Thanks to all of you who voted for me in the first 3 rounds. We’re now in the FOURTH round, and I really NEED your votes now.
HTTPS://TOPHOST.ORG/2026/MICHAEL-HONIG
I’ve slipped from FIRST place in the opening rounds to NINTH place now, and this round will only include TOPHOST‘s TOP 5. It would mean a lot to me if everyone who knows me and knows the work I’ve put into my show for over 13 years would help lift me back up into the Top 5!
You can vote once for FREE every day, BUT for a limited time, your vote counts DOUBLE with 2X free votes every day!
Extra votes can be bought for a CHARITABLE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE contribution to the Ryan Seacrest Foundation!
Voting for the TOP 5 ends November 5th 7PM PDT!
HTTPS://TOPHOST.ORG/2026/MICHAEL-HONIG
The prize for winning the final round will be $25,000 and an iHeartRadio-produced podcast and an exclusive appearance on On Air with Ryan.
I’ll donate part of that prize money to 90.1-KPFT Houston.
For those of you who don’t know the circuitous route that took me to doing my radio show since 2013, here’s some background of what brought me here.
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It’s been a long journey for me to get to this point.
From the age of about 19, people were always telling me that I had a great voice for radio. (Unfortunately, they never said I also have a great face for TV, but you can’t have everything.) But you know how these things go when you’re a kid trying to figure out your life. Your family and friends discourage you because, after all, how many people can make a living in media, let alone radio?
So, I made a living in retail, photofinishing, then window covering installation, and finally back to retail sales.
In the early morning hours of September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike hit Houston. A series of events caused my house to catch on fire, and it burned to the ground, a total loss. There were even news article about it.
That experience was deeply traumatic. It took a year or more for me to re-collect myself and decide what my future was going to look like.
You know how all of us have these mental lists of, “One of these days …”? Well, by the time I was 59, and after the ordeal of the house fire and losing everything, I began to feel the pressure of time, of running out of “one of these days”, so I decided to finally take a shot at radio.
A CBS radio station in Houston, 650AM, sold me a time slot, and starting on May 10, 2010, I started Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig. That lasted until November 2010 when I ran out of money to buy radio time. What I learned in those months was that I could do a decent show, but I wasn’t so great at selling something as ephemeral as airtime.
About a year later, I decided to pitch my show to KPFT 90.1 FM, a non-profit public radio station in Houston. They were receptive, but I needed to prove that I could do radio for them.
After a couple of years of doing guest host duties and on-air fund raising, they gave me a shot at my own scheduled show in May 2013. I’ve now been on their airwaves in one time slot or another for over 13 years.
My show has a specific niche that I aim for and that I state as part of my weekly intro: “On this show, we discuss local, state, national, and international stories that may have slipped under your radar.”
Over the years, my show has evolved in many ways. It started in 2013 as a live call-in show with me as the sole host. I loved doing live call-in.
As a result of times and opportunities, circumstances sometimes caused a radical rethinking of the format.
In January 2020, KPFT asked me to try working with a young co-host as a youthful counterpoint. When COVID closed the station a few weeks later, my co-host Andrew and I worked together for another 4 years, pre-recording a topical show and then uploading it to the station.
Andrew eventually had to move on to other things, and I had to reimagine the show again.
I now read stories that I think deserve more attention, and then I do analysis and opinion on the stories I’ve read. I’ve been doing my show that way for a couple of years now, and I think I’ve gotten pretty polished in that format.
Now I’ve taken a crack at the Top Host competition.
Winning this competition would allow me to reach a larger, broader audience and possibly even allow me access to serious newsmakers and celebrities. It could bring my show to the next level.
Perhaps equally importantly, I could donate a portion of the prize money to KPFT, a station that has given me the privilege of doing a broadcast radio show for over 13 years.
Perhaps I could have the opportunity to share my journey and highlight TOP HOST’s impact with your audience. I believe my story represents quite a journey. It’s about crazy dreams that turn into feelings unfulfilled ambition, and finally — at an age when people are mostly thinking about approaching retirement — it’s not impossible to find a way to finally accomplish some portion of the career that so many people said I should pursue 40 years earlier.
I sometimes compare that part of my life to the movie, “The Natural”, about a man with a gift for baseball — and perhaps a destiny — who finally gets his shot as “a middle-aged rookie”, to use the epithet of the team manager.
But by the end of the movie, Roy Hobbs manages to belatedly achieve at least some of his dream.
That’s where I feel I am today, and that’s why “The Natural” really speaks to me.