Here are some highlights from this 2022 book:
* The movie or TV star is distant from the people; he is a star. The radio talk host, on the other hand, by nature perfectly embodies the thinking of the “man on the street.”
* Research indicates that personalities appeal to listeners more than music.
* I worry—as do others—that while in a functioning democracy everyone’s opinion should count, the loudest voices are sometimes wont to overpower all others. Perhaps “expertise” itself always needs to be given more weight than ignorance.
* There is something absolutely perverse about lonely misfits and amateur information distorters waiting on hold for an hour and more just for the opportunity to be abused by a loudmouthed so-called “host,” a host often equipped with no discernable credentials other than a fast-paced patter.
* Talk radio is a carnival—an amusement show. Fancy parades as fact. The uninformed opinion is championed as thoughtful commentary. Groundless innuendo gets the same respect as investigative journalism. …talk radio often drones as a noisy waste of time; it usually just broadcasts a bunch of malcontents yelling at each
other or a bunch of blowhards impressing each other.
* the medium—to subvert Marshall McLuhan’s slogan—is not the message. The problem with most talk radio and its technological variants is the literal message: demagogic slurs and lies designed—for the most part—not to influence policy but to gain audience share and hence fame and fortune.
* We considered the callers merely disposable foils for our acts. We were convinced there always would be another caller—and there always was. At KABC our program director, the late Jim Simon, believed callers weren’t
just expendable. He considered it a rare caller worth much more than a minute on the air. To keep us from forgetting that philosophy, he installed an old-time police car red light upside down on the ceiling of our studio—the type known as a gumball machine. A timer started when we put a caller on the air. After 90 seconds, the gumball with its flashing red light started spinning. That distraction definitely helped motivate us to say goodbye (or, often, hurl an insult) and go on to a next caller.
In an email exchange with Eric Bogosian, the star of “Talk Radio” and its author, I asked for his thoughts about the role of the caller—both for his film and for talk radio shows.
“The key to success in the talk radio format, as I understand it,” he wrote back, “is boosting ratings. Serious discussion of serious topics is anathema to popularity. (Except say, on local NPR stations, which never get the numbers that Rush Limbaugh used to get.) Ludicrous discussions attract a wide spectrum of listeners. Especially those who are killing time by listening to the radio. So I guess you have to ask first, why do people listen to talk radio? The human voice has tremendous power. Charisma. People like to hear a voice. An emphatic, funny voice gets people to listen. The voice is a friend, coming by to hang out.
* For almost all the American talk shows on commercial radio stations, the host first acts as the picador and the caller as the confused bull. Quickly the host morphs into a matador and hanging up the phone serves as the coup de grâce swordplay.
Points of view aren’t the only drivers that cause the frenetic pace and tone of most commercial talk radio in the States. “I listen from time to time to commercial radio and to sit through all those commercials means the host must make the audience want to stay through the commercials.” Audio clickbait, Krasny calls it. “And so, the burden is always to keep things lively, controversial, engaged, but also in many ways outrageous and tabloid and sometimes funny. Hysterically funny or hysterically outrageous, like Howard Stern.”
* the callers often are picked for their nut factor, depending on the show. Anybody who’s going to subject themselves to potential host abuse after waiting on hold for an hour, I noted, is suspect.
* Talk radio, as practiced by the screaming right wing, says Franken, “is a monetization of resentment.”
* As Covid surged, one after another anti-vaxxing hosts succumbed to the virus. Colorado host Bob Enyart followed Tennessee broadcasters Phil Valentine and Jimmy DeYoung to a station in the great beyond, as did Floridians Marc Bernier and Dick Ferrel.
* From the listeners’ point of view, the talk radio host is a credible relational partner, which puts them in a privileged position to enact uncertainty reduction processes. The positive relationship between the creation of an intimate relationship with a subject and that subject’s ability to trigger mechanisms of self-categorization and identification (useful in reducing uncertainty regarding one’s identity and views through identification with a group) is essentially replicated in the mediated interaction.
* Among the defense mechanisms against information overload are filtering and the more radical information withdrawal strategies. These are designed to determine what information is relevant to a user based on a pattern of importance/priority; in this pattern, a fiduciary relationship with a host, who can offer information and viewpoints modeled on the community of which the listener is a part, can certainly fit.
* The ABC research also showed an opening for what was termed “non-guested confrontation talk radio.” McLaughlin recruited a Sacramento, California, radio host to play the lead role. His name was unknown to most Americans when he was recruited: Rush Limbaugh.
Here are the details behind the phrase “non-guested confrontation talk radio.” The show is centered around the host and his views, with no interviews. Instead of confronting an actual person who could argue back, the host plays a sound bite from the targeted person and attacks the recorded point of view. Leaving no opportunity for the opponent to respond, the host is, of course, confident of winning the argument.
* Limbaugh’s syndication reached about 600 stations at its peak and spawned many imitators. Local stations built formats around Limbaugh and his clones, often using the brand “Hot Talk.” Increasingly AM Talk is equated to right-wing talk. In many major markets, there were three conservative AM talk stations. The top tier was headlined by Limbaugh (on a station with a strong signal, usually 50,000 watts) along with hosts like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage. The second tier, with lesser-known hosts, was typically on a less powerful station. The third level was mostly comprised of quasi-Christian stations owned by Salem media.
* “Who commands the story is not the voice: it is the ear,” this is how Italo Calvino, in his 1972 novels Invisible Cities, restores the sense of listening, including that of the radio: what drives people’s interest is not so much the narrator but the ability of the story to enter the intimacy of the listener’s life and turn into personal history, making this process all-encompassing and highly personalized and participatory. The encounter between the audio, which is specific to radio, and its user occurs in a “subliminal echo chamber that has the magical power to touch remote and forgotten chords.”
* Italians never entertained a particularly intense relationship with the radio medium, preferring the more invasive, powerful, and seductive television as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
* Radio is the most personal form of media, and talk radio is its most personal subset. Air personalities playing music constitute the majority of radio’s history as a cultural force, but even the most legendary disc jockeys did not spend hours each day in direct, unrehearsed live conversation with listeners, ushering them through issues large and small.
* No host becomes popular by being the most well-spoken, the most politically astute, or the most scholarly. While those are valuable, the common trait found in all successful shows is a host with a personality that makes the show desirable to consume.
* One could hardly imagine a better fit than former New York governor Mario Cuomo, a spellbinding orator and
riveting interview guest. But at the press conference heralding his new show, asked about his goals, he listed as first “to educate.” The show lasted a year. The best answer to that question is: To conduct a show in a way that draws people in to hear the host’s views and the views of others in a compelling and entertaining fashion.
* The Limbaugh show was a phenomenon for more than 30 years because he delivered his topical content in a
manner that featured an upbeat mood, an appreciation of humor, and a showman’s gift.
* You don’t need to know anything to work as a talk radio host. That is not an overstatement. The enterprise is entirely predicated on engaging entertainment peppered with factoids and truthiness and driven by emotionally charged hype. It’s a great caffeine-driven formula that keeps listeners tuned in and flipped out.