It is hard to imagine KSEXRadio without Wankus, the person who undisputedly made the station the unvarnished garage band of porn industry discussion.
“Well,” Wankus qualified today, “if you think KSEX sucks, that’s me, too.”
Wayne “Wankus” Lewis joined KSEXRadio in late 2000 after years as a radio DJ in regional markets around the country. He joined at the request of former owner the late Mike Rick.
“I coached his kid in Little League,” Wankus said, “and he called me up when he’d bought the station from the former owner in late 2000. He said ‘I’ll stay out of your way.'”
Wankus brought an abrasive, incisive, often hilarious East Coast style to the airwaves, building a loyal fanbase with “PJ”s (“Porn Jockies”) that worked for $20 an hour. Wankus is responsible for most of KSEXRadio’s identifiable trademarks, from its music to its commercials.
Following Rick’s death, Rick’s brother, Chris, took over the station but he eventually sold to a four-person partnership that included Sean Trotter, a shareholder in Adam & Eve, a “silent partner” named Gene who was a restarauteur, Josh Aaron, and Jon Belinkie. There was talk of taking the station to satellite radio, moving the station to larger quarters from its current Burbank location, and a general restructuring managed from afar. Wankus continued as Program Director.
“There were big plans,” Wankus said of the new regime, which began early last year. “But (despite Trotter’s involvement) the new owners were outsiders trying to run a porn business.”
Tyler Faith, who today resigned her PJ gig in protest of Wankus’ firing, concurred.
“It has been a very rough year,” she said.
I asked what the biggest problem seemed to be in outside ownership.
“This is a west coast industry and you have to respect that,” Wankus said. “When I moved to Santa Barbara from New York, it took me four years to talk without people wanting to fight me.”
(I had earlier asked Wankus to please slow down; I’m from the East Coast myself and I have grown used to people talking at a leisurely pace since I moved here.)
“…so I understood the difficulty,” he said. “They have very New York-y, hard-sell tactics. You can’t yell at (AVN president Paul) Fishbein about the AVN ads. I had to do a lot of apologizing for them. But you can’t manage a business by vacation, which is what these guys were doing. You have to get in and get your hands dirty.”
On Thursday night, PJ Lorrainiac’s show started with a call from partner Jon Belinkie. He informed her on the air that Wankus was fired and that she was the new Program Director.
“I hired Lorrainiac six years ago,” Wankus said. “She had just started the show, everybody was having a good time…”
Wankus and Faith are dubious of the station’s continued success, because they don’t feel the owners know the territory. But this pales in comparison to the method of the dismissal.
“(Wankus is) responsible for KSEX getting to where it is now,” Faith said, “and you don’t treat someone like that.”
Many companies in the adult industry are notorious for shortchanging their employees, but this reflects the entertainment industry in general, and maybe even Los Angeles (that is why I work for myself). These companies might survive based on short-term disrespect to the people who work for them, but it could be argued that they’d do a lot better if employees were treated better.
“(Belinkie) and I would have these screaming phone calls that we’d end with ‘I’m hanging up now. I’ll call you tomorrow,'” Wamkus said. “We didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but we all wanted the success of KSEX.”
Both Wankus and Faith admit they feel relieved after what they think of as a year of struggle and butting heads with the new owners.
“Now he can devote 100 percent of his time to my company (Team Tyler),” Faith said. The couple are negotiating a new series with a major studio, the details of which will be announced soon.
“I’m getting my ducks in a row,” Wankus said.
I asked what the secret of success in the porn business was.
“You can tell who’s going to succeed when people stop getting the googly eyes with naked girls all around them,” he added. “These guys still have the googly eyes after a year.”
Previously: Tyler Faith, awake and asleep; Tyler makes honest man out of Wankus; What makes boobs real?
See also: Wankus, Tyler Faith
Amen, brother Gram.
Amen, Brother Gram.