — another reason that I absolutely adore our team at K (104.7). What was their reaction? “Hey, is Bob happy? That’s great.”
Bob: But I’m just as focused on doing a good job as I’ve ever been. There is no thought in my head about some sort of semi-retirement or something like that.
Sheri: Oh, and can I say, a couple weeks ago, Bob said, “I’ve had an epiphany. If I retire, she (Mary) is gonna kill me. Because I think I’ll drive her crazy. And what would I do? What would my life be? Like, just walkin’ out to the mailbox?” We laughed about it. But the truth is, like, yeah. What would it be?
Bob: It sounds like it’s really boring.
A parting shot
Sheri: I have nothing to say about corporate radio other than I need it to go. I mean, why did two people that have spent their entire career as pampered show dogs stand up one day and say, “Just get me the hell outta here. Let me be self-employed”? Being self-employed, it’s so hard. I’ve never worked more hours for less in my entire life. That’s how bad it was. And again, that’s not Radio One. We don’t know what’s happening at WLNK today. We haven’t known for a year.
Bob: Don’t care either.
Sheri: We could tell you stories. But we’ve opted to take those to the grave because we don’t want to look like sour grapes. Especially since, from where we sit, the grapes are sweet and juicy. At the end of the day, we got everything we wanted. We got our freedom. We got a great partnership in Beasley. We’re delivering what we need to deliver for that partner. We have 70 stations and podcasts and a podcast network. We are innovating and growing and experimenting. We are doing what we do, the way we want to do it, and nobody gives us any static. That is success.
So, we’re very pleased and we’re very happy. I can’t even tell you how much happier we are. I am as happy as a person who doesn’t have dental or a 401K can be.
This story was originally published May 11, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
