Rick Emerson - The Rick Emerson Show

The Rick Emerson Show

Emerson then moved to San Diego, California where he worked as a convenience store clerk. KOTK 1080AM Portland Program Director, Bruce Agler, offered Emerson a job in Portland, Oregon in November 1997. He stayed in that job for only a few months before Emerson was offered national syndication. Emerson hosted his nationally syndicated show, for three years until he was again fired. Emerson was rehired by KOTK in the summer of 2001, and was soon paired with Tim Riley, a veteran broadcaster who brought a unique style of news coverage to his show. Mixed with a series of producers, Emerson was finally with Sarah X Dylan in December 2002, as producer. Rick often considers the day that Sarah joined the show to be the turning point that allowed for the show's success.

Emerson's program and cast has been subject to the fluctuations of the Portland radio market. There have been three significant periods where Emerson was off the air. First was the "unpleasantness" that occurred between Emerson's syndicated show and his transition back to Hot Talk 1080, KOTK. A second gap occurred after the show was pulled off the air by Entercom, which spawned the "coffee cup crusade". The show's listeners, incensed that the show had been taken off the air, deluged the Portland headquarters of Entercom with coffee cups to show their support for Emerson.

CBS Radio, reacting in part to the strength of support for Emerson throughout the metro area, decided to give Emerson an opportunity to re-tool Johnson 970, an all-comedy radio station. Broadcasting from "the plushly appointed but not overly ostentatious studios high atop the bottom of the KOIN tower", Emerson was back on the air with producer Sarah X. Dylan and Tim Riley. Within months, the station was retooled as "AM 970, Solid State Radio" and took on a line-up of syndicated broadcasts from around the country, including Tom Leykis and Phil Hendrie, both of whose programs had been previously paired with Emerson on other stations. Rick's fans are loyal, as evidenced by a May 2008 listener party, where friends of his show and listeners held a roast in his honor. Under Rick's leadership, KCMD-AM became a talk powerhouse, and changed its name to "The Talker" in mid-2008. After a seven-year run with the program, Mr. Riley was laid-off from the program after December 8, 2008 as CBS Portland went through a series of staff reductions. In order to continue to feature news on the show, Emerson invited many other laid-off Portland media personalities to fill-in for Tim. On March 9, 2009 Rick announced that the show would be moving from KCMD's midday slot to sister station KUFO-FM's morning slot beginning on March 12. It was simultaneously announced that Tim Riley would be returning to the show under his former capacity. As part of the move, Emerson would no longer be Program Director of KCMD, that job would instead go to KUFO Program Director Chris Patyk. The new show on KUFO has received low marks from Emerson's longtime fans. Some even going so far as to not even bother listening any more. The consenus is that what once was a unique, funny show is now a formulaic and boring "Morning Zoo." A website had even been formed to attempt to reform the show, it an incarnation similar to the AM970 version. This site has had some moderate success, as musical breaks have become shorter, the content of the show, more substantial, and news, more prevalent. Emerson was also program director for AM 970 while his show was on the station. He gave up the position when the show moved to KUFO FM 101.1. On October 23, 2009, Rick Emerson was canceled, along with other programming, by KUFO-FM's parent company Alpha Broadcasting. In a blog post to fans on his website, Emerson asked them to "please forgo the gathering of coffee cups", alluding to the previous "Coffee Cup Crusade".