“CBS was paranoid during the talks,” says Opie. “They thought they were hiring the Opie & Anthony of 2002. You don’t sit out for two years and learn a thing or two about yourself and what type of radio show you want to do when you get back. They were so paranoid and kept mentioning how the rules have changed. We knew, and reminded them we pretty much followed the rules when we were doing terrestrial radio the first time. I think they have been pleasantly surprised our first month on the job.”

“I thought it would be really rough to get back into that,” says Anthony of the new terrestrial radio mindset. “But we immediately fell into it where we were describing things and getting the point across of the adult subject matter we were talking about.”

As a sign of their maturity, in the old days, O&A would approach things with a do first, deal with repercussions later attitude. Now, there is no need to push those avenues of content on CBS when they have XM to get a little raunchier or edgier with their content.

“It’s easy to hang out here [at XM] and curse for twenty minutes, so it challenges us,” states Opie. “We know how far we can take things [at CBS] but we have to keep our edge no matter what.”

As mentioned earlier, the link between the CBS portion of the O&A show and the XM portion is something that has been quickly dubbed “The Walk Over.” When the deal between XM and CBS was made, it was decided that each portion of the show would originate from different studios to give some separation to the mindset of the hosts and guests as to the broadcast rules of each individual portion.

It is about one cross-town New York City block between the CBS and XM studios, and the whole transition between studios is broadcast live on XM. “The Walk Over” has made for some very interesting radio and every day there is something different. They've had a bus driver stop and pick them up because it was raining. Comedian Rich Vos has started a Starbucks Comedy Tour, dropping in at the local coffee shops and ripping off a quick set before ducking back out on the street. A homeless guy named Mack has become a recurring character. Celebrities including Denis Leary, Patrice O’Neal, Jay Mohr, Kevin Smith, Bill Burr and Frank Vincent have made the walk. Even the Stanley Cup has been along for “The Walk Over.”

“Being at both studios, there had to be a transition,” explains Anthony. “Instead of just playing something, we decided that since it was so close, let’s put some mics on and just walk. The walk doesn’t feel like part of any show. We’re just walking, observing, goofing on people, discussing what we see on the street, yet we are doing a show.”

“One of the reasons the walk works is because we are not afraid, as a show, to acknowledge when we are awful,” adds Norton. “If something is bombing or horrible, we’ll cover it. There’s no fake laugh with a bit. If it stinks, we’ll acknowledge it and try to make it funny.”

“Jimmy is really the person who brought that to the show,” says Opie. “Before when Anthony and I bombed on something, we would get that feeling of heating up and try to cover ourselves and move on. Jimmy was the one that would want to stop and question, ‘What was that?’”

“The listeners can appreciate it, because they heard what just happened,” says Norton. “If you trip and fall, you don’t have to get up and pretend you didn’t slip. Just laugh at it with everybody else and move on.”

“My favorite part of the show is throwing someone under the bus and running them over,” admits Opie.

“Doing a show like this, a lot of it is off the cuff, whatever comes to your head, a funny line, a joke, something, but even if it is brilliant in your head and you spit it out and trip over your own tongue, there is no greater pleasure to two other guys when one guy fucks up,” adds Anthony.

Such was the case on the day of this interview. Anthony thought he had a brilliant joke, but just couldn’t get it out.  Midway through trying to get it out, knowing he was stumbling, he looked over at Norton who had a pure look of pleasure on his face while waiting for the bomb to drop.

“We know each other’s pace to well,” says Norton. “When [Anthony] gets too wordy, I’m like, ‘Oh, now it’s time to go.’ And it’s not a desire for him to bomb; it’s just funny.”

“And you can’t get mad at it; it is funny,” agrees Anthony.

“There is never any pressure to toe the company line,” adds Norton. “I love that in this show. There is no authority. We can all have an opinion. There is no pressure for me to agree with one of them or fill a role.”

Anthony agrees, saying, “There are shows out there where there is a head and then people have to revolve around that person. No one here is afraid to let anyone else shine on the show or be a star, whether it is the three of us or a guest that pops in.”

And let’s take a moment to acknowledge Jim Norton, who is a stand out comedian and actor (he can currently be found playing pot-dealing “Rich” on HBO’s new comedy series Lucky Louie), but is generally over-looked as the fulltime third member of the O&A show.

“There are a lot of misconceptions,” says Opie. “Jim Norton is a fulltime member of the O&A show. We joke about the third chair when he is off doing other projects, but the reality is it’s his seat.”

“How many names can you have on the show – Opie & Anthony & Jimmy doesn’t sound right,” quips Anthony.

“And the name shouldn’t be changed,” states Norton.  “And this isn’t mock humility, it’s the truth. The brand name is Opie & Anthony and the show doesn’t work without Opie or Anthony. I add to the show, but they can function and do a show without me there. I’m very realistic about that and would never want them to change it.”

“He’s a member of the program,” says Anthony. “The thing is, he can take off a week, two weeks to go film something out in California and we’ll have comics come in and take his place, but they all know it isn’t permanent and it doesn’t feel permanent. It is something different, but when Jim comes back we’re back into the trio that we are as the Opie & Anthony show.”

“We’ve been a trio with Jimmy for five or six years now,” says Opie. “Most people don’t know that. It’s fun to watch him uncomfortable in the background at press junkets trying to get his face in there.”

“I just walk out now. This is the first interview I have done in months,” says Norton, who was even dissed at his own company’s event recently. The Raconteurs were scheduled to do an exclusive performance at XM, with O&A as the interviewers, but when the gang showed up to the studio there were two mics, leaving Jimmy on the side, stewing over the fact that his own company didn’t even recognize his role in the show.

“People don’t get that he is such an integral part of the show now,” says Anthony. “Our show was different when it was just me and Opie. It was the two of us discussing things. Now with a third person, it’s a different dynamic for the show. How people that say they have any familiarity with the show, yet don’t realize this is beyond me.”

There is a noticeable difference in the cadence to the show when Norton isn’t around. His unique take on what is happening during the show or on the current discussion is unparalleled by Rich Vos, Bill Burr or any of the others that fill in when Norton isn’t around. Patrice O’Neal comes close, but he hasn’t been on the show recently and has only logged a couple appearances at CBS since the deal went down. When asked about the lack of O’Neal’s presence on the show, Opie laughs, “Read between the lines. Do we need a huge audience hearing him?”

Coincidentally, O’Neal would make his debut the day after this interview, and Opie says he did present a minor point of conversation, saying, “We had discussions about if we thought he could go thirty seconds without swearing.” Anthony admits, “I never curse more than when Patrice is in there with us. He comes in and motherfucker is flying out of my mouth every two seconds. I wonder how that is going to be.” It worked out fine, as Anthony didn’t get hit on the dump report – a daily recounting on XM of all the items that were dumped from the CBS broadcast – though O’Neal did set the record for dumps that was held until a recent appearance by Denis Leary.

All jokes aside, O’Neal, Voss, Burr and some of the other semi-regular guests of the show weren’t on at the start of the CBS deal so as not to cloud the issue that the core of the program is Opie, Anthony and Norton for the listeners that might just be discovering the O&A show due to the CBS deal. A lot of damage was done to the stations that O&A are now on, so they need to be on their “A” game to win back listeners driven away by David Lee Roth after Stern’s departure. And for those that stand in their way, Norton has a word for them, “So many radio shows are cowards, but we aren’t afraid of any other radio show. There is no show in the country that we don’t want to argue with. As soon as we get badmouthed, we attack immediately.”

And Norton means any show out there, including the one show that so many people are afraid to battle – Howard Stern. It is well known that there is a strong dislike between the O&A camp and the Stern camp. Words have been tossed around, Bubba The Love Sponge has offered to fight Opie, the O&A Pests have tortured Stern at appearances from his last day on terrestrial radio to his Letterman appearances, and the Pests also made it miserable for Scott Ferrell during his Sirius trial before becoming a fulltime member of Stern’s programming line-up.

Not much of that bothers O&A, as they look at it as good fun in a silly radio war, but the one thing that bothered them from their battle with Stern was the gag order they had placed on them while at Infinity Broadcasting. The gag order was something of a myth until Stern admitted to it on Sean Hannity’s program, telling the Fox News talker that he indeed went to Mel Karmazin to complain about O&A and have them stop mentioning him. When questioned by Hannity why he would censor someone when Stern is such an advocate for free speech, Stern replied, "I believe in censorship when it benefits me."

“That is the ideology of every Christian group, parent group, and he is right in that category now,” says Anthony, admitting they finally felt vindicated. “Do you know how frustrating it was for us? To sit there and have to see him in the newspaper as the poster boy for free speech, yet behind the scenes he is running to Mel Karmazin and making us shut up about him, it was so frustrating that I can’t even describe how pissed off that got us.”

“It felt really good, because we were yelling and screaming about it for a long time and I was beginning to think people didn’t believe us. You have to understand this is the guy who is for freedom of speech, yet he was doing this to us behind the scenes,” echoed Opie.

Opie, Anthony and Norton all wondered why the press didn’t pick up on what they felt was hypocrisy in Stern’s statement to Hannity, with Norton summing it up as, “The media doesn’t attack him like that any more. At one point he was a tremendous maverick and a rebel and people hated him, but after time you become a part of the establishment and you are their guy and they don’t want to attack you anymore. They see you as a legitimate part of what they are doing. Maybe that is a natural process, but the papers should have attacked that.”

Opie shifts to another Stern quote, stating, “There is another famous quote from Howard, where he says he has been doing subpar radio for ten years, but in those same ten years, that’s when Anthony and I made a name for ourselves by following the same exact rules that he said he couldn’t follow. We’re going to show everybody that you can still do it on terrestrial radio. We’re going to prove a lot of people wrong. We’re going to prove that you can do a funny, clever and entertaining show on regular radio following the FCC guidelines.”

“I just love what we are doing right now,” adds Anthony. “After we got fired, I was really thinking we were truly fucked. When we signed on for satellite, it was nice to have someone interested us. Then we started building an audience again and now having the CBS deal come across – that is one of those things that we never could have imagined would happen.”

Yes, it has been a strange turn of events for the Opie & Anthony show. Once exiled and outcast to the radio wasteland and forced to sit on the sidelines for two years, they are now looked on to be saviors and help CBS Radio recover from a dreadfully poor decision. Time will tell how it turns out, but right now it feels good to them. Opie admits, “For the last month I have been sleeping very, very well, because we don’t ask ‘What if?’ anymore. We were ready to explode all over the country and that made me wonder inside for a long time.”

Wonder no more Opie, you and the O&A crew are getting your shot – just don’t f**k it up this time.