* What makes some on-air talents big-time celebrities and household names while others – though competent, even award-winning – remain just voices and names on the radio?
Do you have to be dirty? Controversial? Scandal-ridden? Perhaps. But not always and not entirely. Sally Jessy Raphael wasn’t any of these things. Yet she was, indeed, a star.
Do you have to be singularly responsible for the ratings and the revenue generated by your show or time slot and recognized by your employers as such? In other words, must you be worthy of the most magic adjective with which a talent can be dubbed – indispensable? Now, we are in the ballpark. But exactly what makes a host or radio performer indispensable? It is the loyal legion of fans that make an appointment to listen to that particular host every day and tell their friends about what they heard the day before. It is also the large pool of advertisers that believe their businesses are significantly enhanced by being associated with that particular host and are willing to pay large sums for a personal product endorsement.
But what exactly are the qualities that make one talent a Howard or a Sally and another a “Gil who?” when they are all damn good at practicing the art of radio? How do you recognize and measure the intangibles that constitute likability, charisma and magnetism? How do you teach the “X Factor?”
* Producer Gary Dell’Abate – one of Howard’s closed circle of high-echelon sidekicks – then said something listeners would never hear on news stations anywhere else on radio, “It’s a terrorist attack, isn’t it?”
By the time the second tower was hit 18 minutes later, the Stern crew connected dots and moved the story forward – nearly 100 percent correctly. News reporters up and down the dial were straight-jacketed, mostly repeating and repeating only that which they knew could be verified. In the case of Stern, it was a rare example of unrestrained speculation during a breaking story actually being ahead of the pack AND correct.
When one of Howard’s cohorts asked, “Why doesn’t the news just call it like it is?” Gary the producer piped up again, “They’re a legit news organization – they’re not allowed to say what we’re thinking.”
And in that simple truth, he honed in on talk radio’s purpose: a place where people can discuss the messy, prejudiced, and sometimes ugly parts of life, speaking from a less-tailored part of the brain. Radio people are notorious for poor spelling and unkempt hair and wardrobe. Even callers know they can anonymously say the sorts of stuff normally shared with a friend over the bathroom stall.
* When Dobbs insisted on hiring a scriptwriter, I was struck silent. He actually wanted someone who would literally write out his monologues, transitions, and even interview segments with suggested questions and factoids.
A scriptwriter – for a talk show?
Spontaneity is the very essence of talk radio. It is the very heart of its beauty. If you script a talk show, you lose the genre. It becomes something… else. Since when is a talk show scripted? Radio, the naked human voice, is the great exposer. You can’t act your way into these thrills and revelry. It builds from within, goes deeper than words. It brings out the things that make us human. You can’t read your way through the thrill of a winning home run, you must feel your way. Or there’s a disconnect. The same principle applies in talk radio for the natural flow of conversation.
