BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Good news for Gary Burbank fans.
There's a chance - maybe a very good chance - that the popular humorist will stay at WLW-AM (700 kHz) and do a local show instead of moving to Florida.
"I haven't made a decision about this yet. They're going to come back to me (today) or Tuesday with some numbers," Mr. Burbank says. "We've got to make a decision in the next week.''
In May, Mr. Burbank revealed that he might move his nationally syndicated 3-6 p.m. weekday show to Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., by Oct. 1.
But WLW-AM and Jacor Communications, the parent company, have made an offer to keep Earl Pitts, Gilbert Gnarley and Mr. Burbank's cast of other crazy characters here.
The counterproposal calls for him to return to doing a totally local daily show here (as he did from 1980 to 1994), and to syndicate his best bits as a weekend show through Jacor's new Premiere Radio Networks division.
Jacor, which owns more than 150 stations, recently bought Premiere, which has a 90 percent share of the syndicated radio comedy market. It syndicates 52 programs to more than 6,300 stations.
The deal could "put me on bigger stations, and more stations" than the 70 outlets carrying his daily "Broadbank Burbcasting Company" show, he says.
As Earl Pitts would say: "You know what makes him sick?" It's refraining from making sarcastic comments about Tristate problems or politics on his national show.
"It was so much easier to find things to talk about when you're local," Mr. Burbank says. "If you drive through 3 feet of snow to get to work, then you can't talk about it. Or about the UC athletic director. Now we only do a few local bits, about one a week."
Mr. Burbank, 56, admits he "hasn't set the (syndication) world on fire, but we're not dying, either."
Universal Studios wants him for a three-year deal to broadcast from a glassed-in studio on Hollywood Boulevard at the park.
Even if he goes, he won't really be gone. He could do the show frequently from here, and commute often to visit his restaurants, his daughter (a producer for The Enquirer Prep Sports Show) and his son (who will make him a first-time grandfather in January).
"I would never really leave Cincinnati in the first place. With today's technology, I could do the show from here and you'd never know the difference," he says.
Not going would make it easier to complete several recording projects - an Earl Pitts singing album with Sandy Pinkard and Richard Bowden, and a blues album.
"If I stayed here, I'd have more time to do them right," he says. "But the Universal deal does sound sweet."
John Kiesewetter is Enquirer TV - radio critic. Write him at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, 45202; fax: 513-768-8330.
