The Ticket's The Musers Have A Rejuvenating New Schedule

Oftentimes when 1310 The Ticket advertises a “major station announcement,” it’s about one of the many annual events the station and its on-air hosts take part in each year. There’s the major station announcement every year to herald the annual Ticketstock extravaganza, there’s another one to let the hordes of station listeners know when the next Jub Jam charity concert will be.

The announcements introduce useful info that a ton of fans are interested in to be sure, but they’re not usually something that sets the internet ablaze. In other words, “major station announcements” have become a bit predictable over the 31 years that 1310 has dominated North Texas airwaves.

On Monday, Jan. 6, however, the major station announcement from the station’s top-rated morning program, The Musers, brought about a major change, and with it, a major reaction.

After nearly 30 years of hosting 1310’s morning drive show from 5:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., hosts Craig Miller, George Dunham and Gordon Keith, also known as "The Musers," announced that their show will run for only three hours, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. The Invasion, hosted by Donovan Lewis and Observer contributor Matt McClearin, now begins at 9 a.m. instead of 10 a.m.

“We’re not 28 anymore, like we were when we first started,” Dunham says over the phone last week. “We’ve been talking about something like this for a while now. Like, how do we keep this going? How do we stay together?”

Dunham and Miller both told the Observer they had a hard time thinking of another Dallas-area morning radio show that had not only lasted as long as they had but had also spent all that time broadcasting for as long as they did each day with the same core cast intact. Scan your dial in the mornings in North Texas and you’ll primarily hear morning shows that run for three hours, usually ending at 9 a.m.

For those who have not worked early morning shifts it might be hard to comprehend just how vital an hour and a half can be. For nearly three decades, Dunham, Miller and Keith have had to negotiate the risk-reward balance of staying up late to catch a game they’ll need to talk about when they have to wake up crazy early to go on the air. They’ll continue to do that, but the self-bargaining will be easier now.

“In the 9 a.m. hour, we’re usually zombies,” says Miller, who has a 3-year-old daughter at home he’s glad to have even more time with. “We had already been on the air for three and a half hours, we would still have an hour to go, and at 10 a.m., I would walk out of there just really worn down and with my mind turned to mush even though we’ve done it for so many years.”

On the surface, it might be easy for some to dismiss the new schedule as a minor shift. After all, how big a deal is ending a show an hour early, really? But for many P1s — the name the station has given to its most loyal listeners — any change is a seismic event. That’s especially true after a two-year stretch during which The Ticket’s on air-talent pool underwent more turnover than it had in the previous two decades combined.

Both X and Reddit were lit up with hot takes on what the change in schedule might mean or how listeners feel about it, and it was one of the few topics breaking through last week when it seemed all anyone around here wanted to talk about was the impending snow. Over the course of Jan. 6 after the announcement was made, “the ticket dallas” was a top trending Google query for anyone using “Dallas” in their search.

Everything else that day? Dallas weather, Dallas snow, Dallas forecast and the like.

Getting up around 4 a.m. every day, even when you do it for many years, is a lot like a native Texan experiencing the summer here, year after year: you accept it without ever really getting used to it. And to hear the hosts tell it, this change, regardless of how minor some may think shaving off 30 minutes here or an hour there from the show’s run time, is going to have a major impact on them both personally and professionally. In fact, the positive effects have already begun, only a week into the new arrangement.

“There’s a sense of rejuvenation,” Dunham says. “Even after these first few days, really. I’ve almost had the same feeling I had in October of '95 when we first moved to mornings. This is new. It’s good to hit the reset button every once in a while, you know.”

Regardless of the online criticism that might come their way, the morning show hosts are confident that the vast majority of P1s have their back and will roll with the changes. And they have plenty of reasons to have that confidence.

Since 2022, the station has said farewell to several beloved on-air personalities with major and supporting roles, including Texas Radio Hall of Famer Norm Hitzges, who retired, and former mid-day hosts Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp, who proceeded to endure a high-profile legal battle with the station’s ownership over non-compete clauses in their contracts after they left the station in 2023.

Even with new shows filling those slots in 2024, Miller says the station enjoyed the highest ratings in its history. In October, The Ticket also won the prestigious Marconi Award for major market station of the year, not just for sports station of the year, as it had done numerous times before.


“The station is so resilient. I love that about it,” Keith wrote in an email. “It has always been this scrappy little dog that endures every setback and attack. It’s a crazy survivor. I root for it to do well because it has taken so many hits, sometimes from its own goofy self… This scrappy little mutt that’s always somehow bigger and more magical than anybody who tries to hurt it.”

With the hosts in their late 50s and now members of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame, with a career full of acclaim and achievements, it makes sense the guys are perhaps looking at the finish line, even if they’re not quite ready to cross it. The question brought up a few months ago among the trio about how to keep the show going is really what led to making the change now. Simply put: without this shift, The Ticket would endure yet another major shakeup to its core much sooner than it certainly would want to.

Without hesitation, Miller shoots out “yes, yes, absolutely” when asked if ending the show at 9 is the difference between their time at The Ticket being over sooner rather than later. Keith concurs that the new arrangement is the ticket to their continued longevity at the station, which is something that’s music to the ears of the people who power their massive ratings.

“This new schedule definitely prolonged our show’s stay at The Ticket,” Keith explained. “There were other important deal points we felt were just as necessary, and the company was great in working with us to address those needs as well as their own. We want to keep creating content with The Ticket and they want the same. So we all worked together on the common goal.”