Nashville Radio: Bobby Bones Busy Building His Brand

"I've had 15 death threats. I have security with me everywhere I go," Bobby Bone tells Rolling Stone Country. "It's not even that they care about me, Bobby. But I'm an asset to the company."

That company is radio giant iHeartMedia, formerly Clear Channel, where Bones has stood out with his hugely popular The Bobby Bones Show, broadcasting to nearly five million weekly listeners in 100 markets around the country. But while his employers try to survive underneath a reported $20 billion in debt, Bones is busy building his own brand.

In just three years since landing in Nashville from Austin, where his show was structured around pop music, the Arkansas-reared Bones has followed in the footsteps of one of his heroes, Howard Stern, in becoming if not a king of all media, then at least a prince.

Bones, who has tussled on-air and on social media with Kacey Musgraves, Aaron Watson and, most recently, Florida Georgia Line (the duo jabbed at Bones for a billboard publicity stunt) has remained humble. Sort of.

"I'm the best interviewer in the whole format," he says, priding himself on his ask-anything and keep-it-real approach. "Except for Howard Stern, I'd put myself against anybody. Because I ask human questions."

And therein lies Bones' appeal. For all his boasts, he remains unfailingly genuine and approachable on the air, as willing to discuss his childhood raised by an alcoholic mother as he is his previously lackluster dating life.

Earlier that morning, he and his team, including primary foils Amy Brown and Dan "Lunchbox" Chappell, hold forth on The Bachelorette, the merits of Marilyn Manson and Lunchbox's misplaced wedding ring. It's everyday stuff, reinforcing Bones — who sits in the center of his crew, arranged in a semi-circle so that they can maintain eye contact — as the witty, slightly nerdy homebody next door. Just one who travels with a bodyguard.

In the Rolling Stone article, Bones talks about a big inluences, Howard Stern. "Growing up in Arkansas, we did not have Howard Stern. When I started radio as a teenager, I hadn't heard of Howard. So I was that guy trying to have the big deep voice and fake it. Once I started to get tapes and watch his show on E!, I was like, 'Dang, he's just like a real human.' All I could be is as good as I am. It was a flick of the switch. He has a terrible voice; I have a terrible voice. Neither one of us would make it in the voiceover industry. But he's so great at being a person. He's so great at putting his flaws out there. I wish I had grown up with him my whole life. I wouldn't have struggled so many years early on."

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