Gene Valaitis

Jesse and Gene (or The Jesse and Gene Show) is a Canadian morning zoo radio show that aired in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada radio market between 1986 and 1997. The duo of co-hosts consisted of Jesse Dylan and Gene Valaitis.

The show first began airing on Q107 on 5 September 1986.

In June 1989, the show's move to 680 CFTR, a Top-40 music station branded as "All Hits 680 CFTR", got announced. Starting in July 1989, it initially served as an afternoon drive time show airing between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Various outlets in the city reported on CFTR's terms that lured the duo away from Q107 as being lucrative.

Starting on 17 June 1991, Jesse and Gene became CFTR's new morning show following the retirement of the station's longtime morning man Tom Rivers. When CFTR changed its format to an all news station in June 1993, re-branding as 680 News, Jesse and Gene were let go along with most of the on-air personnel.

The duo got picked up by AM 640 (CHOG) during late 1993 for the station's morning slot. Branded at the time as "AM 640: The Beat Of Toronto", the station was a bit of dinosaur in the Toronto market as the last remaining Top 40 station in the city and the last AM station in the area to play the contemporary hits music format. Right away, the duo posted strong ratings, coming in third in the Toronto market during January 1994 with 131,000 listeners in their peak quarter-hour, behind only Andy Barrie's 285,000 on CFRB and Erin Davis' 143,000 on CHFI.

In 1994, the show received complaints of racism over a skit that aired on 30 March 1994 involving an impersonation of Canadian Member of Parliament Jag Bhaduria singing songs by The Beatles with altered lyrics about his politically controversial situation in a strong Indian accent. The complaints were sent to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) who later referred it to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC). The CBSC later found that "the spot was a parody of a particular politician, and was not abusive or discriminatory toward people of any national or ethnic origin".

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