April Fool’s Gold (11:46)

The Rouse and Company morning show I hosted from 1988-2005 in Baltimore became more successful than I could have ever imagined. It was a blend of on-air players with perfectly defined roles, great program managers who guided us, and a management and ownership team that wanted to win as much as we did. During that 17-year run, WQSR was nominated and won numerous awards as America’s top large market station. Along with the typical news, sports, traffic, and weather, peppered amongst the music were what we called signature breaks. We did these bits every morning: The Joke du Jour, the Impossible Question, and The Time Tunnel. They all had listener involvement. Having listeners on the phone was a tremendous way to give them the feeling that they were part of the “club.” We had incredible giveaways like Cars and Cash, trips to Hawaii, Disney World, and Cruises. We were heavily involved with the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens.

We also found regular entertaining characters from the listening audience: Madge, Donald the Singing Bush, The Supreme Pat, and Elvis P. Anderson. We developed our own characters: Larry Love, Geoff with a G, Billy Wong, and The Mattress Brothers. Many nationally known stars dropped by the show, and the station brought even more acts to the large city venues for them to perform on stage. It didn’t hurt that our band Stevie and the Satellites opened every concert, performing a few of our parody songs. As many listeners said, the show was “A party every morning!”

Some of the best moments came from the pranks we played. Some of the funniest involved our boss, whom we nicknamed Billy Bob. These stunts really registered with the listening audience. I mean, who wouldn’t love to pull one over on their boss?

Billy Bob loved to travel. One time, when he was in London, we called his hotel while on the air, pretending to be him, and ordered the most expensive bottle of champagne in their world-renowned wine cellar. He later admitted that the bottle of bubbly cost more than his week’s stay in the hotel.

Once, while he was on holiday in Montreal, we again called his hotel live on the air and requested that housekeeping replace all the plush, luxurious towels and washcloths in his room with paper towels due to his odd towel allergy.

Another popular bit involved the loss of Baltimore’s NFL team, the Baltimore Colts. in 1984.  It was a heartbreaking loss for the city to find ourselves without an NFL team. It remained that way until 1995 when the Canadian Football League expanded into Baltimore. A controversy over the nickname of the team began. Most thought the new team should be named the Colts. Sure, the NFL had the Indianapolis Colts, but this was the CFL, an entirely different league. What could possibly be the problem? Paul Tagliabu, the commissioner of the NFL, found all kinds of issues, as did the Colts owner Robert Irsay. They weren’t going to allow it to happen and would file an injunction to stop the use of the name “Colts” for Baltimore’s new football team. Most of the city’s football fans were outraged, so we decided to do something about it.

Our position was, “They” took our team, “They took all the history of the team, and “They” stole our name. We had nothing left of the Colts except what was left in the Colt’s stalls. That’s right, you guessed it, manure. We thought it was only fitting since “They” had taken everything connected to the team from us, “They” might as well have the only thing that was left behind, horseshit.

So, the campaign began. We set up a kiosk in front of our studios for three days that included a pile of horse manure, plastic bags, and USPS-padded envelopes. Angry fans were free to stop by, fill up a bag, place it in the large envelope, and we would mail it to Paul Tagliabu in New York.

Fans loved it. They were lined up around the block to get in on the action.

We enjoyed pulling these kinds of pranks, as did the listeners, but in my opinion, there was one that was the granddaddy of them all. We called it “April Fools Gold.”

A call came into the morning show; I answered,” Morning Rouse and Company.” “Steve, it’s Lenny. I live in Federal Hill.” “Hey Lenny, what’s happennin’,” I said. “Hey man, I jog around the Inner Harbor every morning, and somethin’s going on down here.” “What’s up?” I asked. “Well, all I know is there’s a couple of Baltimore City Police and probably a couple hundred people. Most of them seem upset about somethin’, and when I ran through the crowd, I heard your name mentioned several times.” “Huh, ok, Lenny, thanks. We’ll check it out.” I responded. “Ok, Steve, I’m telling you, man, some of these people are really pissed about something.”

Two weeks before, the crowd at the Inner Harbor was “really pissed about something.” We were doing a live broadcast from a shipyard near Fort McHenry on a chilly March morning. That’s where the USS Constellation had been towed for major repairs. The huge Sloop of War ship had been built around 1855 and was a fixture at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, but it was now rotting away. We wanted to show our support and help with some fundraising for the expensive undertaking.

As if that wasn’t enough to have the ship top of mind for our listeners, I had appeared as a pirate spokesperson in a Maryland Lottery TV commercial that was filmed on the Constellation. That commercial ran on all the local TV stations during the previous few months.

On the morning of April 1, we put into motion an April Fool’s joke involving the Constellation and a bounty of gold.

Around 7:30, the hoax began with a call from our producer posing as an employee of the Constellation Restoration Committee. He said several chests of gold coins had been discovered during the demolition of the ship’s decking. The committee decided they would keep some to help pay for the rebuilding of the Constellation. However, after much discussion, they felt a portion of the bounty should go to the citizens of Baltimore for their years of support of the historic ship. It was simple: come to the Inner Harbor Amphitheatre, show your Maryland driver’s license, and walk away with a gold coin.

After the call, I excitedly discussed on air with the rest of the show members what these coins may be worth. We figured these coins were probably from the 17 and 18 hundreds. Which meant they were 100 percent gold. Back then, there was no filler, so they had to be worth quite a bit!

The calls began to pour into the show. Off the air, I asked the listeners who called to think carefully: “When was the last time someone was handing out gold for free?’ They’d say, ‘Uh,’ and I’d say, Think about it.”
Still, people descended upon the harbor in droves. To add to the momentum, we had a couple of our salespeople call into the show disguised as folks who had just picked up their coin and were thrilled!

Within 30 minutes, hundreds of gold-seeking pilgrims wandered the harbor searching for the booty. Police officers at the morning roll call at the Inner Harbor Police kiosk were surrounded by fortune-seeking citizens. Tourist information workers at the Visitors Center huddled behind locked doors, wondering what the hell was happening. Constellation officials, preparing for their day of ticket sales and tours, were caught off guard by an angry mob demanding gold. Early morning radio station personnel attempting to call clients or set up meetings couldn’t find an open line. The station’s phone lines were jammed!

Billy Bob, our typically over-reactionary boss, came busting through our studio door saying he just got a call from the Mayor’s office and Tom Frazier, the police commissioner! “It’s time to pull the plug!” He said this April Fool’s joke was getting out of control and demanded that we CEASE and DESIST before the National Guard was called out.

We later learned that the actual Director of the Constellation Foundation, Lou Linden, was caught naked in his shower when his wife ran in with an urgent phone call from his bookkeeper. The bookkeeper held her phone to her radio speaker to let him hear what was happening. Linden said he had no idea why we were talking about a committee that hadn’t been around for 25 years. He dried off quickly and headed to his fax machine to fire off a fax. When the fax screen popped up, so did the date. April 1. He said right then and there it dawned on him, “Oh God! We’ve all been had.”

The next morning’s headline in the April 2, 1998 edition of the Baltimore Sun read: “Radio Host’s Ruse Triggers Gold Rush. April Fool’s Day offer lures crowd to harbor!”

Of course, numerous calls came into the show on the morning of April 2. Most were from listeners who just wanted to say, “Wow, that was a good one!” One couple called and said they drove from Cecil County, over an hour away, and paid 20 bucks for parking. Another husband called in to tell us his wife was none too pleased when he whisked her out of Union Memorial Hospital after having a hysterectomy and sped to the harbor. A city ambassador responsible for taking a group of 50 Japanese tourists to the Inner Harbor’s Maryland Science Center told us he quickly detoured the group to the Constellation. What he had hoped for was to nab a memorable souvenir; what he got was 50 very perplexed Japanese tourists.

Although a few people were angry about being sucked in by the ruse, most, after a cooling-off period, had to admit this April Fool’s Joke was one for the ages.

So, we pulled it off. It went exactly as planned. It couldn’t have gone better. More exciting than even the success of the prank locally was our fake gold rush received worldwide attention. For many years, it was ranked at a solid number 72 on the Museum of Hoaxes international list of the Top 100 Hoaxes of all time in the world!

Since that day, many listeners have come up to me and told me they almost lost their jobs because of that April Fool’s Joke. I kiddingly reply, “But how many times in your life have you been part of a history-making event of worldwide significance? You’re welcome.”

That wasn’t the only time we went for worldwide notoriety. We were bound and determined to set the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest whoopee cushion explosion ever to occur in the world! That, however, is another story for another day.