Mark Scott, controversial Detroit radio host
deb...@comcast.net
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
BY JOHN SMYNTEK
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
He began each radio show with the soaring guitar riffs of George
Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers' "Bad to the Bone" and he
ended always with the clarion cry of "Excelsior!" In between was a
singular mix of conservative and libertarian cant, occasional health
and fitness insights and rightest certitude that make Mark Scott one of
the highest rated -and in some circles, most hated- radio voices in
Detroit during the 1980s and '90s.
Mr. Scott, 69, died Sunday of a heart attack at Providence Hospital in
Southfield. His wife of 29 years, Leslie, said he had been plagued with
heart problems in the past year.
Mr. Scott had a colorful life, attending five colleges and logging
combat service as a Marine in the Korean War, his wife said. (Scott
regularly greeted fellow former Marines who called his talk show with
"Semper Fi!," a shortened version of the Marine motto "Semper
Fidelis," Latin for "Always Faithful.")
After his service time, he worked for controversial politically-tinged
California evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God,
writing the scripts for Armstrong's purchased-time telecasts that
mixed the apocalyptic and the political in the 1960s.
After leaving Armstrong, he bounced around radio and TV, working in
Ohio, Georgea and Kentucky until 1980 when programmer Michael Packer
brought him to WXYT-AM (1270). Scott was brought in by chance after
Alan Berg, a Denver talk show host who was later murdered, backed out
of Packer's Detroit offer with little notice.
Scott had a unique broadcast style that irritated many but entertained
and informed even more. His wife said Scott regularly carried a
handgun. "There were threats; there was danger," Leslie Scott
recalled.
"That was him coming across the radio," she said. "He never
played devil's advocate just to provoke dialogue," his wife said.
"A equals A" was one of his favorite broadcast mantras, using it to
attack a caller whose view of the world defied Scott's view of logic.
Services Friday at 7 p.m. at the Griffin Funeral Home, 42600 Ford Rd.