D/FW Radio: Danny Balis EXITS The Ticket

Danny Balis

Danny Balis says goodbye Friday to KTCK The Ticket after almost 23 years

Balis has been producer of the afternoon drive-time show The Hardline since August 1999.

The Black Cloud (so nicknamed because of his dark humor, hatred of anything other people like and tendency to occasionally lose his temper with callers) announced his departure just before Dallas Mavs’ game one against the Golden State Warriors Wednesday.

Hardline host Corby Davidson,  who started at the station about the same time, spent the following segment fighting back tears (“I’ll try not to get choked up here,” he says) and reminiscing about the past two decades.

“People will never know, truthfully, what … bizarro things you and I went through together here,” Corby said on Wednesday’s show. “Wondering if we were even funny … bringing our marriages and divorces and losses to the air … and you talk about drama … these have been our formative years.”

Because they started as the youngest members at the station, Davidson and Balis have been perpetually viewed as the station’s wild and crazy punks, they joked. The job has allowed them to keep up that party-guy reputation into their 50s.

“Will I miss it? Hell yes I will,” Balis says. “I regret nothing.”

He says he doesn’t see himself doing the job into his 60s, so he has decided now is the time to focus on other interests.

In non-Ticket life, Danny Balis is a serious musician, co-owns the Twilight Lounge and has a talented grown son, Joshua Balis.  He’s also been at the center of multiple tragedies in Dallas music community. He was roommates/bandmates with Carter Albrecht and bandmates with Chadwick Murray and Trey Johnson, all of whom met with devastatingly young deaths.

The official station announcement notes that Balis has made an “undeniable impact” on the show.