When Dori fell asleep on air

Dori Monson is the consummate broadcast pro. But he admitted Thursday he once committed the gravest radio sin of all time: falling asleep live on the air.

Dori had been talking about his brush with death when he encountered an erratic driver on I-5 who later said he was having trouble staying awake while driving. Dori said he’d never fallen asleep at the wheel – but he had on-air.

Dori ended up with a weekday morning radio sports show, and then acted as executive sports producer for the rest of the day. On Saturdays Dori did a sports talk show, and on Sundays he was on-air for five hours straight.

“I was saying ‘yes’ to everything, I was 27 years old,” said Dori, “I was working 55 hours a week for KING-5, and I was working about 30 hours a week for KING 1090 radio.”

“I knew I wanted to get into news talk, so I did a news talk show from four to six, a sports show from six to eight,” he said, “and then this horrible show called God Talk from eight to nine at night.”

One weekend Dori had to fly out to Atlantic City to cover a boxing match. When he came back on Sunday, he went straight to work on God Talk.

He was alone in the studio, listening to a caller go on and on and on. It was warm, he was tired. He had his head on his fist.

And then came the crash.

“I’d been up for literally about 24 straight hours,” said Dori. “And I just go out like a car. And all of the sudden, I don’t know how long I was out, but all of the sudden, I hear in my headphones: ‘Hello, hello? Dori, are you still there?'”

Next to his recent whistle-fail, he says it’s his most embarrassing moment on-air.