Radio Career

While completing his degree at UCSB, Germain found himself drawn to the talk radio format. He told interviewer Matthew Gilbert: "it reached out of the radio and grabbed me by the shirt collar"^[5]. Germain called local radio station KTMS offering to do anything to get his foot in the door. At first he was rebuffed. He then discovered that there was an intern position available. On his third day of interning, he was offered a job "running the board". Within a year and a half, he was the assistant program director^[6].

Returning to Los Angeles, Germain found employment at radio station KFI. He was a screener and producer at first (of Stephanie Miller, Bill Press among others), and then as described in the next section, started hosting his own show - Ask Mr. KFI. Displaced from his evening time slot in 1996 by The Phil Hendrie Show, he was offered the overnight slot. He said no and left KFI ^[7].

In January of 1997, after a contractual (non-competition clause) 3-month waiting period, he brought his show to KABC radio renaming it Ask Mr. KABC.^[8] The show had difficult times its first few years due to it frequently being pre-empted by sports programming, also it was at times only one hour long. For several months in 1999, he co-hosted a morning show with Brian Whitman. According to a newspaper article by Sandy Wells, Germain could not wait to get back to an evening time slot^[9].

His show blossomed in March of 2000 when KABC management expanded Germain's show to 3 hours.This was due to Stephanie Miller’s syndicated show being removed from the KABC lineup^[10]. He steadily built a following and in its final year he had the number 1 or 2 rated show for his time period. Midway through 2006, the start of his show was pushed back an hour (to 10 pm) to make room for a syndicated show based out of New York – Mark Levin. In January of 2007, KABC wanted to push his show back another hour (to 11 pm) to make room for another hour of Levin’s show. Germain balked at that proposal stating that it would be detrimental to his family life, and he and KABC parted company on what is reported to be very good terms.

Three weeks later, (March 5, 2007), he returned on radio station KTLK, with what is considered by the radio industry as the coveted “drive-time” time slot.