Overlooking the pool through the lobby bar’s towering windows, three casually dressed dudes lounged on a pair of plush couches as if they were in a buddy’s basement man cave rather than a pricey, four-star hotel.
Corby Davidson, Bob Sturm and Dave Lane, the trio who now makes up the popular 1310 The Ticket afternoon drive program The Hardline, were in the middle of a commercial break during a remote broadcast. There weren’t any large banners signaling their position, nor was there a giant crowd surrounding them at that point. A couple of cocktail waitress strolled by to drop off drinks a few tables away from the broadcast spot, while a few folks sat at the nearby bar, nursing drinks, completely unaware of the radio taping.
With his headphones removed, Lane rested his right elbow along the back of the couch, his right leg hiked up on the seat cushion as he chatted with his co-hosts. It's just another weekday on the sports radio juggernaut that is The Ticket.
But for the 50-year-old Lane, who's also gone by the nickname “Gen X Davey” for decades, it wasn’t typical, not yet. Just a month prior to that lobby bar moment, Lane spoke his first words as a full-time host on The Hardline. For more than 25 years, it was a moment he had hoped for.
For most of those years, he was convinced he had no chance at a permanent on-air gig. Throughout his adult life, he had watched others snap up the rare Ticket host positions that came available as he endured several personal setbacks. But here he was, finally, hosting for one of the most popular radio stations in the U.S. as a full-fledged member of The Hardline, the very program with which he had a fraught history.
It didn’t happen without a fair dose of luck and good timing. He had long cared deeply about nabbing this job, but as he admitted over the air on the evening his hiring was announced in June, he finally came out on top “when I finally stopped caring and gave up all hope it would ever happen.”
The Chance That Never Arrived
Lane’s new post as The Hardline’s third host, a slot often referred to as “the yuck monkey” by Ticket personnel and the legion of loyal station listeners dubbed “P1s,” isn’t his first full-time position with the station or the show. Lane began at The Ticket after graduating from the University of North Texas in 1994. He worked his way through the system, going from weekend overnight board operator to a show producer for a short while, eventually becoming a “Ticket Ticker Guy” who presented sports updates on The Hardline, then hosted by Mike Rhyner and Greg Williams.There were ups and downs during those initial post-college years. Lane was laid off for a short time, then rehired at the station. After about a year of reading tickers for The Hardline, he was bumped back down to a lower position when the station's management made staffing changes. That wasn’t the first time he had been passed over for promotion, and after sensing the direction his young career was taking, Lane cut his losses and left the station on his own in 1997.
He joined local ABC affiliate WFAA as a news writer for the channel’s Daybreak morning show. He didn’t stay there long.
“I hated it,” he says. “It was just very grueling. My shift was 1:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. I had to write dozens of stories for a two-hour newscast. It was valuable experience working in a real newsroom and having such tight deadlines, but it can burn you out quickly. Plus, I looked at what career advancement looked like, and I decided I didn't want to pay dues for five or 10 years for a shot to work nights.”
Lane found voice-over work at a marketing agency, where he stayed for 13 years working on national ad campaigns before he was laid off. But he never strayed away completely from 1310. He had formed close friendships there, and his voice was still heard each Saturday as a member of The Rant weekly show with Gordon Keith from The Ticket’s weekday morning show, as well as his current co-host Davidson.
When that show ended its run, Lane teamed up with Hardline then-producer Danny Balis to broadcast their own Saturday program, The Orphanage, which ran until 2015. The irreverent title is a personal reference: both Lane and Balis were adopted at early ages. Lane also regularly filled in as co-host with other
Danny Balis, longtime host of The Ticket, recently quit after speaking on air about his grievances with the gig.
Mikel Galicia
Over those years, not many hosting slots were made available on the station as The Ticket enjoyed almost-unheard-of stability throughout its core lineup of on-air stars. Lane convinced himself he wasn’t cut out for what the corporate suits of big-time radio wanted from their hosts. Lane’s humor has an edge, and he had long become a favorite among P1s for his off-color, off-the-cuff commentary. What is taboo for others is all-too-touchable for Lane. He knows how to seize the comedic moments.
Lane says he and Balis were approached by 97.1 KEGL back in either 2008 or 2009 about possibly bringing The Orphanage to their frequency, but those talks really didn’t go anywhere.
The passionate Dallas Cowboys fan has hot sports opinions to share and dissect, but his specialty lies outside of the sporting realm. He’s the station’s resident expert on all things new wave music, discussing the finer points of the Cure and Morrissey over the air. On a few occasions, he’s hosted a nighttime Ticket show on which he’s played a bunch of his favorite '80s tunes.
“His foot has always been in the door,” Davidson says. “Even though he went away, he never fully left. But I am sure he never thought getting this hosting job would ever happen.”
Setbacks and Delusions of Grandeur
Davidson is correct. Even though Lane remained a regular, and popular, presence on The Ticket, he still felt any thoughts he had of becoming a host at that point were “delusions of grandeur.” By the time he was laid off from his marketing job a few years ago, he had become accustomed to navigating life’s unforeseen stumbling blocks.In his 20s he had a stretch when unemployment benefits, a part-time job at the Gap and a rent-controlled apartment were his tools for survival. The hits kept coming beyond that, but he can look back now and see how he had trouble negotiating obstacles well before adulthood.
A pair of divorces, at least four layoffs that he can remember and even getting ripped off by contractors on different homes over the years were some of the brutal roadblocks that killed any momentum Lane might’ve felt since he left college. He is happily married these days. His wife since 2019, Marissa Stabler, an advertising executive and the daughter of NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Kenny Stabler, has been vital in helping Lane build belief in himself.
As a father to a 12-year-old daughter, Clara, Lane grasps the importance of a parent’s support from an early age as well as anyone.
“I always felt I was coming from a self-confidence deficit,” he says, “because I was a late bloomer with latent adoption abandonment issues. It’s taken a long time for me to get even somewhat comfortable in my own skin and optimistic about my life ahead.”
In January 2020, Mike Rhyner, the longtime co-host of The Hardline and Texas Radio Hall of Fame inductee, announced his retirement. The job vacancy his departure created was the first one at the station in over a decade. Supreme Court justice openings appeared more often than open positions on the top tier of talent at The Ticket during that stretch.
Lane was among the candidates to fill that spot. In a surprise move, the coveted seat went to Bob Sturm, the co-host of the station’s midday BaD Radio program. For the station to move an established star from one show to another was a shock to Lane. But perhaps due to a lack of self-esteem, it made more than enough sense, to him at least, that he wasn’t the one chosen for the promotion.
“When [Mike] Rhyner left, I put on a full-court press," he says. "I wore a suit up to the station for my interview. I don’t believe I ever felt I had real shot, though. I gave it my best, but I was realistic about it. It just came as a shock to everyone when they broke up BaD Radio and moved Bob [Sturm] to The Hardline. In retrospect, it makes sense because Bob is a marquee personality and probably the most knowledgeable sports guy up there. But at the time, it seemed incongruent and out of left field. Especially when you had guys like Danny [Balis] and me who had history with the show. At the same time, it's afternoon drive, so I understand why they didn't want to let the show devolve into total jackassery.”
With Sturm moving to The Hardline, BaD Radio producer Jake Kemp took over Sturm’s old seat. In addition to Lane, Balis and Mike Sirois, the producer for the late-morning Norm and D Invasion show, were passed over for the hosting job. As the pandemic rolled on, listeners to the station had little reason to think anything was other than perfectly smooth at The Ticket. The station kept dominating the ratings, and in November 2021, 1310 was announced as the Sports Station of the Year at the prestigious annual Marconi Awards, the Oscars of the national radio industry.
A Changing of The Ticket Tides
The station’s waters, which had looked so serene from the outside, experienced a tsunami this May when Lane’s longtime buddy and Orphanage co-host announced he was quitting. Making no bones about it, Balis explained during a May 18 broadcast that he'd decided to leave due to the lack of hosting opportunities at the station and to focus more on his quality of life. He also plainly noted he felt he'd been performing duties above and beyond his pay.A couple of weeks later, Sirois, another show producer who, like Balis, had been a host of a long-running Saturday show and acted as more of a co-host than off-mic support staff, announced he was also leaving the station. Sirois also said he wasn’t happy with his pay or his prospects at the station. His efforts would now go toward helping his brother and Saturday Cirque du Sirois co-host Cash Sirois manage his two companies, The Well Creative Productions, a video production firm, and sports memorabilia video channel The Collectible Network.
Although the vacancies left by Balis and Sirois were producer jobs, these two men were highly popular personalities with Ticket P1s. Following the resignations, Twitter discourse, not to mention the active r/theticket Reddit forum, buzzed with concern and condemnation.
Both departed producers participated in interviews with Gordon Keith on his Twitch channel, among other outlets, expanding on their dissatisfaction with their roles at The Ticket and their decisions to leave. The public was getting arguably its most revealing peek yet behind the mighty Ticket curtain, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.
When Lane heard from Balis that he was leaving his post, Lane felt differently about a Ticket future. Thanks in large part to the support of his wife, he was more content with his station in life than he had ever been.
He could tell the grind of the job had worn on Balis and that his friend was at peace with his decision. When Balis asked Lane if he would be interested in assuming The Hardline producer’s chair, Lane quickly knew he wasn’t. He had settled into a happy flow of freelance marketing work and co-hosting his music-centric podcast High T With Old Waver with musician Toby Pipes. Getting his hopes up and squeezing into a suit for just any job wasn’t going to happen this time around.
“I took a total backseat,” he says. “I told my wife, ‘If anyone at The Ticket wants to talk to me, I’ll listen, but I don’t want to be a producer.’ I didn’t want to step into the role that had frustrated Danny for so long. I wanted to be a third host. I had finally realized that I don’t need The Ticket to define me or to chase notoriety or beg for attention. I have an understanding of what I want to do and where I want to go.”
Finally a Yuck Monkey
According to Davidson, he and Sturm wanted Lane as a third host, and the Ticket’s program director, Jeff Catlin, felt the same way. But as Davidson said, “It’s no secret that costs money, and we’re owned by a company (Cumulus Media) that isn’t one to spend a lot.” However, with Davidson, Sturm and Catlin all on board with bringing Lane on as a true host, the idea was approved.
Lane had kept Balis in the loop as talks quickly progressed, and he says Balis was nothing but supportive. The timing of adding a hosting position to The Hardline right after such high-profile departures raised a few eyebrows. Both Lane and Davidson suggested there were some PR issues to consider, but Catlin says damage control had nothing to do with the decision to bring Lane back to The Ticket full-time.
“The passion our listeners have for the station is unreal,” Catlin wrote in an email. “And it’s the sole reason we’ve had the success we’ve been lucky to have over the past 28 years. But we can’t make personnel decisions based on ‘how it plays’ in the court of public opinion. Any of the programming moves or new hires I have made or make have one guiding principle in mind — what is best for The Ticket right now. Dave Lane was the best person to add to The Ticket and The Hardline at this time because of his unique talents that complement Bob and Corby.”
Davidson is just happy to be back in the studio with someone with whom he was once “inseparable,” he says. “I’ve realized just how much I have missed him being around,” Davidson says. “He’s got such a unique way of looking at things, and having him here laughing and cutting up is so huge, because that fun is a major part of our show, and he only adds to that side of it.”
Lane seems wrong in his notion that the job came his way only after he stopped caring and gave up all hope it would happen. It looks like it finally happened when he stopped thinking he wasn’t good enough for the job. It doesn’t yet feel real to him to be in this position, but true to his new, self-assured form, he’s not ready to say whether this is his dream job, not just yet.
“Whether or not it ends up being my dream job remains to be seen,” he says with a laugh. “It is a lot of pressure compared to what I’ve been doing, and I hope that I’m built for the long haul. I hope that I feel like it’s been a dream job down the road. I do know that I’m really enjoying it now, that’s for sure.”
