Loveline
Dr. Drew's calm medical answers and Adam Carolla's running commentary, taking calls about sex, relationships and drugs from teenagers who had no one else to ask. The late-night KROQ radio show went national in 1995 and got a live MTV version the next year, and for a decade the two of them were the voice of after-midnight advice.
Loveline began in 1983 as a Sunday-night dating-and-relationships segment on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles, hosted by the DJ Jim "Poorman" Trenton with "Swedish" Egil Aalvik and Scott Mason. In 1984 Trenton added a segment called "Ask a Surgeon" featuring his friend Drew Pinsky, then a fourth-year medical student at USC, and as the show grew Pinsky became its regular presence and, informally, "Dr. Drew." The 1989 film Heathers slipped in a thinly veiled version of the show, a call-in program called Hot Probs hosted by Trenton. Loveline expanded to five nights a week in February 1992, and in August 1993 Trenton was replaced by the former MTV VJ Riki Rachtman.
Adam Carolla joined in October 1995, the same month the show went into national syndication; he and Rachtman competed for airtime until Rachtman left in January 1996, and from then on it was Carolla and Pinsky. Carolla called himself a "sheep in wolf's clothing," the comic edge that kept the tone approachable even when callers were talking about addiction, abuse or domestic violence, while Pinsky, an internist and addiction-medicine specialist, supplied the medicine. The show aired live Sunday through Thursday from 10 p.m. to midnight Pacific and was carried on rock, alternative and talk stations across the country.
At the height of its popularity it became a weekly live MTV series, also called Loveline, which premiered on November 11, 1996, and ran until 2000. Produced by Stone Stanley Entertainment at Hollywood Center Studios, it added a studio audience, a celebrity guest and a rotating cast of female co-hosts, among them the MTV VJ Idalis, Diane Farr and the comedian Laura Kightlinger. Pinsky and Carolla toured, co-wrote The Dr. Drew and Adam Book: A Survival Guide to Life and Love in 1998, and turned up in cameos across TV and film.
Carolla left in November 2005 to launch his own radio show, and after a run of guest hosts Pinsky was paired with the KROQ DJ Stryker, then with Mike "Psycho Mike" Catherwood from 2010. Loveline's radio run ended on April 28, 2016, with Carolla back for the final episode. Podcast and radio relaunches with new hosts followed, the latest on KROQ from December 2024 to March 2025, but the show people mean when they say Loveline is the one with Adam and Drew.
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