THE INDUSTRY REPORT # 15 | ALT987 BOOKER & STRYKER
THE INDUSTRY REPORT # 15
A Conversation with Booker & Stryker
December 4, 2023 by Traci Turner
There are not many places in the US that have embraced alternative music in the way Southern California has. The artists that ushered in the genre in the early ‘80s – such as Depeche Mode, New Order, and The Cure – found a home on the West Coast and continue to sell out venues even today (um, hello SIX upcoming Depeche Mode shows!).
When I decided to bounce around the country to pursue radio, I had no idea I would basically be giving up my favorite genre (the pre-internet days were dark times). Of course, I am not saying SoCal is the ONLY place for alt music, but it definitely feels like the soundtrack of the area.
These days, many artists labeled alternative cross genre lines and can find a home on multiple stations, but some listeners (raises hand) have found ALT 98.7 plays alternative hit after hit after hit, and they are staying tuned in. But when you are playing the heavyweights of alternative today – The Killers, Muse, Green Day, Paramore, Linkin Park, Blink-182 – for the people who love, love, love their music, it can be tricky to find the right personalities to keep listeners engaged.
BOOKER & STRYKER
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Enter Chris Booker and Ted Stryker. Booker had already been handling afternoons at ALT 98.7 for a year when word hit Stryker would be joining him. Stryker was available after his amicable parting from KROQ’s morning show, which had come about after the unexpected departure of longtime host Kevin Ryder.
The duo launched their afternoon show on iHeartRadio’s ALT 98.7 in February 2022, and from my official Instagram research, they appear to be having a blast together. But the two have such stacked resumes in radio and TV, which means – pardon the overused cliché – they each have a lot to bring to the table. Do these two guys, who have such incredible histories in the industry, have egos? Can they survive sharing a space together every day? OC Music News decided to find out…
CHRIS BOOKER | TED STRYKER
Traci: Booker, you were born on the East Coast and a large chunk of your career was in New York. When did you move to California?
Booker: I’ve been here for about 14 years now, so I’m encroaching upon the longest time that I’ve been anywhere in my life. It’s really wild to consider myself an Angelino. I was 13 years in New York, so I’ve surpassed that. And even growing up in West Virginia, I boogied out of there when I was 18, and I moved there when I was five, so, yeah, I think I’ve lived here the longest of anywhere in my life.
Traci: How long have you been at ALT 98.7?
Booker: I’ve been here a year longer than Stryker, so…
Stryker: And you’re two, eight months.
Booker: Yeah. You’re almost at two, aren’t you?
Stryker: I’m a year and nine months to the day.
Booker: This January will be my third. So I’m just one above him.
Traci: Did they walk up to you one day and say, “Hey, we’re going to have this guy Stryker join you?” How did that come about?
LISA WORDEN
VP Rock & Alternative, iHeartMedia | Program Director – ALT 98.7
Booker: We’ve known each other for so long, it just became one of those obvious things when he was available. “Hey, Lisa [Worden – ALT 98.7 Program Director and KROQ alum], me sitting in a room by myself, I’d kind of had enough of that,” so that just seemed like a natural ask. I didn’t even know where he was in the idea of that. I didn’t know if it was a “get me away from radio” kind of thing, but thank God it wasn’t that.
Traci: Stryker, that leads me to asking a very important question. (pause) Do you like movies about gladiators?
Stryker: (laughing) Yes! And I’ve seen a grown man naked.
Traci: Excellent! But yes, you had just come from a very difficult situation that is all too familiar in radio, but that led to the ability to join Booker.
Stryker: But just to be clear, knowing that I was working with him was not even on my radar when I left there.
Traci: Did you know each other well before this?
Booker: God, yeah! (laughing) When I was at KAMP, I was across the hallway from him. But when he was at KROQ in Los Angeles as the night jock, I was at K-Rock, New York as the night jock. You know how small the industry is; we’d met over the years when I would come to Los Angeles for work, for MTV or wherever I was working at the time. I would literally call him on the request line, like, “Hey!” That’s how we naturally became friends. Just two radio dorky disk jockeys calling each other and yapping. I don’t even know how many years ago that was, 2000?
Stryker: I did the same thing with Booker when I went to the East Coast for a gig outside of radio; I called him…
Booker: And I dragged him around the city…
Stryker: Yeah, then we would go out and do things at night. That was 1999, 2000 range.
Traci: Oh wow, years of history! Although, does that make it harder with the show? With so many years of friendship and inside jokes?
Stryker: No, I don’t think so. But I do think that it’s not a guarantee just because people know each other that you can be cohesive doing a show. Same with musicians. There’s musicians that have known each other forever. “Let’s start a sideband!” And it stinks! (all of us laughing) So it’s no guarantee, but it’s just feels good.
Booker: It is funny. I just see him as my peer. I just kind of see him as me. You know what I mean? He was the night jock out here. I was the night jock on the East Coast. So I always sort of thought we kind of did the same thing. But when you pull back the lens, we’re two very different people and we see the world the same, we see the industry the same. And more importantly, I think we see the listener exactly the same.
Stryker: And our goals are the same, our goals are so similar in terms of what we want to achieve every day on the air and off the air.
ALT987 | LA’s NEW ALTERNATIVE
Traci: Which is what?
Stryker: Connection, authentically with people listening, and have fun, which is contagious and keeping it simple. Not dumb, but just keep it simple. Grab people’s attention. Just have fun with it. Be the music aficionados we are. Have some games. Create amazing experiences for the listeners.
Booker: I hate the expression “it’s a vibe,” but it is a kind of a vibe that we just want to put out every day. Like, “We’re you guys, you’re us, you’re in a box, we’re in a box.” They’re driving in one, we’re sitting in one. Let’s connect. Let’s have some fun. Let’s make it easy. Let’s see if we could put a smile on your face, because we’re putting a smile on each other’s faces today. So it’s just as easy as that.
Traci: You are coming up on your two-year anniversary together. Do you have anything special planned for that?
Stryker: Yes, we do! Last year we threw a one-year anniversary party. It was called the Gutter Ball. We had it at Lucky Strike in Hollywood and talk about a vibe and an energy with our listeners – that was freaking amazing! I wish we could tell you it’s going to be a month of fun and doing celebrations, even though we’re two guys that get red in the face and embarrassed to celebrate anything when it comes to us. But it gives us an excuse to create these really amazing experiences with our listeners and be there with them doing these things.
Booker: It is the most important thing. We’re not trying to be a huge show. I come from the [Howard] Stern world of a huge show. Obviously, it’s the greatest show ever, but there is a disconnect between the host and the audience, and it’s the exact opposite of what we want. We want to be able to say, “Hey, I know you idiots! Let’s have a beer.” That’s really what we want.
Stryker: That’s them calling us the idiots, by the way.
Booker: Yeah, we’re always the idiots. (laughing)
Stryker: You know what’s really fun on this show? It’s not even tooting our own horn, but we feel comfortable praising each other on the air and making fun of each other. It makes us laugh when one of us messes up. And our amazing audience, whether the stream or listening on the good old radio, they’re in on that. And if we mess up our text line, they are so quick and so funny to make fun of us or even say, “Hey, that interview with Twenty One Pilots was awesome, guys. Good job.”
Booker: And he mentioned the text line. Back in the day it’d be a request line, and speaking to someone and actually writing to someone. There’s a difference. I don’t know how or why there is, but there definitely is; it’s more freeing, I think. You’re not embarrassed of your voice or there’s not a picking up and calling sort of thing. There’s just a really cool energy with us and them, and it really is astounding how many people text every day on the most innocuous stuff. You just go, “Really?” We’ll plan stuff sometimes, and it won’t get the reaction of just something fleeting that he’s making fun of me, what I’m wearing.
Traci: Wait, what are you wearing?
Stryker: I have an AFI shirt today, which I always wear. Band t-shirt.
Booker: I’m usually black t-shirt guy.
Traci: It’s funny you brought up the texting, because when you got into radio, there was no social media. Now things about you can spread so rapidly. What is a ridiculous rumor about you that you’ve seen online?
Booker: Stryker’s in the military, I’d like to tell everybody! (laughing)
Stryker: No, no! I said I was an astronaut, and people thought I was… (laughing)
Booker: There’s always one person that’s just like, “Well, Stryker was in the National Guard!”
Stryker: And I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t!”
Booker: He felt badly about it because it’s the armed services, and in no way should he be associated with the military or anyone fighting for our country. (all laughing)
Stryker: I can’t really think of anything. I mean, we’re salacious, but not like that salacious. We’re the most rated G to R human beings ever. Comfortable being rated G and comfortable being rated R.
Traci: So the story about you collecting llama figurines, that’s not true, Stryker?
Stryker: I do…
Booker: (laughing) Well, you do have these tchotchkes all over your place, and it’s just like, “You’re a grown man. What is all of this stuff?”
Traci: Going back to your second anniversary, the suggested gift is cotton. Have you thought of a cotton gift to give each other?
Booker: New black t-shirts coming my way?
Stryker: Yes, I would like some medium.
Booker: No, it’s cotton candy for you.
Stryker: Yeah, cotton candy. I’ll take that.
Traci: Do you have pet names for each other?
Booker: I’m Bookie.
Stryker: I call him Bookie.
Booker: Do I call you anything else besides Stryker?
Stryker: No. I like to call him Bookie, though. “What’s up, my Bookie!”
Booker: My brother, maybe. I’ll say that a lot.
Stryker: Yeah. I like when he says that when he walks in. We’re always here within five minutes of each other. So if I’m here first, I can hear his feet outside the office, and I start to get real excited. (Booker starts chuckling) And then he’s like, “What’s up, my brother?” And then he plops in his chair, and we’re in the office ready to go.
Traci: You guys have ALTer EGO coming up with Paramore, The 1975, Thirty Seconds to Mars, The Black Keys, Bush, Sum 41, Yellowcard, lovelytheband and The Last Dinner Party. Who are you excited to see?
Stryker: I know his answer for him.
Booker: I’m a little fanatic when it comes to The 1975. There’s something about that band’s vibe or energy that I picked up on the very first show when they played in Los Angeles at the Troubadour. I love that band. I don’t know what it is.
Stryker: And you were early on that band.
Booker: Yeah, I mean, literally their first Los Angeles show, I just happened to be there because I lived behind the Troubadour. I love that band and got a relationship with them now and probably seen them 20 plus times, so looking forward to 21 or 25, whatever. But it is embarrassing – I went to New York to see some friends, and it wasn’t to see The 1975, but they happened to be playing the Garden, and one of my friends happened to work for the label. We go backstage and the band just kind of looks at me and I’m like, “I know this is embarrassing. This is really embarrassing at this point. But I did not mean to come back here and accost you guys.” But I like that band a lot.
Traci: How about you, Stryker?
Stryker: I have such easy answers for this. Sum 41, because I’ve loved them from day one and I was there for day one. I love seeing them play to these audiences, and also, they’re breaking up. They’re only doing a few more shows, then they’re done. I’m also super excited for Yellowcard because of their comeback and they’ve been playing to bigger audiences than they ever have in their career. And they’re great guys. And [Paramore’s] Hayley Williams, the front-woman – she is the strong, powerful, human, creative. The three of them, that band, those are my top.
Booker: Yeah. But to see Bush too. Knowing Gavin [Rossdale] all of these years; we both have our own experiences with him. Seeing that ball continue to roll, I think is awesome. I think there might be some kids there that have never seen Bush…
Stryker: And probably know a couple of the songs.
Booker: Yeah, and to hear “Glycerine” and “Comedown” and all those hits.
Traci: What else is coming up for you two?
Stryker: We are giving away a lot of Depeche Mode tickets.
Booker: Charger stuff, too. We have a really good connection with the Chargers since we carried the games and we’re taking some listeners on the field next weekend. That’s been great; getting to know the brass at the Chargers and meeting the coach and some of the players. They’re A-list players we’ve met and getting in on that organization is cool. And SoFi. What a beautiful stadium. But we really haven’t got a lot on the books other than ALTer EGO.
Stryker: Yeah, it’s Depeche Mode and ALTer EGO, and then our two-year anniversary, February 1st, and we’re going to have, I think, four events in February.
Booker: And we’re going to Vegas in between! It’s always something. We fly by the seat of our pants; it’s great. We should mention our manager. Lisa Worden is… I haven’t had a boss like this in years; one that is so invested in our show and constantly listening. I don’t want to say it’s like advice and bearing down, “you should do this.” It’s not like that. It’s just a good partnership that sometimes at radio there’s so many things going on. You can easily become an afterthought as a show. But we are front and center in her mind; seemingly, that’s how I feel anyhow. They really go out of their way to do a lot of cool things to help grow this, and that should be acknowledged.
Traci: Over these nearly two years together, what has been the most memorable part?
Booker: Many trips to Vegas!
Stryker: All of them are with our listeners and meeting them there, sometimes for unofficial hangout sessions. But I have an answer other than Vegas. The highlight to me, it’s something that I did not expect. The amount of fun that I am having, and the energy that is back in my body for this profession is at its all-time high because of him [points to Booker] and what he brings, and because of our audience and the connection and my coworkers. It is insane. I’m in here and it’s just like I’m moving around. I’ve got the eye of the tiger and that energy that I love, and I’m really just enthused about this gig because of him and everyone else here.
Booker: I always explain Stryker to everyone as the little rubber balls that you never know which direction they’re going to bounce, but they always make you happy. That’s what he is to me – that little rubber ball. The energy is infectious. The one lesson I always knew, but I think he’s reminded me of so it’s front of mind constantly, is to make that connection, to definitely slow down. Don’t run through, even if we’re talking the call letters, whatever, just try to (pauses), you know. “I’m Booker. He’s Stryker. Nice to meet you.” Thanks for really trying to slow it down to make that connection, because he’s really great at it.
Stryker: Thank you.
Well, with those kind words for each other, we have our answer. Chris Booker and Ted Stryker can not only work together successfully without egos, but also have a fantastic time together while doing it, and bring the listeners with them along the way. Through it all, the alternative music Southern California loves provides the soundtrack.
Check out Booker and Stryker afternoons on ALT 98.7, and join them at ALTer EGO with Paramore, The 1975, Thirty Seconds to Mars, The Black Keys, Bush, Sum 41, Yellowcard, lovelytheband, and The Last Dinner Party on January 13th at the Honda Center.
