Afternoon hosts Cort Webber and Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts were among the casualties Friday afternoon just before KUFO began stunting with a robotic countdown to Wednesday morning.

OMC talked to the two about what happened, asking the same questions in separate interviews:

OMC: What have you been doing and thinking since you were fired?

CW: I've just been trying to deal with the the sudden and rather staggering outpouring of support. We put out the call for people to friend us on Facebook and Twitter so that we could best answer questions and keep people updated on events and I think I had 200 new "friends" waiting for me on Facebook when I got home from the commiseration drinking on Friday night. And it's been a pretty steady stream ever since. It's invigorating. Outside of that, I've just been trying to relax a little and prepare for what's next. Plus we're trying to get the word out about the Midnight Movie (Raising Arizona November 6th at 11pm at the Bagdad Theater.) It will be an interesting experiment to see if we can pull people in without the benefit of 100 thousand watts.

FR: I've been pretty scatterbrained, myself. Even without a daily show to prep for, I've got my hands in 15 different cookie jars simultaneously. This was my first radio job, and hence, my first radio axing, and I'm finding myself surprised at how TIRING getting fired is.

OMC: What was the first indication from the station that your job was in jeopardy?

CW: There were little hints from the moment Alpha took over, most of which could be excused from your mind as basic transition pains. Awkwardness in the halls, lack of communication, general unease, etc. It was solidified for me when I first met Ditch. I walked into his office to introduce myself and he seemed very uncomfortable. He was definitely privy to the fact that I was not long for the station and was trying (unsuccessfully) to mask the fact. I don't blame the guy. Gotta be rough getting hired to detonate an airstaff and relaunch a heritage station. Lot of pressure to not mess up. Ditch's awkward introduction was compounded by the fact that every manager's door in the building seemed to be closed for the rest of that week. And when a door finally did open, it was Ditch walking out to let us know that Scott wanted to talk to us in the conference room at 3. Fortunately for us and our podcasters, we were told that at 1:30 giving us an hour and a half to record a brief goodbye to be sent out in the event of our termination.

FR: The first indication was that there was no indication. The new higher-ups were very quiet, very inscrutable. Even more so than radio management typically is. Even the management down in the basement with us button-pushers didn't talk very much, except to ask us for change for the vending machine. And then our PD got fired, and there was no email wishing him well. There was no email regarding the change for about 24 straight hours, actually. And then the new PD came in and wouldn't talk or look at us for longer than 1 second. And then almost the entirety of Portland kept texting us like "We heard your whole building just got blown out, T/F?" And still nobody was saying anything to us. It was a weird, weird week.

OMC: How were you told you were fired?

CW: The how was pretty clinical. Since we knew what was coming there was no surprise. We walked in and sat down with Scott sitting across the table. He seemed a little confused because it was supposed to have been a meeting with us and the Rick Emerson Show, but they didn't get the message in time. Then he just laid it out. "Station's going in a new direction. Unfortunately that does not include you," and so on and so forth. Really the whole thing played out more like a mortgage loan meeting than a firing. They gave us time to pack up our stuff (some of which I had done a few days before since I had an inkling it was coming) told us that if we needed any files left behind on the computers that we need only ask and they'd be retrieved and that was it. No drama.

FR: We were sitting at our desks, writing our benchmark segments, when at around 1:40, the PD's door opened, and he delivered a halting, awkward request to meet with upper management at 3. So we waited for about an hour, recorded a goodbye podcast, went upstairs, sat down, and very pleasantly got fired. We were told KUFO was going in a new direction, and while station research said we were universally liked by almost everyone interviewed, we wouldn't fit on the "new" station anymore. I guess the idea is to "put hair back on KUFO's chest." We said "Okay," he said "Thanks," we said "Thanks" and we went downstairs and packed our stuff.

OMC: What do you think of the stunting?

CW: I think the stunting is a little silly. I mean, I understand why they feel it's necessary. Too many stations have had major changes occur without making any delineation from what the station had been. Take The Beat, for example. Great alternative station here in Portland back in the 90s. It was moved from 970 AM to 107.5 FM. Programming remained unchanged for about a month. Then they changed it from a straight up alternative station to a Hot AC with a slightly alt-y bent without relaunching the station. It was still "The Beat" but it didn't sound anything like it had before and that hurt the station. When we were blown out in 2000, Michelle Engle (PD at the time) told us that research showed that we were still identified as an alternative station even though we were competing more with Z-100 and KINK. So, I understand why they're doing it. I just think the recorded voice thing may not be the most unique idea. To use The Beat as an example again, if I remember right they signed that station on the same way back in '91 or '92. "The beat is coming (thump, thump)... The beat is coming (thump, thump)..." Something like that.

FR: I dunno. Stunting seems so goofy to me, really. And I'm a guy who's professionally known as Fatboy, so for this to be goofy? It's gotta be pretty goofy. You get the Microsoft Sam guy that Emerson's been using as a punchline on his show for the last 3 years, and then you fill the station with him counting backwards for 72 hours? From a PPM standpoint, I guess it's better than just completely going dark and not registering a listen. My first thought, honestly, was "We were there for 5 years and couldn't get a single TV commercial. The day after we get fired the station lands a spaceship full of flesh-eating monsters downtown. Nice."

OMC: What's the most realistic, concrete way that Portland radio could be made better? Then, what's the fantasy way, and why is that only a fantasy?

CW: Well, I think the two questions are linked because the most realistic ways to make radio better are probably just a fantasy at this point. The best way to make Portland radio "better" is to fully staff stations with live, local bodies. Automation has been a godsend in many ways. From the point of view of someone doing a talk-ish show I am now allowed to focus more on calls and podcasting during songs and spots because I'm not constantly swapping out carts and CDs. And if I want to go on vacation I can put together a best-of and walk away knowing the show will go on. However, automation has given corporations a huge money-saving tool. No reason to staff a station when you have AudioVault. It's getting to be that the only job security in radio is the computer geek on the engineering staff because he's the only one who knows where the power button is on the server to cold boot when the silly thing crashes.

Along with the segue machine draining the humanity from a medium that was built on personality, you also have the homogenization of programming. Rock radio in Portland sounds just like rock radio in Vegas, sounds just like rock radio in Bangor, Maine. Research on the east coast is used to program stations nationwide. Portland is not every other city. Just because Atlanta likes something doesn't mean we will.

By staffing stations around the clock with jocks, you'll get better radio. Not just because you'll have someone on the air when an oil tanker explodes at 3AM, but because you'll have people learning how to do radio. There are a lot of talented people in this city who could probably put together a decent show, but because weekends are tracked by the weekday guys they aren't provided the opportunity. And that doesn't just go for air staff. Stations need music directors, promotions director, promotions assistants, etc... Too many shops in town are consolidating so much that some people have three job titles, or worse they cut those jobs altogether. The result is a lot of stress and malcontent, which poisons the whole building.

The reason why this is a fantasy scenario is that all those people, all those jobs, all those titles that go into making great, local radio cut into the profit margin. So unless you can find a way to make radio human again, the whole thing is a fantasy.

FR: After 5 years of this, I still consider myself a bit of a radio neophyte, but to me, it seems like you can realistically succeed in Portland radio by simply paying attention to the people in the city. Know what you want to be, and then be it. Granted, that sounds all sound-bytey and simplistic, but that's how Cort and I did our show, and it seemed to work pretty well for us. And when we've slipped up and done shows we weren't happy with, it was because we were overthinking it instead of just stopping, looking at ourselves, and going "how much different are we from our audience, really?" And the answer was always "Not at all." Then we'd go and do our show, and we'd kick in an extra 40-45 minutes just for the people who downloaded us, and we'd sign off satisfied.

People know when they're being pandered to, when they're being condescended to, when the people selling them images are selling those images with contempt and disrespect. Or at least most do. In 2009, there are too many people entirely too savvy about how the media machine stands up plasticene facsimiles of themselves, warped mirror images of what they're trying to cater to, for radio to survive on superficial "image"-based personas. And yet there are still large swaths of the business built around degrading the audience for daring to enjoy the product they're putting out there. It's a strange sort of reward for their patronage.

There's gotta be some substance there. Whether you agree or disagree with it, enjoy or get annoyed by it, there's gotta be something behind the words that points to thought, conviction, belief. Something for a listener to latch onto. That's what builds audience, so far as I've seen it. But it's a slow burn, and it takes awhile, and too many people are way too beholden to the standard that says "Step 1: Wait for something to work somewhere., Step 2) copy that, regardless of whether it FITS or not. Step 3) Run it into the ground. While you're surfing that particular tidal wave into the side of a cliff, someone else will (accidentally) figure out how to succeed on their own. Return to Step 1."

So I guess for me, what seems realistic and common-sense might be interpreted AS the fantasy. People don't seem to have faith in their own judgment anymore, and are all too willing to abandon a good idea because there's not enough research, not enough consultant notes, to justify it to a higher up. So they soak in mediocrity until they wrinkle, and get shoved out of the tub after a few years anyway, be it for cost-cutting purposes, or to ensure the higher-ups don't get fired. Radio seems to be a business staffed by people who ONLY hold their job not because they like doing it, or even really KNOW how to do it anymore, but because they're scared of not having a job at all.

OMC: Where do you go from here?

CW: Start pitching ourselves to PDs around town. Our show has some equity in the market and I'm hoping some wise PD out there has the good sense to recognize what we'd be bringing with us. In the meantime we will be podcasting and continuing the Midnight Movie at the Bagdad. We're also going to be showing the final season of Lost at the Bagdad as well.

FR: Lord knows. Cortandfatboy.com will be back in some form, and the speed at which that is happening is surprising even me. A listener named Gabriel Bliss volunteered his weekend (without us reaching out to him or anything, he just did it) and not only saved the entirety of our archives, but all of AM 970's local shows (Musicology, CBS Radio Theater) and The Emerson Show's archives, and resurrected the Cort and Fatboy Messageboards with improved features. I know where I wanna go, and that's back in front of a microphone with Cort. Whether it's Podcast, whether someone in town pays us to do it inbetween songs, I'm not sure just yet. It's only been 3 days. But I can't see us just letting this lie. And I can't see our listeners just letting us laze around and not do a show, either.

You can catch Cort and Fatboy tonight at 7:10 on KGW, or in person for their regular Midnight Movie event November 6 at 11 pm at the Bagdad Theater for "Raising Arizona." Admission is $3.00. "It will be an interesting experiment to see if we can pull people in without the benefit of 100 thousand watts," Webber says. You can also reach them by email (cortwebbergmail [dot] com, fatboy_robertscomcast [dot] net), Twitter (@cortwebber, @fatboyroberts) and Facebook (Webber, Roberts).