(I used to write a bi-weekly column, RadioRadio, for Players magazine in the Tampa Bay area. The following story appeared in 1991.)

Profile: WMNF's
Phil & Bill Show

By Bob Andelman

Alert the media, it's official: the "Phil and Bill Decade" at WMNF (88.5 FM) is over.

"I didn't know it was the 'Phil and Bill Decade,'" says Bill, the radical, idealistic one. "I thought it was the Reagan era."

"Don't you have anything better to write about?" wonders Phil, the conservative, practical one.

The end came as quietly as it could on April 28th when Phil Lee and Bill Hamilton boxed up their vinyl memories (Country Joe & the Fish, Grateful Dead, Hendrix) and biting sarcasm of a decade that ended two decades ago and passed the torch of the "Sixties Show" to new voices.

"We had a nice 10 years," says Phil. "It was nice to kiss it goodbye. I've got a family now and working Saturdays doing a show from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. kind of tied up a whole day. I've discovered a seventh day of the week."

Under Hamilton and Lee, the Sixties Show consistently rated among WMNF's most popular programs, both in listener surveys and during pledge weeks. In a decade, the duo raised $100,000 for the non-profit, non-commercial station.

They stumbled into public radio in 1980 the way many people do. Hamilton had just moved back to Tampa and his wife told him about a radio station playing some interesting music. He listened, liked what he heard and called to suggest WMNF do a program of sixties music and commentary. The program director asked Hamilton - a furniture craftsman by trade with no broadcast experience - to be the host.

"I called my friend Phil and said, 'Do you want to do a radio show?' Two weeks later we were on the air," says Bill.

Lee, 37, a commercial photographer whose studio work has appeared in Maison Blanche, Maas Brothers and Wal-mart ads, has known Hamilton, 39, since the two were at Tampa's Plant High School together. "There were a lot of shared journeys," recalls Hamilton, "wandering in the wilderness, our trips on L.S.D."

The friendship between Hamilton and Lee was heard to stretch to its limits on the airwaves, particularly in the later years of their program.

"Bill's a - I dunno," says Phil. "He's ingrained in the '60s more than I am and he's a bit more radical, but he's got a good heart. There's a lot of yin and yang. We were a lot tighter in the first five years. In the last five we'd pretty much walk into the studio and (only) see each other there. Recently, we've begun patching up and we're seeing each other more."

"Over the last 10 years we've been able to turn some heads with outrageous points of view," says Bill. "But I didn't feel I was suitable anymore. When Phil and I came to the program, I think our concepts were similar. But the more we did it, we had counter-tendencies. I became more political and Phil was skittish about that. I became one stereotype and Phil became the other. I'm too serious. (The show) needs someone with joyful irreverence. I became so involved in the issues it became harder to be sarcastic.

"During those periods, people told me listening to us was like some soap opera. The tension was palpable. ... At my worst, I felt unsympathetic to the compromises (Phil) felt he needed to make to get along," admits Bill. Then, oddly, he asks, "Why am I telling you this? I just got high and now I'm getting drunk."

Lee quit for a while around their sixth year, then returned only to leave again in 1989. He teamed up with Hamilton earlier this year during WMNF's annual pledge drive and the pair agreed to go out as they came in - as a team.

Why did they finally decide to step aside?

"I thought the time slot was ready for some new blood," says Phil. "I also think the old days we used to kick to death have all gone that way, so it was pointless to continue. I got tired of rehashing the politics week after week and anyway, I think the world is shaping up. I just came back to reprieve the old show and say goodbye."

"The program needed to be looser than I am," says Bill. "I started feeling that I was preaching to the audience too much. It's not like I outgrew it. It's just that I changed and I couldn't do it as well or as comfortably as I think it should be done. The Sixties Show, for many people, symbolizes the idealistic passion of the station. That's what made me love the program - people took it seriously."

There may be no more "Phil and Bill Show" - WMNF is filling the Sixties Show slot with revolving hosts for the immediate future - but both men expect to remain active and visible in the station's programming and culture. Hamilton wants to develop special features for the documentary program "Radioactivity." Lee can be heard as an occasional substitute host on "The Morning Show" but he doesn't expect to become a station regular again.

"In fact," he says rather ominously, "I'm weeding out my '60s vinyl. I'm going to cash it in for some '90s CDs."