Anthony Cumia Reflects on the Impact of Opie & Anthony

We were talking before this podcast started that you, when you left Opie and Anthony, you went and decided to do your own thing behind a paywall. Yeah. So you're like in this position, you're sort of uncancellable. You don't have all the trappings that everybody else has in terms of like sponsors and people coming after you. You just have subscribers. Yeah, this was a conscious decision because I saw it coming a while ago, the what they call cancel culture thing. Well, you guys get hit with it first. Yeah. Out of all the people that I've ever heard of because when you guys had that homeless person on who said he wanted to, what do you say, want to rape Condoleezza Rice? Condoleezza Rice and the queen of England and the first lady. I got to say something about that though. We had just gotten to satellite radio from FM radio. To us, this was like, all right, it opens up a whole new world of what we can do. So I thought, what better place to just showcase a homeless person? Let's see what rantings and ramblings come out of a homeless person's mind. So bring them up in the studio, put them in front of a mic and let them go off. It's satellite. No FCC rules and regs. The guy starts talking about crazy stuff and raping political figures and the queen of England. We think it's hilarious because you're getting that insight. You're getting into the mind of a crazy homeless guy on the street and the shit hits the fan. Oh my God, Condoleezza Rice that brings the sex thing in and the race thing and all that. They lost their mind and we were like, oh shit, we're getting fired again? Like we're going to get fired for this. What happened? You didn't get fired, but you guys get suspended for how long? We got suspended for, I think it was a month. I think that was a month suspension from satellite radio, but we were still at K-Rock in New York doing that show in the morning because we used to do both. Yeah, we used to go across with the microphones. I did that with you guys. We did the walk over. We would do terrestrial and then we would broadcast live as we were walking down New York City with mics and comics and we would go to the other studio. Yeah, we would do things occasionally like Rich Voss would go into a diner or something and just start doing stand up in front of the customers. It was hilarious. Cringe stand up. Cringe stand up. These people don't know what's happening and stupid big club soda Kenny would announce some, ladies and gentlemen, they're looking like they're ... It's going to be like a mass shooting is going to start and it was hilarious. You guys were the birth of podcasts. It was a podcast on the radio. We didn't know it at the time. We didn't know what a podcast was. Nobody knew what a podcast was. It was a bunch of guys that you find funny, you like hanging out with, talking about anything. That seems to be what the formula is. You guys figured it out first because every other radio show that I did, like if I did Stern or anything else you did, it was very formatted. Regimated, yeah, timed. He had some things you want to talk to. He wanted to talk to me about Fear Factor. He wanted to talk to me about the UFC and questions about this. It's always like, and then you have a call in and then you have celebrity guests and he had it all very smooth. You guys would just bring a bunch of people in and then Patrice would start talking and Burr would start talking and Ari would start talking and it was just chaos. We were all just having fun. Just having fun. When you have a room of those guys, Nick DiPallo and Patrice, God rest his soul, and Bill Burr, Martin, all these guys, Colin Quinn, they're all in a room. You can't lose. People will hear it and say, holy shit, that was one of the funniest shows. It's like, what show? The Opie and Anthony show. People remember the name of the show, but all these other guys are delivering this amazing funny comedy. It worked that way and we embraced that and just started bringing these comics back on in different combinations because you know better than anyone. Some of the funniest stuff you'll ever hear are guys shitting on each other. When someone was in, we called it being in the barrel, and that could consist of wearing a shirt. You come in wearing a shirt and Patrice goes, what the fuck? What kind of shirt is that you wear? Where the fuck you get? Now everyone's on your shirt. Now you're sitting there going, you're looking at all the comics going, what can I use to get this off me? You'd have to shit on Voss's teeth. Always. It was this constant battle to get the shit off of you. It was funny every fucking time. You guys were so great at letting the comics just go wild and not put any restrictions on anybody and not try to control the conversation. Just let it have fun. Just let it breathe. A lot of shows, a lot of hosts. This is something you do that is fantastic and rare in the business. Let your guest talk. If you have a room full of guests, let them have fun. If you hear funny shit going on, a lot of people, their ego gets in the way. They feel, hey, it's my show. My name's on the marquee. I have to jump in and say something. If something funny's happening, back off. Leave it the fuck alone. It's going to be great. People are going to love it and they're going to go, oh, that was on the Opie and Anthony show. It doesn't really matter who's saying it. You guys had figured it out. It really is the birth of podcasts. I learned a lot from doing that show. I also learned that I wanted to do it. When I would do your show, I was like, God, I want to do a show like this. I want to do something like this. When I did regular radio, if I did on tour, I would say, oh, that may be fun to do a regular radio show, but then I would be like, they will never hire me. I will say something stupid. I'll get fired. This is not going to work out for me. But I do your show and I'd be like, huh. I'd be like, this is, this, I think I can do this. I think I can do this. I was paranoid because I never went to school for radio. I was in construction until my early to mid 30s, dude. I got into radio late. My impression was always if I didn't know the alloy of the metal in the transmitter antenna, there's no way you're getting into radio. I thought you had to know all this shit that they taught you in radio school. The fact of the matter was these jocks were constantly looking for somebody that was entertaining. I never realized how desperate a lot of these jocks are for somebody that could make people laugh. Someone with very interest too. Someone who was interesting. Yeah, yeah. Who could talk about different things. Talk about a lot of different things. Sometimes you got to talk out your ass like you almost kind of know what it's about. For sure. But this, the other thing about what you guys did was you created a safe place for men. Like where you could just be a fucking idiot. One of the last bastions of- That's the thing. It's like there's a lot of men out there, but there's not a lot of entertainment that's geared towards men. One of the things that comes up on my podcast when the advertising people get to talk and they're like Jesus Christ he's got like 94% men. Like what is going on here? This is crazy. They're not represented. Men are not represented. It's like I don't know what the number is of regular television, but it's not geared towards men. No, not at all. There's like the talk and the view and there's a lot of these shows that are geared towards women. But it turns like a man show. You can't have a male oriented show on network television. It would be toxic. It's a personal affront to feminism and women and regardless. It's just men being men. This is weird, right? I don't know where this idea came from that in the past even couple of decades, which relative to a tortoise or a mayfly, it varies how long a period of time that is. But in that period of time, we as humans were supposed to have physically and mentally evolved to this point where men don't still want to talk about tits and cars and lifestyle stuff and gosh each other guns, of course. I think there are people that actually think we have evolved out of that. You know why? Because there's a lot of men. Instead of being brainwashed. A lot of men that are hand packed and they work in some terrible job where human resources is breathing down their neck and they have neutered themselves and they put themselves in this position of this sort of non-man. Yes, non-man. And then because of that, they chastise other free men. Look at this, this is toxic masculinity and it's fine, it's form. They say all these crazy things like, you're not free. It's also equated somehow or another with cruelty, with being a bad person, with being a shitty person, just by joking around or doing the things that we like to talk about. Yeah. Yep. I hear punching down a lot is a bad thing. That was your whole show. Yeah, that was the entire show. The entire 20 year history of the Opium Anthony show. There was never a punch that got past the 180 degree mark. You guys don't get enough credit. I say it every time I can that you were the inspiration for podcasts, without a doubt. It really is for what, I think for what Howard did for the shock jock genre in radio, we kind of were right at that precipice of radio and podcast when that happened. And I think what we were doing was better suited to a podcast than it was a radio show. Yeah, I think so too. But it was a great radio show too though. Yeah, but it was a great radio show. The problem is the suits. The problem was not the content. The problem was the suits. The problem was people go, hey, hey, hey, you can't. This is not... Like, meanwhile, did you just see what happened? Everyone was crying, laughing. That's entertainment. Yeah, that's what they want. It got to a point where early on, even when I got in, which was again late in the game, but early on in the 80s and 90s, all they gave a shit about were ratings. If you had ratings and you did something stupid, you'd get this slap on the wrist in public and behind the door with the GM and the PD and all the other management people, they'd be like, oh my God, that was great. Great job. Oh, look, take off a week paid. Say you're suspended and that's it. They really did this. And we went through a few of those. And it turned into they really did get mad and they really started suspending you without pay and firing you. And these were these suits, like you say, that just didn't understand the talent end of the business anymore. And when radio stations were owned by mom and pop operations, we were at WAAF up in Massachusetts and it was owned by Zappus Communications. I met Zappus. I met the guy. When we went to Infinity Broadcasting, there was no Mr. Infinity. There was Mel Carmisen and there was all the suits from CBS. It got big. It got real big. CBS has affiliates and they also deal in laundry detergent with this subsidiary. And you say something and baby diapers don't sell. That's when it got really fucked up and personalities weren't able to do what they do anymore because now you're fucking up their sales in the burger industry. And Zappus owned a fucking radio station. And he loved when his radio station got ratings. That was all there was to it. Now it's all a conglomerate of bullshit.