How radio revived former TV presenter Ed the Sock
Normally, it would be a stretch to compare someone’s career path to that one sock. You know, the one that goes missing but somehow always turns up. At the back of a chest of drawers. Behind the dryer. In a gym bag. Or, in Ed’s case, a radio station in Oshawa.
It really is a fitting metaphor. Because Ed after all is a sock. And just like the non-sentient version, this sock always manages to reappear.
Ed the Sock, the hoarse-voiced, caustic puppet who launched his career on community TV some 25 years ago, with stops — and reboots — on nearly as many stations and platforms as that rumored Crosstown LRT, is back. Again. His last appearance is on 94.9 The Rock at night, answering calls and texts, joking with listeners, people, politics and pop culture – in between back-selling songs from Billy Idol, Nickelback, Nirvana and the like.
Nirvana is also how the man in Ed describes his new performance – while subtly mocking the medium for which he is best remembered.
“I had determined that television just wasn’t the place I grew up in,” Steven Kerzner said diplomatically via Zoom.
His gruff puppet counterpart remains synonymous with MuchMusic, which he left in 2008. Ed was definitely the most sarcastic – and arguably most entertaining – host on that station. The modern-day incarnation of what is now simply referred to as “Much” serves as frequent cannon fodder on the weekly talk show that Kerzner (well, Ed) co-hosts with his wife and longtime creative partner, Liana, on Sauga 960 AM.
“The people living[on TV]now… it’s not the place I would feel comfortable doing what I do best.”
Live radio, he suggested, instead gives “a sense of authenticity and community and immediacy that used to exist in the television I produced … a sense of belonging that I had been missing.” Making radio really woke me up. It has revived the Ed in me.”
But hold on. How does a former sourtongue TV personality, whose appeal was largely based on his looks, transition to an audio-only platform? “Ed is more about his opinion,” Kerzner claimed. “People go to him because they want to know what he has to say. Not because they want to be amused by a doll with green hair and a cigar.”
But back to what Kerzner says he does best — or at least what his groundbreaking sock first garnered a loyal following in the late 90s — and how that would play out to audiences in 2023. Because it’s probably even Citytv’s executives who gave the go-ahead for “Ed & Red’s Night Party,” which ran for more than 10 years, today would cringe amid the pop’s innuendo-filled racket of scantily clad female porn actors (and sometimes petite people) wading in a hot tub.
Kerzner, 52, does acknowledge what society now considers an abomination. The hot tubs, he said, were “a product of the times. Burlesque…a rejection of TV conventions.” And while acknowledging, “What show can you do today that was exactly like 20 years ago?” he emphatically emphasizes that Ed has always been a feminist.
“Those women were never objects,” he said, emphasizing that they were paid for their appearance. “They had names, they were addressed. They had freedom of choice. It was fun. No one was injured.”
Doug Elliott, Rock 94.9’s program director, was aware of Ed’s polarizing personality when he put the doll on his station. (It’s unclear who initially approached whom. Elliott said Kerzner came to him; Kerzner said it was the other way around.) But he’d also observed Ed’s evolution.
“Over the years, Ed has, uh…” Here Elliott paused, searching for the right words, “the character has developed through self-study and everything really. Ed is enlightened, very versatile.” Elliott said he had no doubts about his new night shift hire: “He’s a great communicator. And this is an opportunity to energize an audience that has been really ignored.”
And to be fair, Ed (and by default Steven) has long embodied progressive views. “We were pro same-sex marriage, pro gay rights, pro transgender people,” Kerzner noted. “I also have a firm rule of never mocking anyone’s faith. And we used comedy (to express this position).”
He is also a big pusher of pandemic safety protocols and vaccination, posting a video of Ed gently confronting anti-mandate protesters in Queen’s Park, which would cause both camps to laugh heartily on that controversial topic.
And while Ed now uses the radio to vehemently wax on many of the tropes exploited by private radio – (so many. Trump. ugh) – there are also many soft, and still funny, more personal moments, which a late-night live show affords. Like the listener explaining why he enjoys his service in the graveyard and bosses in the steel mill. Or the Amazon employee who assured Ed that he can indeed take breaks so he doesn’t have to pee in a bottle during work. Those kinds of genuine conversations — especially the silly ones — are a refreshing tonic against a social media landscape filled with vitriol screaming.
“I call it my nighttime neighborhood,” Kerzner said with a smile, adding that his new bosses are the most supportive he’s ever had — perhaps indicating he’s also mellowed since his confrontational days on TV. The night shift, he said, “is such an other universe feeling. People out there are their own community.”
Liana, who works as a peer counselor and host of a mental health show at Sauga 960, agrees that Ed has evolved.
“I now need less runway to convince him,” she said of urging him to think more modern, especially when it comes to women and gender. “The things that were considered funny (early in their careers) just aren’t funny anymore.” However, she is not convinced that he has necessarily softened. “But has he grown up? Well, I certainly hope so in 20 years.”
All this personal growth begs the question: Couldn’t Ed retire to that sock drawer, leaving Steven – as Steven – to take on the studio mantle?
“There are a lot of Stevens there,” said Kerzner. And Ed allows him that a human voice can’t. “Ed is someone who is understood, recognized.
“Why should I put years of work aside and earn attention and affection to draw attention to me? That would be a foolish move by the ego.”
