‘Breakfast With the Beatles’ host Chris Carter hits 500th show on Sunday
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The long-running Breakfast With the Beatles radio show, currently airing Sunday mornings from 8 to 11 a.m. on KLOS-FM (95.5) hits a milestone this week, as host Chris Carter notches his 500th show.
What’s Carter got in store for the momentous occasion?
“All Rutles — three hours of Rutlemania,” he said, then laughed. “No, actually, I wasn’t planning on this. A listener alerted me to it. But I like that number: 500.... I’m not going to do much. I thought I’d take some requests, because it’s the people’s show. And I’ve put together a little highlight thing, which I’ll do, maybe toward the end of the show.
“The highlights for me,” he said, “have always been when an actual Beatle calls in. Sometimes they’ve called in on holidays. Ringo called in on his birthday, and on Easter.’
‘Breakfast With the Beatles’ also now has a presence beyond Southern California as a component of Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel on Sirius XM satellite radio. And although longevity in radio is the exception rather than the rule, Carter isn’t surprised at the ongoing interest in the music he’s been playing each week for nearly nine years, having succeeded the show’s original host, Deirdre O’Donoghue, who died in 2001. “The spirit of Deirdre O’Donoghue has been in the studio for all 500 of those shows,” Carter said, ‘and she did the show more than 500 times” from the time it began in 1983.
“I feel like a chef who’s working with really good ingredients,’ Carter said. ‘No matter what breakfast I serve up, I know it’s going to have really good things in it.”
If there is a facet of the show that surprises him, it’s “the amazing amount of young listeners we have. When I take requests or people call up to win a quiz, I’ll ask how old are you? They’ll said, ‘I’m 17,’ or ‘I’m 13,’ and they’re always answering some obscure ‘Yellow Submarine’ question. I know they’re Googling, but that’s OK.’ How long “Breakfast With the Beatles” will continue is anybody’s guess, but Carter says, “It’s the kind of show that hopefully keeps its longevity. The great thing about this show is it doesn’t matter what era we’re in as far as what’s going on in music. It’s its own little island unto itself: It’s the Beatles.”
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-- Randy Lewis
