Radio / Kevin In The Morning

aka: The Kevin And Bean Show

Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen was a morning zoo radio show on the seminal Los Angeles alternative rock station KROQ. It began in 1990 as The Kevin & Bean Show and ran for over 30 years. It is perhaps most notable for launching the careers of Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel and Ralph Garman.

Kevin Ryder

Kevin Ryder, the Kevin in "Kevin in the Morning," is still pretty much a 12 year old in a man's body, with a child-like glee for general mayhem and practical jokes, despite having done 30 years of radio by the side of his former co-host. But with Bean's departure, Kevin has stepped up to be the captain of this radio show still afloat. He still can't be trusted with a bowl of strawberry ice cream, but he's learned how to be an excellent interviewer and how to keep the show on time. In his spare time, Kevin helps his wife run Friends and Helpers - a non-profit org dedicated to helping victims of abuse.

Gene "Bean" Baxter

Gene "Bean" Baxter was the sensitive sophisticate to Kevin's man-child antics, but he also expressed a strange obsession with unusual deaths, a joy for bad puns and arguing over minutia (such as his famous finger-wagging over anyone who refers to "Daylight Savings Time.") He started the whole thing with Kevin in late December of 1989 after having worked with Kevin on radio in the Phoenix area. Before that time, Bean served as a more traditional wacky afternoon DJ at stations along the East Coast during the Eighties.

Allie Mac Kay

Allie Mac Kay is a girl born and raised in L.A.... by a couple of Bostonians, which is why she still is a Patriots fan, despite all the hate she gets for it. Allie served her time in the trenches of morning television news, in markets like Salt Lake City, Sacramento, in and around New York City, capping it with 6 years as a feature reporter for the KTLA Morning News - which is where Kevin and Bean first found her. Several guest appearances and occasional sit-ins for Ralph Garmin on the Showbiz Beat led to her getting hired in 2016 to fill the void left by Lisa May's exit. With Ralph having moved on as well, she now does the What's Happening segments at the end of the hour on the show.

Jensen Karp

Jensen Karp first popped into the public eye at 19 as a freestyle rapper discovered on Power 106's Role Call under the name Hot Karl - by which he managed to get himself a million dollar record deal on Interscope, releasing songs with Kanye West, Redman, Mya, and will.i.am. (If you're curious, he wrote a book of stories from his life at that time called Kanye West Owes Me $300.) He owns Gallery1988, a Los Angeles art gallery devoted to art inspired by pop culture of the past. His experience writing comedy for stuff like The Late Late Show with James Corden, the Grammys, the ESPYs, the MTV Movie Awards, the Howard Stern Show, and FunnyOrDie as well as several appearances as a guest on Kevin and Bean, led to him joining the show as a co-host in 2018. Oh, and he's also married to Danielle Fishel.

In April of 2019, Bean announced that he was going to leave the show at the end of the year - he planned to move to England with his wife Donna and semi-retire.^note  Up until he left, Bean denied it was a retirement - he wanted to move to England because it was something he always wanted to do, and he wasn't getting any younger, but he still planned to try and find radio work in England. Naturally, this led to jokes about how Bean was really dying (#RIPBean) or about how bad his English accent is. ^note  Seriously, at it's best, it sounded like a bad impression of one of the Beatles. Although he originally intended to go on until the end of the year, the sheer amount of work to sell his houses in the US, move his household's property over to England, and arrange for a new residence in England, required that he leave sooner. He announced in October that his last episode would be on Thursday, November 7th - as the next day, November 8th, would be a Best of Episode, as he and Kevin would be in New York, being inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. Kevin returned to the show the next week, and continued the show under the Kevin & Bean name for the rest of 2019 with Allie & Jensen as co-hosts. On January 2, 2020, the show was renamed Kevin in the Morning with Allie & Jensen, formally ending the transition.

Sadly, the renamed show did not last very long - on March 18, it was formally announced that Kevin, Allie, Jensen, and all the staff of the show had been summarily fired by Entercom, the current owners of KROQ, the previous day, March 17th. Just prior to the firing, all the employees had been asked to work from home due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affecting the US. The show was temporarily on hiatus while the station figured out how to do broadcasting from home - but it's not known if they were really trying to accomplish this, or if they simply used it as a ruse to get them out of the building before cutting them loose. Kevin was allowed a few minutes on the morning of March 18 to say goodbye on behalf of the show and explain what had happened - and he wasn't above taking a few pot shots at the new management. KROQ announced that Stryker and Klein would be moved up from afternoons to cover mornings on the station.

Over much of its' history, the show produced yearly Christmas albums for charity, consisting of both original comedy bits and songs recorded by bands and artists whose music was played by KROQ. There were sixteen albums from 1990 to 2006.

Tropes:

• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Kevin and Bean interviewing Rob Durden...or Dyrdek, as is his real name.
  • Listener Dieu To had the frequent habit of referring to Kevin and Bean each as the other, though this seemed to be due to having trouble differentiating their voices.
• Anti-Humor: One of the longest-running regular guests on the show was the Armenian Comedian, a real Armenian-American hairdresser named Sam who fancied himself a comedian and entertainer, but was actually a delusional weirdo with a questionable grasp of both humor and the English language. The hosts of the show were so fascinated by his horribly unfunny jokes that they kept bringing him back. Sam achieved such a level of notoriety that he became the subject of a documentary called Born Hye: The Armenian Comedian Story, a title playing on his Armenian heritage and his liberal use of marijuana.
• Ascended Fanboy: Jimmy Kimmel's original persona on the show was Jimmy, a listener with a thick New York accent who called in to complain about the weakness of the show's sports coverage (or total lack thereof). He began calling into the show to provide sports reports over the phone until he was eventually invited into the studio full-time.
• Back for the Finale: Though the show technically wasn't ending, Bean's last episode on the show functioned as a kind of finale - and several people from Kevin and Bean's past visited or called in to participate in wishing Bean well and reminiscing - including:
  • Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla, still friends and collaborators, visited in the studio for the majority of the episode - they gave their sides of how "The Bleeda in Reseda" came to be and how it introduced Adam to the show staff.
  • Matt 'Money' Smith - one of a succession of sports guys who followed Jimmy Kimmel as the original sports reporter for the show - called in and detailed how he started on the show as a phone screener and how his progress on the show led to him being the official broadcast voice of the Los Angeles Chargers football team.
  • Doc on the Roq - KROQ's former newsman - called in to reveal that he's now an Episcopalian minister (!) and after talking about the wild stories that came out of Doc's time on the radio, he gave Bean a 'blessing' for his new adventures in England after the show.
  • Jim "Poorman" Trenton - a former KROQ DJ who ended up getting fired over a stunt where he invited 500 listeners over to Bean's house (back when he was still living in the LA area), ostensibly to wish Bean a Happy Birthday - but ended up with causing severe property damage to the home, and Bean and his wife having to move to regain privacy. He revealed that he's back in broadcasting on his own morning show - on a not well known radio station in Orange County that he wanted to plug - and no, he's not really all that much over how he left KROQ. In particular, he traded barbs with Adam as well - Adam ended up replacing him on KROQ's other long-runner show: Loveline.
  • Dave Grohl, lead singer of Foo Fighters, and a long time friend of the show, called to wish Bean well. He called London a fantastic place to drink - which earned a laugh from Kevin, because Bean doesn't drink.
  • Big Tad called in to reminisce about his time on the show - he revealed that after his "Taditude" got him bounced from both Kevin and Bean and Jimmy Kimmel - his health started to fail, and that he's currently bedridden at a care facility in Santa Ana.
  • Former Producer Lightning called in - he has left the broadcasting business, but still works on podcasting after his time forming and working on "The B Team" (the Kevin and Bean behind the scenes podcast that still features Dave The King of Mexico, DJ Omar Khan, and Beermug) - he revealed that Lightning was the man in the hall who announced that "there was a boxing trainer wanting to talk to Jimmy" - in other words, the person he arranged Jimmy and Adam Carolla to meet and begin collaborating.
  • Ralph Garman - the man of 1000 voices and easily the single person with the longest continuous pedigree on the show, outside Kevin and Bean themselves, with 18 years of service to the show. He confessed that because he himself left under something of a cloud, he was on the fence about calling in - "but I figured if you were going to let Poorman on..." - this led to reminiscing about Ralph's first big contribution to the show: playing Thom Yorke, the frontman of Radiohead, for an April Fools Day prank in which "Thom" got into a fist-fight with Bean. ^note  Ralph was so convincing people believed the Radiohead concert playing that night was going to be cancelled, and even the record company's representation was calling in asking what was going on, despite having records that neither Yorke or the band was supposed to be interviewed at KROQ. This led to what Bean revealed as what he thinks was the single greatest moment of the Kevin and Bean show - nearly causing an international incident when "Jerry Lewis" (Ralph again, naturally) managed to get through to the President of France, Jacques Chirac, at the Presidental Palace in Paris. For the first time since the incident happened back in 2003, Bean played some of the tape with "Jerry" and Jacques - tape that couldn't be played before, because immediately after it happened on-air, station management came in and said the segment would never be aired again, nor would the incident ever be mentioned on-air. (Since the station had actually changed hands a few times since then - they figured mentioning it now wasn't going to be a problem - besides, what could they do to Bean? Fire him?) Ralph is now the host of his own show in paid podcast format: The Ralph Report - as well as still being a working voice-over actor like he was in the last years he was on the show.
  • Finally, Dr. Drew Pinsky got a chance to call in and give his respects to Bean - Dr. Drew is still a friend of the show who has a regular segment every week, as well as a regular podcast with Adam Carolla, so it wasn't so much about catching up than reminiscing about the highlights of the past 30 years of the show.
• Big Brother Bully: Former producer Lightning has described Kevin and Bean as having this sort of relationship with him when he worked on the show, claiming it motivated him to work that much harder.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: The hosts frequently took shots at KROQ's stinginess and managerial staff when the station was owned by CBS.
• The Boxing Episode:
  • Jimmy Kimmel found himself challenged to a boxing match by Michael the Maintenance Man after making a perceived racial comment on-air (specifically, that black people don't ski). This challenge played out over several weeks (including Kevin and Bean going with Jimmy for his pre-fight physical to get audio), culminating in a live on-air boxing match dubbed "The Bleeda in Reseda." The match was called by broadcaster Pat O'Brien and there here were celebrity judges for the match as well: Tom Murray (then-sportscaster for KCAL channel 9 in Los Angeles), Adam Sandler, and John Wayne Bobbitt. This sequence would bring on notable changes to the show's cast: Adam Carolla cold-called the show to offer his services as a boxing trainer and spun the opportunity into a broadcasting career. When Corolla left the show, he recommended his roommate, Ralph Garman, who became the show's long-time third man.
    • In an interview for the B-Team podcast, Frank Murphy (Kevin and Bean's producer at the time of The Bleeda in Reseda) remarked that Bobbitt actually recognized him from a radio show he worked on previously in Washington DC.
  • In 2007, Ralph and Dave The King of Mexico would try to repeat this with a "drink boxing" match for charity (it was intended to be set around St. Patrick's day that year). Ultimately, it never came together, due to lack of support from KROQ management.
• The Bus Came Back: After having left the show in 2012 to focus on co-hosting Loveline, Psycho Mike returned to the show briefly in 2018.
  • Though the entire staff of the show was fired in March 2020, Omar Khan would be re-hired by KROQ almost immediately; Beermug would be re-hired on a part-time basis some time later.
• Butt-Monkey: The show has had a few of these over the years. Depending on how long a listener has been tuning in, their Butt Monkey of choice was Mark the Whiffle Boy, former producer Lightning, Big Tad, or most recently, Beer Mug.
• Celebrity Impersonator: Between the show's cast members (Ralph Garman, especially), literally dozens of celebrities have been impersonated on the show, including Kevin and Bean themselves.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Psycho Mike, who is married with a small child, and an endorser of being respectful to the women in one's life and sexual responsibility, has a predilection for some pretty extreme things, so that he admits to having a dedicated computer with a specialized server solely for going onto the Dark Web.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The nature of radio being what it is, if someone leaves the show (especially if it's under controversial circumstances,) they don't usually get a chance to say good-bye.
  • Michael the Maintenance Man, a significant member of the show in the 1990s, was apparently fired from the show and filed a wrongful termination suit. The hosts are prohibited from speaking about the suit publicly, so Michael is virtually never brought up.
  • When Lisa May and Doc on the Roq were fired, Kevin and Bean were not allowed to talk about it for a week. They later brought Lisa May in to discuss what happened and essentially apologize.
  • Dean Schefrin, who replaced Matt "Money" Smith, as the sports guy for a few months from 2005-2006, also left the show with no notice. Publicly, it was said he left the show because KROQ management felt that the show didn't need a sports guy; however, the few subsequent references to Dean have downplayed his presence on the show, up to and including quick denials that he was ever a part of the show at all.
  • Sometime in 2012, Alex Warren, who replaced Lightning as the show's producer and like others before her (including Lightning) also started as an intern, left the show with no notice. Up until her departure, she supplied voices for female characters on the show (including Britney Spears) and provided an alternate female perspective on the show alongside the also-departed Lisa May. In an episode of The B-Team podcast, Lightning subtly implies that Alex also left under acrimonious circumstances; so subtly, in fact, that Lightning refers to Alex by a pseudonym, though longtime listeners can puzzle out who it is based on the timeline Lightning gives.
  • Averted with Ralph Garman - when his contract was not renewed in November 2017, he was able to come to an agreement with show management that in return for keeping his departure secret until his last day, November 30th, he would then be allowed to say goodbye on the air.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: The show has had its' share of crazies over the years. Notably, none of them was a "character" invented for the show; all of them were very real:
  • Sam the Armenian Comedian, who combined this trope with a heavy dose of Small Name, Big Ego, big time. With a combination of his own supreme overconfidence in his (lame) comedic and musical talents and a near-constant high, Sam claimed that he was the funniest comedian and most talented musician on earth, and would not allow the point to be argued. He couldn't (or wouldn't) recognize the obstacles in his way, including his rather limited English skills, his misunderstanding of basic joke structure and inability to play any instrument with any proficiency, including his preferred instrument, the recorder. Despite all this, and decades of spinning his wheels on the extreme fringes of show business, Sam held to the belief that breakout stardom was just around the corner. Unfortunately, Sam died in a car accident in April 2023.
  • Dieu To, albeit in a more disturbing manner than the Armenian Comedian. Nothing about Dieu is terribly clear, except for his affection for German chocolate cake and his obsession with Steven Seagal. He has very particular tastes in women (Korean women 5'8" or 5'9" in height). Dieu seems to travel back and forth frequently between Asia and the US, and as such, is notoriously difficult to contact. He is very evasive about his personal life, dodging specific questions or giving extremely vague answers about himself. Once, when Psycho Mike visited Dieu's house to do a segment in the vein of MTV's Cribs, Mike found knives hidden inside an air-conditioning vent and a drawer full of womens' panties in Dieu's room that Dieu tried to explain away by saying, "It's not". The visit itself was prompted by an email in which Dieu claimed to have obtained a California gun permit and asked if this fact disturbed anyone on the show; when confronted on-air about it, Dieu tried to laugh it off, claiming it was just a joke.
  • Duaveed, a very strange man who came to the show's attention in 2009 when he wanted to marry a mannequin whom he named Clara. He would take the mannequin everywhere he went, pulling her around in a wagon. Duaveed ultimately married Clara in a ceremony officiated by Psycho Mike, and the show kept up with them for about a year of their "married life". Duaveed would reach out to the show again in 2014 when Clara was stolen while he was in the hospital during a brief stay in New York, as he was trying to find a replacement for her.
  • Various other weirdos passed through the show in its earlier (pre-internet) days, with a few being mentioned by Lightning on The B-Team podcast. These would include:
    • Drunk Gil, who lived in a tent and was described by Lightning as "the real-life Rudy Cisneros". The King of Mexico frequently had to take phone calls from Gil during his days as a phone screener, and regarded Gil as the bane of his existence. Gil would eventually get sober but passed away not long after.
    • Stuffed Animal Boy, an adult listener who believed his stuffed animals were alive and spoke to him.
    • Ralph (not Garman) was a crossdressing veteran with drug and alcohol issues and (at that time) unaddressed PTSD. During one of Lightning's Christmas tree excursions, Ralph (a guest on the trip called "The Freak Bus to Bethlehem") attempted to steal the tour bus during a stopover in Barstow. Lightning was forced to kick Ralph off the trip and gave him money to get back to Los Angeles. It would later turn out that Ralph used the money to buy drugs and simply hitchhiked back home. Lightning would later run into Ralph and discovered that he had begun putting his life back together.
• Commonality Connection: Played with by Ralph, when Christian Bale unexpectedly called into the show.]] After finishing the call, Ralph remarked how the show was originally scheduled to talk to actress Kristen Bell, who failed to call in, so they got to talk to Christian Bale instead.
• Commuting on a Bus: A number of former regulars continue to have active relationships with the show, all of whom departed the show on amicable terms. These include Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Carolla, and former sports guy Matt "Money" Smith (now a sports radio host and radio voice for the Los Angeles Chargers football team).
• Diet Episode: Or episodes, in Beermug's case. In his time on the show, Beermug has been a part of no fewer than three ongoing weight loss challenges.
  • First, in 2012, Beermug was bet that he couldn't lose thirty pounds between Valentine's Day and June 1, which he managed to win.
  • Next, in 2016, Beermug worked to lose twenty pounds ahead of his wedding.
  • In March 2018, Beermug was in a contest called March Fatness against Dave the King of Mexico, wherein whoever failed to lose the most weight by March 31 must dress as Britney Spears and perform "...Baby One More Time" at the 2018 April Foolishness concert. Both Beermug and Dave half-assed the contest so much, the joke was that the winner would be determined by whoever gained the least weight. This time, Beermug lost.
• Dreadful Musician: A recurring game is Omar-oke, where users have to identify a song as sung by DJ Omar Khan, the show's imaging director. He... is not the greatest singer. A variant of the game is Kevin and Bean-aroke, where all the hosts take part. They're all just as bad as DJ Omar Khan.
  • During one game, Kevin was supposed to sing the song "She's Kerosene." He ended up butchering the lyrics so badly, he had to start the song over and still got the lyrics wrong again. The poor listener was not able to guess the song. It should be noted that Kevin was READING THE LYRICS IN FRONT OF HIM as he was singing.
    • The Interrupters, the band who originally performed the song, happened to be listening to the show at the time and found it absolutely hilarious.
  • Sam the Armenian Comedian claimed to be skilled at the drums, keyboard, and (especially) the recorder, while betraying a near-total lack of proficiency at any of them, which the show would occasionally use for comedic effect.
• Dumbass DJ: The show is an example of the "morning zoo" style of show, with comedy, interviews and give-aways as the main draws. Being local to Hollywood, however, they have a better relationship with celebrities than most other examples.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Played straight with Bean, whose middle name is "Lee". Subverted by Dave the King of Mexico, in that he doesn't have an embarrassing name per say, but rather by the fact that it's the commonplace Spanish name "Juan".
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • Kevin, or as his ex-wife Melissa was known to call him, Lamby.
  • For a time, Lightning was known as DJ Tweeter, mocking his high-pitched voice which would go even higher when he was excited or agitated.
• False Confession: "Confess Your Crime", an infamous segment from June 1990 where Kevin and Bean took calls where people confessed to minor crimes. Shaping up to be a lame segment, they had fellow DJ Doug "Sluggo" Roberts call in and (falsely) confess in a very roundabout way to killing his girlfriend. Somewhere along the way, someone made a connection between the bogus confession and the actual unsolved murder of a 19-year-old girl. The Los Angeles County Sheriffs' Department investigated the claim and despite Kevin's and Bean's repeated assertions that the call was real, discovered the hoax. They were suspended without pay, forced to pay restitution to the Sheriffs' Department, and perform 149 hours of community service. The entire incident was the subject of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
  • In an interview for the Los Angeles Times focused on Bean as he retired from the show - the "Confess Your Crime" incident was brought up - Bean mentioned they used to blame "Mark and Bryan" for it in jest whenever it was mentioned. He fully agreed that it was a stupid decision on his and Kevin's part, though he did mention that he didn't think the police were very thorough in their investigation - they never actually got around to interviewing Kevin or Bean about it, and Kevin and Bean were made to pay restitution to the city of Burbank to pay for the wasted police man-hours.
• Firing Day: The entire show, including the off-air staff, were unceremoniously fired from KROQ in March 2020. According to an episode of the Janky Town podcast, DJ Omar Khan was almost immediately rehired by KROQ to work on the new morning show; Beermug himself would be rehired on a part-time basis as a DJ shortly thereafter.
• The Generation Gap: Paul the 55-Year-Old Intern, who was on the show in the mid-90s and played by Mark Davis (aka Richard Cheese), was an old-school radio man who spoke with a stentorian delivery and had no love for KROQ's alt-rock repertoire, preferring Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.
• Giftedly Bad:
  • Sam the Armenian Comedian, who could stumble into being entertaining despite (or perhaps, because of) his incredible lack of comedic or musical talent.
  • Beermug, when he does his on-the-street or red carpet interviews, is entertaining to the audience precisely because he's so bad at asking other people questions, especially when he's drunk.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: They play a variation of this game - when a phrase pops up that they think works as a band name, they'll usually say something akin to "[Band Name] is playing at Coachella, I can't wait to see them" or "I caught [Band Name] at the Troubadour, they were great..."
• Grand Finale: Averted, in that the entire cast of the show was unceremoniousy fired from KROQ in March 2020, with only Kevin allowed back on the air briefly to acknowledge what happened.
• Guinness Episode: Over the years, the show was involved in multiple attempts at getting into The Guinness Book of World Records:
  • Dave the King of Mexico made two attempts to set the record for the longest time spent watching TV continuously, most recently in October 2005. Technically, Dave set the record, but it was rejected by Guinness because the record-keeping of the attempt was deemed inconsistent and thus unusable.
  • In March 2007, Sam the Armenian Comedian attempted to set the record for the most haircuts given in a 24-hour period. The show was broadcast live from a hair salon owned by Lightning's wife Brandi. The attempt was called off a few hours in when Sam failed to abide by the rules laid out by Guinness, on top of giving haircuts at too slow a pace to even match the record, much less break it. Brandi was forced to give free haircuts to those people whose hair Sam essentially butchered.
• Hilarious Outtakes: Flubs are quite commonplace on the show, to the point that there is a standing rule that if someone (usually Kevin) is struggling with a line or word while on the air, no one is to help them. Notable flubs are saved and used to provide "A Moment with..." sound clips, with the ten best "Moments with" selected by DJ Omar Khan and played at the end of the year.
• Hot-Blooded: Petros Papadakis, longtime friend of the show, can run hot under the collar when it comes time for him to do his weekly reports on The Bachelor, with a particular contempt for host Chris Harrison and his "baby hands".
• I Want My Jet Pack: Bean has long been fixated on the idea of owning a jet pack of his own.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: When Bob Dylan had his satellite radio show, Ralph would impersonate him and sing along to the songs Dylan might play to fit a particular theme; the humor being that the Dylanesque style renders otherwise well-known songs utterly indecipherable.
• It Will Never Catch On: Kevin and Bean hosted "Gorilla Theater" on KCAL in 1990 as a television extension of the radio show. In one episode, they announce a new song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and comment on what a terrible name that is.
• Lame Pun Reaction: When someone makes a particularly bad joke, usually a tortured pun, someone will usually shout "File!" so that it can be brought back up in a later "Would You Like to Take That Back?" segment. This extends to guests and, on at least one occasion, a caller.
• Long-Distance Relationship: Bean, in a professional manner. From 1999 to his departure in 2019, Bean did the show via ISDN lines from home studios in Seattle and New Orleans.
• Long Runner: The Kevin and Bean Show first went on the air in January 1990, before abruptly ending in March 2020.
• Long-Runner Cast Turnover: With the show being on the radio for just over 30 years, and between Kevin and Bean, various supporting on-air personalities, behind-the-scenes people, and numerous interns over the years, quite a number of people passed through the show's ranks.
• Male Restroom Etiquette: The show used to have a recurring segment where Kevin would sit in a bathroom stall and try to engage the men pooping beside him in awkward conversation. His opening gambits were usually, "Hey... what are you doing?"
• Ms. Fanservice: Any of the various winners of the yearly Miss Double December contests, held to find a hot girl to function as a sexy representative of the Kevin and Bean show at various KROQ events. The contest was ended due to the belief the contests had become played out, and the changing attitudes about ogling women.
• Only in Florida: A recurring segment called What's Up With Florida covers a block of about five to eight strange news stories coming out of Florida.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Big Tad, who started as a call screener then moved up to doing ridiculous stunts and bad celebrity interviews for a period in the 90s. Tad's considerable notoriety led him to develop "Taditude", making him difficult to work with and eventually led to his firing. Also, a real-life (double!) example of The Bus Came Back, as Jimmy Kimmel persuaded Kevin to rehire Tad as his manservant Thaddeus, a situation that lasted one day as Bean and Ralph threatened to quit if Tad remained; Tad also returned to be interviewed for an episode of The B-Team podcast that was dedicated to his exploits post-show.
  • Michael the Maintenance Man, who sued KROQ and Kevin & Bean over it. In an episode of The B-Team, Lightning said of Michael, "He sued us, and then disappeared."
  • This trope really applies to anyone who ever left the show with essentially no notice, including Lisa May, Doc on the Roq, former producer Alex, and a myriad of former interns. Notably averted by Ralph Garman (who was allowed to announce his departure on-air), Psycho Mike (who also announced his departure to cohost Loveline full-time), and Matt "Money" Smith (who had an on-air going-away party).
• Race Lift: Played for Laughs in regards to Psycho Mike's portrayal of Kevin Federline, or "Federlezee". The character is a white man evoking stereotypes of black culture for himself, even going so far as to refer to himself as a black man, while condemning the appropriation of black culture.
• Road Trip Plot: The show took numerous trips over the years. These trips have included:
  • Going to Scotland the find the Loch Ness Monster.
  • Numerous trips to New York City for the MTV Video Music Awards.
  • Lighting's numerous trips to retrieve a Christmas tree for the Almost Acoustic Christmas concerts
• Running Gag: A whole lot over its 30 year run. A few notables:
  • "Point for cake." A debate over pie versus cake spawned a long period where the hosts would conclude something good happening as "a point for cake."
  • Santa Karl. Jimmy Kimmel's most popular character, portraying basketball player Karl Malone as if he were Santa Claus and talking to listeners' children.
  • Ralph reading an email from a fan that concludes with a line that sounds very similar to the chorus of a One-Hit Wonder song that Ralph is obsessed with that month, followed by Ralph singing the sound-alike chorus over a clip of the song. It started with "Rock Me Amadeus" by Falco, and went on to include "Heat of the Moment" by Asia and "Dude Looks Like a Lady" by Aerosmith.
  • Inappropriately dropping in audio from DJ Omar Khan's student film Cucamonga Heat in which he plays a mob boss having a telephone conversation to set up a "double cross."
  • "This...was a sussess (sic)."
  • For many years, whenever the show would discuss a child or teenager who performed a major accomplishment, someone would ask Kevin what he was doing at the same age, to which he would invariably reply, "I was throwing rocks at my neighbor Robbie Joyner." This largely fell by the wayside after the real Robbie Joyner called into the show.
• Sassy Black Woman: Ralph's character Lakweesha, who reviewed reality television with snide commentary.
• Self-Deprecation: A hallmark of the show. The hosts constantly criticized their quality as broadcasters.
  • One recurring moment is "A Moment With...," which highlights a host's previous blunder or gaffe. Kevin is particularly known for making these.
  • Another recurring segment is "Would You Like to Take That Back?", which highlights an extremely unfunny joke told by one of the hosts.
  • Ever since K&B were inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, the amount of self-deprecation has grown by leaps and bounds. Every so often, someone will call out "Hall of Fame!" whenever someone makes a bad blunder, mocking that the show managed to receive the accolade.
• Sex Bot: If there's anything Bean is as obsessed with having as a jet pack, if not more so...
• Shop Class: Mr. Birchum, played by Adam Carolla, was a cranky wood shop teacher with a short fuse and a tremendous affection for pornography.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Kevin and Bean hated Rick Dees when he was a crosstown rival at KIIS, frequently mocking him and occasionally playing pranks on him. The reason for their ire: in Kevin's and Bean's minds, Dees was the epitome of everything they hated about phonies in radio.
  • One prank actually made headlines when Dees accused the show of stalking and threatening him; Michael the Maintenance Man once went to Dees' house to prove he wasn't live on the air first thing in the morning when he claimed to be.
  • Kevin and Bean also once had listeners gather hundreds of KIIS-FM antenna balls and performed a live on-air mock funeral, burying the balls along with a cardboard standee of Rick Dees in a genuine casket.
  • When word came that Dees was going to be inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame, Bean (impersonating Dees) called the head of the organization live on-air to turn down the induction, claiming that "he" (Dees) was totally unworthy of the honor.
• Sleepwalking: Kevin, who has been known to have problems with insomnia, once sleepwalked while carrying a bowl of strawberry ice cream. When he woke up, the ice cream was splattered all over his bed and the floors & walls of his bedroom and bathroom. At the time he first related the story, Kevin had no idea why he did this; later, Kevin would try to blame his behavior on taking a dose of Ambien.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • Sam the Armenian Comedian personified this trope:
    • Sam was convinced that he was both the funniest comedian and the greatest musician in the world, despite constantly proving himself to be remarkably inept at both, and having legitimately invested decades of his life into it. His lack of success, coupled with his floating through an endless string of haircutting jobs, forced Sam to admit his wife was the primary breadwinner of the family in a rare moment of self-awareness.
    • Sam has claimed that Kevin and Bean have held him back out of jealousy over his "popularity", when they are easily responsible for his prolonged exposure, including, due to their relationship with Jimmy Kimmel, Sam getting a national appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
    • Sam once auditioned for Last Comic Standing, and was declared the worst audition the show had ever had. Discussing the audition afterward on Kevin and Bean, Sam was convinced the audition had gone "great".
    • After Kevin and Bean played a prank on Sam where he was led to believe he would be performing at the 2009 Almost Acoustic Christmas concert, Sam called the station and angrily threatened to blow it up, claiming he had "connections" with the Armenian Mafia. Whether Sam meant the threat or not, the LAPD took the threat seriously. It resulted in Sam being arrested, having to spend a long holiday weekend in jail, being sentenced to community service and anger management classes, and being slapped with a restraining order that forbade him from contacting KROQ (or for K&B to contact him) for two years.
    • Sam occasionally referred to an incident when he was a New York cabbie, in which he had a near-miss with a lightning strike. For reasons that are meaningful to Sam but unclear to everyone else, he long interpreted this incident as a sign that he was destined for greater things. Thus, on top of his dubious talents as a comic and musician, Sam was also convinced that he can achieve world peace if people would actually listen to his (utterly nonsensical) ideas.
  • Nick the Sign Holder, who stood on the sidewalk, holding a sign advertising for a cellphone store, had pretensions of becoming a screenwriter. He even managed to get an internship at a company that read screenplays and provided coverage on scripts. Despite Kevin and Bean finding a movie business professional willing to read his screenplay, Nick only seemed to want people to affirm his own high opinion of his work rather than give him honest criticism.
  • Big Tad may be the most literal example of this trope. His antics on the show garnered him a tremendous amount of recognition and popularity; according to Lightning on The B-Team podcast, market research showed at one point Tad had become as synonymous with KROQ as any of its disc jockeys. Unfortunately, this attention fed into Tad's ego and he developed a bad attitude (or "Taditude" as it came to be called), that led to his being dismissed from the show. On The B-Team Podcast episode dedicated to him, Tad would admit this attitude would re-emerge when he later worked on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, at a time when the show was struggling, and complaining about a lack of support from ABC when (by his own admission) it wasn't his place to do so.
• Spin-Off: In its' 30-year history, the show has produced a number of sister programs:
  • The B-Team Podcast, hosted by producer Dave the King of Mexico (previously by former producer Lightning), sound editor DJ Omar Khan, and K&B "utility man" Beer Mug, takes a look behind the scene of the show, answers listeners' questions, and examines old audio from the show's 25-year plus history. The B-Team ended with the firing of the show's entire staff in March 2020.
    • The B-Team arguably has its own spinoff in Janky Town, a new podcast with Dave, Omar, and Beermug that the three launched independently in September 2020.
  • The short-lived Armenian Comedian podcast that Sam recorded with Omar, which lasted precisely three episodes in the fall of 2013.
  • Kevin and Bean's Cinco De La Tarde, a one-hour show that aired during afternoon drive time for about a year from 2008-2009. For that period, the morning show ended at 9:00 am, with the afternoon show basically replacing the morning show's last hour. On an episode of The B-Team podcast, Lightning remarked that the show was pre-recorded, but Beer Mug still had to come back to the station every afternoon to run it.
  • Same Shit, Different Day, a "best of" Kevin and Bean program that KROQ aired for a time on Saturday mornings from 7:00 to 10:00 am.
• Stoners Are Funny:
  • Mole, whose prolific drug use causes him to routinely miss KROQ events (frequently calling in a day late still trying to get tickets) and getting into comical misadventures. Unlike the Armenian Comedian, Mole was a character played by Tony Barbieri, best known as Jake Byrd from Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
  • Subverted by Sam the Armenian Comedian: his near-constant high, coupled with his own unshakable belief in his comedic "abilities" made Sam legitimately believe he was the funniest comedian in the world, a belief that virtually everyone around him greatly disagreed with. Those few who did find Sam funny found the humor in how bad he was and how unaware Sam was of the disconnect between his confidence and the embarrassing reality.
• Streaking: When the show still broadcast from its' previous location in Burbank, various staffers (usually Lightning, Big Tad, and on one occasion, Dave the King of Mexico) would be sent to streak through a particular 7-Eleven store at Halloween and Christmas. Kevin and Bean would call the store to signal when the streaker needed to make his run through the store. The phone call would then be broadcast live on the air as the streaker caused chaos among the workers and customers.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • The show would usually send its most incompetent interviewer to perform red carpet interviews. Big Tad started the trend and it's carried on by Beer Mug.
  • The segment jingles created by Omar almost always have intentionally off-key and obnoxious vocals.
• Surfer Dude: Rockin' Fig did daily surf reports on the show for over twenty years, until he was let go by KROQ in 2010.
• Take That!: Perhaps the meanest thing the show has ever done was telling Keanu Reeves that he's the worst actor in Hollywood during an in-studio interview promoting A Walk In The Clouds. After making an attempt to defend himself, Reeves stormed out of the studio and has refused to associate with the show ever since.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Big Tad developed "Taditude" and started refusing to do wacky stunts for the show, Lightning laid a huge speech on him about how Lightning himself had to do similarly crazy and/or humiliating stunts when he was in Tad's position because that's what was expected of him and it was expected for Tad to do the same.
  Lightning: Why don't you bring your stupid, obese, egocentric, bad-goatee-wearing, double-chinned, bald head of yours right on over here and kiss my friggin' ass, you whining p***y?!
• Token Minority:
  • Anel Rivers, frequently referred to Kevin and Bean's "(only) black listener", would call in to discuss issues related to the African-American community and eventually got his own periodic segment called "Jive Talkin'".
  • Dawan, who was another black listener, became a friend of the show over his love of Drew Barrymore and Gossip Girl, and his desire to both work at In-N-Out and become a DJ.
• Under the Sea: Kevin and Bean once did a show live while SCUBA diving, complete with bad audio of air hissing into their masks and Kevin and Bean sounding like they had head colds. Years later, Ralph would revisit the audio, remarking that people would ask him what Kevin and Bean used to do before guys like he and Jimmy Kimmel were on the show, and replied that it was ridiculous stunts like this.
• Verbal Tic: Although listeners calling into the show would frequently address Kevin and Bean together, Dieu To had the odd habit of running their names together as though they formed one word, "Kevinandbean". Those moments when he would address them separately, Dieu To tended to confuse each one for the other.
• Vox Pops:
  • "Man-on-the-street" interviews have long been a staple of the show, as have interviews done on the red carpets of movie premieres. However, their entertainment value lies as much in the ineptitude of the interviewer (most recently, Beermug) as in the ridiculous answers the public provides to the questions asked.
  • Beermug had his own recurring segment, "Cheers with Beermug", in which he put questions to the patrons of his neighborhood bar. Not only would this get Beermug some funny responses, but he himself would get progressively drunker as the interviews go on.
• Wham Episode: Ralph and Doc on the Roq had to do a live broadcast on September 11, 2001 while Kevin and Bean were on vacation. To say that it was outside the norm is putting it mildly, but Ralph and Doc handled the broadcast with the utmost professionalism.
  • The unexpected final episode that aired March 18, 2020, when the entire cast and crew of the show had been fired just as the COVID-19 lockdown was taking hold in the U.S. The show consisted of a single segment where Kevin was allowed to explain what happened, take a parting shot at parent company Entercom (now Audacy) and say goodbye.