Jewish News Paper article - Arizona restaurant and dining guide radio - Dial to Dine with  Don, KXAM 1310 AM covering Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, and Chandler AZ

Restaurant radio show lets listeners
talk - and sing - about eatery picks

SALVATORE CAPUTO
Special to Jewish News

Kim Siegler and Don Sandler have a taste for radio and restaurants, so they've whipped up a broadcast meal called "Dial to Dine."

The recipe is simple: Stir together two hosts, lots of free stuff (like coupons for dinner and a show), and callers ready to spread the word about their favorite restaurants. Then, serve the whole mixture piping hot on radio.

"I love to eat and I love to talk - so here we are," Siegler says.

"We're not the critics," Sandler says. "We're the hosts, and it's the callers who make the recommendations to different Valley restaurants."

The couple stockpiles the recommendations, since they themselves are newcomers to the Valley. "I've got a list a mile long of where I have got to eat," Siegler says.

The pair of Massachusetts radio veterans moved out to the Valley last summer to get out of the cold. "We'd been through one too many harsh New England winters," Sandler says. "The year before we moved, they had record snowfall, and that was it for us."

Siegler first met Sandler about nine years ago when she proposed doing a program on the station he owned (and still owns) in Brockton, Mass. Sandler wasn't buying, but he let Siegler buy time to put on her own show. She did so well that a year later he hired her to be the host of the station's morning show.

Over time, another kind of relationship developed, and the two began living together.

They decided on the Valley of the Sun as their escape from the snow after Siegler's son, who didn't like the cold any more than they did, came home from Super Bowl XXX. "What are we doing living here?" he asked, and proposed that they move to Arizona. "It took me about five minutes to think about it (before saying yes)," Siegler says.

Soon they were packing up and heading out to a new life without being exactly sure what they were going to do. They wound up doing what Siegler had done before - buying time on a local radio station for their own show, and selling their own advertising time to make it fly. "Dial to Dine" can be heard from 3 to 6 p.m. Sundays on KXAM (1310 AM).

Siegler and Sandler say that once they explored the Valley and found out that it had more than 5,000 restaurants, the food fans figured "Dial to Dine" - partly inspired by a restaurant show on his Brockton station - could be a money-maker.

"I figured we could build this into a good business," Sandler says. "We knew that talk (radio) is hot, and people love to win free stuff."

Both Sandler and Siegler like to focus on the "mom and pop" restaurants as much as the big names. The show's commercial rates are inexpensive enough that some of those small establishments have become steady customers, getting their word out across the Valley for a figurative song. For a literal song, callers can get free stuff in a segment called "Sing for Your Supper."

The show also features food trivia contests, interviews with chefs, a regular segment on the history of beer, and even remote broadcasts from restaurants. In addition, every caller's name goes into the "Stew Pot" for prize drawings each hour.

"Each week we do a theme on the show," Sandler says,. "It could be anything - neighborhood restaurants, service, good delis, tipping."

"Dial to Dine" marks just the latest step in Sandler and Siegler's long radio-career trek. Siegler observes that Sandler once wanted to be a star but that he realized that if he wanted to buy a station, he'd have to learn sales and the art of deal-making. It's those skills that made "Dial to Dine" happen.

"I was interested in radio ever since I was a little kid," says Sandler, who always speaks in a so-called radio voice. "Radio's a disease, once it gets in your blood."

He studied radio in college and started out working as a disc jockey. At one point, he was rejected by the Brockton station he now owns. "Years later, I bought the station, and the guy who had thrown me out the door was asking me for work," Sandler says.

Having made himself adept on the business end, he sold stock to fund his acquisition of the station and retains a majority interest. However, this was not big-market radio, so he couldn't just sit back and watch the money roll in. "I ran it seven days a week for three years, and then six days a week until last year." So he was definitely ready for a change when Siegler suggested the move.

Siegler got into radio by a more circuitous route. She studied teaching in college and worked at it for a while, but quickly burned out. She was a real-estate broker, selling businesses, when she began working part time in the "media escort business."

The job consisted of driving authors to interviews. "I thought this could be fun," Siegler says. "Pretty soon I was talking to them during the drives, and they were asking me how I thought the interviews went, and I was giving them feedback."

Siegler met a cable-station talk-show producer who complained that she wanted to get rid of the show's host because he only wanted to interview authors of political and war novels. Siegler - who in her business-broker role had filled in for a camera-shy business owner during a TV interview - raised her hand and said she had TV experience. Suddenly, she was a talk-show host. The general-interest show, in which she interviewed authors of every stripe, eventually became focused on cookbook authors because cooking is another item on Siegler's list of loves.

Now, Siegler says, a "Dial to Dine" cult is growing and some fans do treat the couple like stars. In fact, when Siegler and Sandler ran a blind help-wanted ad, they got a response from an applicant who was surprised and excited to find out that the phone number belonged to "Dial to Dine."

"She's been a 'Dial to Dine' groupie since day one," Siegler says. (By the way, the fan got the job.)

One couple has even taken to showing up at the show's remote broadcasts wearing homemade T-shirts that read: "I sang for my supper on 'Dial to Dine!' "