Dana Miller: Best Producer/Manager of the Stars on the Planet, Prepares to Send Leeza into Higher Orbit

Together Shannon and Miller had a seven-year run on television in 17 countries with the music countdown show, Smash Hits. He managed the Beach Boys as well as every teen idol of the 80’s including Rick Springfield, Andy Gibb and Corey Hart. On tv, Dana co-produced Star Search, Solid Gold, a ton of Bob Hope Specials, The Greatest American Hero, Sinatra’s 80’th and ABC’s Disco Ball. He won a cable ACE Award for his special, The Beat of the Live Drum. He oversaw the television special that commemorated the 20^th anniversary of AIDS Project Los Angeles hosted by Tom Hanks. This summer he’ll executive produce a “varality” series along with superstar Diana Ross. He has produced programs featuring Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Elizabeth Taylor, Garth Brooks, Robin Williams, Hillary Clinton, David Geffen, Barry Diller and Elton John. Dana and Elton created the Elton John AIDS Foundation almost 20 years ago. Miller was the volunteer chair of the board of AIDS Project Los Angeles for six years at the request of Steve Tisch and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Today he is the ubiquitous executive producer of an exciting new venture with Leeza Gibbons, LEEZA LIVE! It’s a daily radio show produced in pods, or separate elements, to be ultimately used by any kind of format or syndicate. The specially constructed show from these pods has been customized for KBIG and is heard on Sunday nights from 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. Leeza’s connection with KBIG goes way back. For many years she was the tv spokesperson for the station. Both of her Premiere Radio Networks syndicated shows, ‘Hollywood Confidential’ and ‘Entertainment Tonight on the Radio’ aired for many years on KBIG. “The station is really enjoying some great ratings and sounds sensational,” said Dana. “Early this year KBIG did some core research on Leeza and reaffirmed what we all knew, Leeza completely and totally speaks to women and they get it. Leeza is above all a storyteller. They came to us and we were flattered. Leeza cares about what’s on your mind and what’s in your heart. Greg Ashlock, Dave “Chachi” Denes, Jim Murphy, Charlie Tuna and Irma Blanco are all so sweet, smart and generous to us. It’s a great place for Leeza to call home.”

Every weekday morning at 8 a.m., Leeza & Dana join their production team at their Zen-like candle-lit Beverly Boulevard studios across from El Coyote. For the next four hours, Leeza talks with people. Not really an interview. She is all about conversations. “She is the very best broadcaster I have ever worked with. She is so spot on-it smart and talented and knocks it out of the park over 100% of the time. Ten to fifteen interviews a day, from former Presidents to the Desperate Housewives and she is always totally in the game,” Miller said. “We do pop culture but her mantra to me is always the same - let’s tell a story. Let’s make a difference.”

Dana continued: “First thing we do in the morning is to call people back who want to go on the air with Leeza and bank a ton of calls. Our listeners are calling about current issues or whatever may have been the subject the night before. A ton honestly just want Leeza’s advice. Our crew is so over the top great. Chris Finch spent eleven years with Rick Dees and a year dancing with Madonna. [Okay, so we rescued him.] He is so our voice of what’s happening now. Linda Blake from Air America is all about how we talk directly to women and Brian Baker understands the show, the spirit and the gig plus our natural flow and is the best gawd damned imaging guy I have ever worked with.” Leeza’s show is having major success in Florida, Nashville, Memphis, Georgia, Seattle, New York, New Jersey and two dozen other markets, in addition to KBIG.

Dana believes that they can adapt to any radio station and totally sound live. They think it can be a morning, midday, afternoon, nighttime or weekend show. The format makes no difference to them. “Here is a world class broadcaster with stellar name recognition, a celebrity journalist and mover and shaker whose rolodex Clinton & Clooney would kill for saying to me every single day: “Let’s do it!” The programming pods, or elements, are then made available by downloading elements from the exclusive Leeza Web site to subscriber stations.

“Almost 20 years ago, Leeza was hosting a show called ‘Country Line USA,’ which was a live country call-in show,” continued Dana. “She and I were in L.A. and the guest was a pretty boring Hank Williams, Jr. who was in Nashville on ISDN. At the time Leeza was on Entertainment Tonight. When the songs and spots were playing I was chatting with Leeza about doing ‘ET on the Radio.’ She said she had the rights to it but didn’t know how to put it together. HELLO! We ended up creating ‘Entertainment Tonight on the Radio’ and we printed $3 million a year for years and years from that show.”

Dana graduated from USC and his first radio job was middays at KTMS-Santa Barbara. The lead singer of the Beach Boys, Mike Love, lived there and caught one of Dana’s weekend radio specials and in a quick hour offered him a job running the Beach Boys’ record label, Brother Records. He went from $400 a month to $60,000 a year virtually overnight. He put together the annual Beach Boys July 4^th events on the Mall in Washington, DC, (asking for the permit from Bush Senior when he was Vice President) and hired Charlie Tuna and Wolfman Jack to host a 25^th anniversary TV & Radio special for the band. It cemented his belief in being at the “right place, at the right time” But, this veteran intern of KRLA in Pasadena at the Huntington Sheraton Hotel who worshiped and brought coffee to Lee Baby Simms, Jimmy Rabbit, Johnny Hayes, Casey Kasem and Shadoe Stevens knew that radio was where his heart was.

In the mid-1980s, Dana got a phone call out-of-the-blue from radio veteran James Paul Brown of Earth News fame with Lew Irwin. “It was the strangest phone call,” remembered Dana. “Jim told me to meet him at the corner of Madison & 64th in New York City the next Tuesday afternoon at noon. I’m on a plane wondering what the heck I was doing. Who the hell was this guy? Thankfully I did connect with him and we drove together to Purchase, New York, and the home of Pepsi-Cola. In one hour we sold Pepsi a total annual sponsorship of Hit Line USA for 1.4 million bucks, a weekly syndicated radio show and it was a huge success for a ton of years on Power-106, Z-100 and 200 other stations. I think it cost $350,000 to produce. To me, Jim is a legend in radio. You know today it’s all about sponsorship and product placement and these idiots think they invented it. Hell, it used to be totally that with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on radio and all the early tv shows. American Idol brought it back big time with Coke & Ford but James Paul Brown was doing it all throughout the 80s & 90s on radio with great success. He is the master.”

As manager of Scott Shannon, Dana was heavily involved with Scott’s launch of L.A.’s Pirate Radio in 1989. “I used to argue and fight with Norm Pattiz [president of Westwood One]. But ya know, Norm remains the best executive in broadcasting I have even known. Say what you will, but when you went up those damn steps to his office you knew he lived, breathed and loved radio. Norm was and I guess still is a stubborn genius. When Shannon and Norm weren’t talking during the bad Pirate Radio days, my phone would ring every day at exactly three PM when Scott was driving home and I’d hear 45 minutes of ramblings. The drive from the CNN building to his home on Sunset in Brentwood was precisely 45 minutes. I was locked on. No where to go. And I totally loved it! What a wacko genius he is. Then Scott stopped talking with Pirate’s gm Simon T. and for a moment Bob Moore. My life was hell. But fun!”

Pirate Radio was like a turntable smash - lotsa play, publicity and promotion, but at the end of the day, not much success. “I think the crew panicked at the end, as far as L.A. radio history goes,” insists Dana. “But Scott deserves major credit for two things – The very best launch of a radio station ever, [Bill Drake & Ron Jacobs may disagree with that, but get the Pirate launch tape with just Scott at 5 a.m. broadcasting from the WW1 warehouse in Culver City to make your final decision] and getting every single person in this town a raise. We got Scott for mornings and programming $3 million a year plus major moving expenses. My buddy, WW1’s Eric Weiss hated that, but he kinda understood. Rick Dees heard that and he smiled. He was making a million bucks and he went in to the brass and said he wanted the same thing. Jay Thomas was at ‘Power’ and he hit Jeff Wyatt for a big time raise. All of these guys who had real ratings went to their companies and got a raise. Scott honestly deserves 10%.”

Dana has a unique perspective on Pirate Radio: “The people at Pirate Radio choked. They had such terrific ratings initially with a huge and brilliant marketing campaign totally created by Scott that was completely coming together and then they panicked on the music. Scott was totally a born to be wild Top 40 guy. He and I went together to the KHJ 25th Anniversary Party in Century City and I swear it was like taking a kid to his first cat house. He was the ULTIMATE fan. Robert W. Morgan, The Real Don Steele, Dave Diamond were all there and to see Scott Shannon in the room with his version of Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Larry Mantle was stunning. Yet back at Pirate we were playing Bon Jovi, Poison, Warrant, Motley Crew in Top 40 rotation. The enormous crowd we drew didn’t want to hear just the same tunes over and over. The audience wanted what KLOS or KMET delivered when I was a kid. Our Pirate team didn’t give ‘em that and I think they choked and panicked. Oh my God, there were nine months of chasm between Scott and Norm, and finally they stopped talking. It was just a horrible time. God bless Tom Cuddy and WPLJ for making an offer because Scott and his amazing wife Trish were so over Pirate and Westwood One.”

Dana remembers how he got back to radio. “Last May, Leeza called. I told her that I’d retired, been out of radio and was kinda done with it. But she dragged me kicking and screaming back in for this flexible format. I’m having a total ball because she is so damned smart. She is the total broadcaster – what you see is what you get. I have worked with the best and she just simply excels.”

Our goal is to completely build a network targeted to women and get them to know Leeza’s total brand: Her non-profit Memory Foundation, her make-up line, Sheer Cover, and her life coaching stuff called Sheer Inspiration. It’s all about quality of life and I gotta tell ya, I LOVE it!”

Sirius and XM Satellite Radio already have a women’s channel. ABC has just announced they are launching something similar. Miller closes with, “We want to launch one that has nothing but voices talking to women out there – led by Leeza because honestly there’s no better voice than hers. Everyday this Mom of three, entrepreneur, producer, writer and philanthropist blows me away. I’m back in radio because of this very special, spiritual and talented person. I honestly can’t wait for tomorrow because of her.”