CHAOS THEORISTS: (L-R) Diamond, Duncan, Wolf and Banas. : skip Millard

One newish 'cast that's surprising in a crudely funny, smarmily sick, yet weirdly professional fashion is at www.ChannelChaos.com.

"We're the best personality radio show on the air," says the show's de facto leader—host and producer Ed Banas. "We're definitely better than Chio."

Billed as "a real fed-up Internet radio show," Chaos (recorded live downtown on Wednesdays) is like capturing your neighborhood heads:

• The Viking metal dude with the deep voice rhapsodizing about his cock
• The stocky bald comic who's got a three-packs-of-Marlboros habit cracking wise about death, booze, women and big breasts
• The phobic woman with those big breasts tolerating those assholes
• The oddball who talks dirty, imitates Neil Diamond and wears a wig

Slick shows with titles like "Milfs and Blow" and "Pregnant Hooker Parts in My Plumbing" are all rudely offensive without four-letter words.

With its bright studio sound, smooth delivery and not-so-filthy language, Channel Chaos could fit on FCC-approved radio. If only the big boys would let it.

ChannelChaos.com is—after 10 months—still a renegade podcast produced by Banas, WYSP 94.1 FM's imaging director, the guy who records sound effects, promos, football-game intros and between-song voiceovers.

Sidekick Melissa Wolf was Banas' intern at WYSP for six months in 2005 before he started Channel Chaos. Hoarse comedian/writer Jon "JD" Duncan was also an intern who then became a regular on WYSP's "Couzin" Ed show (when Ed held court during the evenings). Duncan met Michael "Dirty Diamond" Hans on Ed's show and brought him in as Channel Chaos' newest regular.

In a way, it's a WYSP family.

"It's like retarded summer camp," says Wolf. "I'm the only normal kid."

Except she's not, as the show often revolves around her list of real phobias—germs, bulimia, drinking without a straw. Wolf's the star of one of Chaos' most downloaded shows—the one where she talks about sexing up her high school best friend's mom.

"She has phobias," exclaims Duncan. "But she's a hot chick with phobias that you want to bang."

"It's like being locked in a room with your own fears," says Wolf.

But WYSP has its fears. Like banging-your-best-friend's-mom talk. FCC rules, you know. Howard Stern cast a long shadow over stations around the country. Even their podcasts.

The station wants no affiliation with and makes no mention of Chaos—not on air, its Web site or its own official podcasts. (WYSP also would not comment for this story.)

"Corporate" couldn't be associated with the indecent content and language of a little podcast that gets 25,000 to 30,0000 hits weekly and routinely ranks among the top 11 in America on Podcastalley.com.

"We are the victim of our own goals," says Banas of trying to get the show picked up.

Podcasts can say what they want. But most podcasts don't have the desire to go further. Chaos has the burden of playing in a podcast realm but with terrestrial rules.

"After you meet with people in the business, you find that if you want to take it to the next level, you have to clean it up," says Duncan.

This cleanup is despite bringing in Hans, who turns the sweetest Neil song into a soliloquy on coke, cock and pussy. "You know how a lot of great radio shows have big resident comedians?" asks the wigged Hans, pointing out Opie & Anthony's affiliation with "Ed, no … Jim Norton. Banas settled for me." And employing a roving reporter, Eric Caruthers, who does remotes on what he knows best: crackheads and strippers.

Banas is confident in his comic talk team. At 37, he's a radio vet of 18 years: mornings in Buffalo, nights on Long Island, WYSP for the last five years. He'd been looking for a team that could banter bitchily for seven years when one afternoon in June 2005 he found Wolf and himself in a conversation as quick-witted and raw as any Stern broadcast. Then Duncan joined them.

"Right then, I knew," says Banas. "Now—with Diamond—we're an unstoppable juggernaut. I'd stake my career behind this team."

Faith is great. But when this group hits their groove, Chaos is like a great jam where dynamic musicians find their pocket and riff on. "When I fall off my chair laughing—which happens every week now—that's how I know," says Banas.

The white elephant in the room is that despite how good they are, getting on air in Philly doesn't seem promising. Yet.

Wolf is pragmatic. "I might be prepared for failure. But we're starting to seem real. We're no longer the guys sitting under black light posters and smoking doobies in my parents' basement."