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Talk radio's blue streak

On a winter morning in Boston, WEEI-AM's "guy talk" duo - John Dennis and Gerry Callahan - are getting tired of discussing the merits of Muhammad Ali. So they move to an interview with one of their stock characters, "Nigel," the British soccer hooligan who's reporting from the anti- World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Nigel is talking about his plans to pay a violent visit to the cybertycoon in nearby Redmond.

"I'm gonna add a whole new meaning to loggin' on with Bill Gates," he vows in his best British thug accent, as the hosts chuckle. "I'm gonna hit 'im with a redwood."

On another day, 200 miles to the south, syndicated "hot talker" Tom Leykis is holding forth on New York's WNEW-FM. The former rock station recently changed to a talk format and now advertises itself as "exotic, erotic, and a little psychotic" - and today's subject, not surprisingly, is sex. First, Leykis interviews a caller from Seattle named John, who happily reports that woman had exposed her breasts to him in a parking lot that day. Then he takes a call from Mark, who boasts that he is sleeping with two women at the same time. "We got a new name for your station," Mark tells Leykis. "We're gonna call it butt-naked radio."

And in cities from Detroit to Miami, listeners play along as syndicated talk host Ed Tyll - his breathless style is part DJ, part game show host - quizzes them about their favorite rock concerts. When one 30-something guy recalls a headbanging Black Sabbath-Boston-Motley Crue extravaganza in the '80s, Tyll explodes with a hearty "That's a monster kick-ass show."

Welcome to the revolution - or maybe, more accurately, the devolution - in the interactive world of talk radio. Politics and weighty issues are passe. Sex, lifestyle, and sports are in. Older listeners, traditionally the core of the talk-radio audience, are not invited to this conversation. Generation Xers and even teenagers are the coveted prize. The great "issues" talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Williams are past their prime or have moved on. The younger, raunchier, hot talkers - many of them imitators of the incorrigible Howard Stern - are flooding the airwaves.

Whatever your opinion of talk radio, it is often an accurate gauge of the national Zeitgeist. The animus toward Clinton that was vented on the airwaves in 1993 not only predated much of the mainstream media's coverage of the president's ensuing problems, it foretold the next year's Republican romp in the congressional elections. Talk radio's in-your-face style of opining has influenced such "new media" creatures as the all-news cable talk show and the Internet chat room. And now, a confluence of factors - a flush economy, the desire for younger listeners, Bill Clinton's diminishing value as a punching bag, public alienation from government, and the proliferation of infotainment - has given rise to a frothy new breed of talk radio more likely to debate Pamela Anderson Lee's measurements than the merits of a flat tax.

In Boston, one of the nation's best issues-talk markets a decade ago, talking about politics has become practically verboten. In the nine years since it changed formats, WEEI has become a leading "guy talk" station, mixing sports with a heavy dose of testosterone-laden locker-room chatter. And in the boldest local experiment, former "smooth jazz" station WSJZ-FM reinvented itself last September as WTKK-FM, launching local talk on the FM dial, which has long been considered the home of rock 'n' roll and younger listeners.

Nationally, the trend toward "FM hot talk" and "guy talk" is even more pronounced. At WTKS-FM in Orlando, Florida, the Monsters of the Midday talk show - starring what the station's program director calls a bunch of "dumb-ass rednecks" - is a blockbuster among young listeners. At KJFK-FM in Austin, Texas, the hot new host is a local bar owner whose chief areas of expertise are cigars and booze. In New York City, WNEW-FM, once a leading rock station, now boasts a trash-talking lineup and topics that range from overweight celebrities to sex with inflatable dolls.

In an era when the presidency hinges on accounts of oral sex, when prime time television relies on X-rated words and R-rated scenes, and when Jerry Springer is a cultural icon, radio's move toward lighter and more lascivious fare is perhaps no surprise. You could call it frivolous talk for frivolous times.

It wasn't always like this.

Talk radio's first renaissance began little more than a decade ago, when the medium began flexing its political muscle. Dominated by "traditional" programs devoted to issues like gun control, taxes, and gays in the military, talk radio was marked by a conservative/libertarian ideology that gave voice to the antigovernment populism of the late '80s and early '90s.

That was when Rush Limbaugh entered syndication and emerged as a force with his satirical assaults on liberals. (The early Limbaugh was more inclined to use humor than the later model.) In 1989, radio talk hosts throughout the country staged a national "tea bag" rebellion to protest congressional pay raises, and thousands of tea bags were sent to Washington in response. In 1992, syndicated radio talk host Don Imus helped save Clinton's presidential campaign by letting him play a likable Southern "Bubba" on his show. Later, Clinton acknowledged the power of radio by inviting talk hosts to the White House lawn to try and sell them - and, by extension, the public - on the merits of his health-care program. And Limbaugh, the most successful of his generation of talk hosts, was seen not only as the savior of talk radio but as a major force behind the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress and the Gingrich revolution.

In Boston, AM talk radio hosts like Jerry Williams, Gene Burns, Peter Meade, David Brudnoy, Marjorie Clapprood, Pat Whitley, Ted O'Brien, and Janet Jeghelian made the city a hotbed of serious-issues talk.

WRKO's Williams wielded his microphone to launch a populist crusade against the state's first mandatory-seat-belt law, playing a major role in the 1986 referendum that repealed it. And his opposition to the siting of a prison in New Braintree

helped turn that project into a political football. In 1990, John Silber, then president of Boston University, used talk radio - and its silent-majority constituency - to spread his straight-talking message and engineer his stunning win in the Democratic gubernatorial primary against former state attorney general Francis X. Bellotti. The candidate's blunt pronouncements on everything from crime to welfare - dubbed "Silber shockers" in the mainstream media - found a considerably more receptive audience in the angrier world of talk radio.

Talk radio was also in the forefront of Massachusetts's tax revolt. One week before residents went to the polls in 1990 to vote on Question 3 - the hotly contested proposal to reduce the state income tax by nearly 2 percent - handicapped human-services recipients staged a rally outside the WRKO studios to denounce the station's talk hosts for their antitax stand. And the name of Williams's weekly 1989 program, The Governors, was more than mere hubris. The team of Howie Carr, the Boston Herald's hack-bashing columnist; tax foe Barbara Anderson; and Williams was riding such a tide of distaste for state government that they may have been the most influential force in Massachusetts politics in the waning days of the administration of Governor Michael S. Dukakis.

But as the '90s marched on, "the chemistry changed," says Michael Harrison, publisher of the monthly trade publication Talkers Magazine. "There were no good guys, because Ross Perot proved to be a flake and because the Republicans proved to be just as bad as the Democrats."

The economy boomed, interest in politics faded, and "talk radio, both locally and nationally, lost its flavor as a force to change policy," says Bob Newman, president of Newman Communications in Boston. "You went from almost all political talk to almost all entertainment talk."

In 1993, WEEI picked up syndicated talker Imus and began kicking off its sports-talk format with his brand of New York shock talk. That same year, Howard Stern, the bumptious baby boomer who revolutionized talk radio with doses of irreverence and prurience, surfaced locally on Boston rock outlet WBCN-FM. Stern, once considered an aberration on talk radio, was rapidly becoming a role model.

Two years later, WRKO introduced a local talk show called Two Chicks Dishing, in which hosts Leslie Gold and Lori Kramer, with Joan Rivers-like delight and inflection, tittered about celebrities and debated such issues as whether Lyle or Erik Menendez - the brothers who murdered their parents - was cuter. The show, which lasted four years, featured a kind of gossipy, voyeuristic talk that was new for Boston. (Kramer is now co-hosting a new WRKO show called Kramer and McCarthy, and Gold has moved to WNEW in New York, where she is known as "The Radio Chick.")

At the same time, Howie Carr, the afternoon host at WRKO who had built a career as a newspaper columnist by attacking the public sector, began tacking toward talk lite. Instead of castigating hacks at the public trough, he asked listeners which celebrity they would most want to see naked. "I began to notice what people wanted," Carr said of his strategy at the time. "I still like to do the political stuff. There's just no call for it."

By the mid-'90s, people like Williams, Meade, and Burns had headed into exile or retirement. Meade - who once debated David Brudnoy on WBZ radio for two hours on the merits of Question 3 - wistfully notes that last year's lengthy state budgetary impasse barely made it onto talk's radar screen. "Can you imagine the state Legislature not having a budget out all those months and Jerry Williams not out there beating the drums?" he asks. "In 10 years, it's just incredible; 1989 was the heyday of The Governors, where hot political talk ruled the airwaves," says Charley Manning, a political consultant and former part-time talk host. "Now, Howie Carr is talking about what you hate about the supermarket."

Today, Brudnoy's nightly WBZ program and Chris Lydon's five-year-old morning show, The Connection, on National Public Radio outlet WBUR-FM are really the last two local outposts of serious-issues talk. And although WRKO has tinkered with its formula and de-emphasized politics in recent years, it stands as Boston's only traditional talk station, with a lineup that features Limbaugh, radio psychotherapist and morals maven Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and Carr, who has broadened his audience and shtick by moving into syndication in recent years. One nostalgic fan who would like to join WRKO in that niche is Alex Langer, the new owner of WMEX-AM. Langer is planning to relaunch that station with a back-to-the-future talk lineup that includes the now-retired Williams, former morning drive host Clapprood, veteran talker Upton Bell, and Gene Burns, who has been broadcasting out of San Francisco for the past five years. The names are well known, but the strategy is risky.

"It's a labor of love," Langer says. "I remember the heyday of Gene and Jerry." But Langer says his lawyer told him he was crazy to try it, and many observers believe he is swimming against the tide. The prevailing wisdom is that, these days, any local show that focuses on politics could lose a ratings war to a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

If Williams and Burns made a career out of tackling issues like taxes, term limits, and tyrannical pols, the ascendant young talkers are far more interested in the niggling nuances and nuisances of daily life. While their predecessors thought in terms of "us," the new talkers focus on "me." And while the issues talkers were PG-13, the hot talkers rate at least an R.

"We are going to the new generation of talk radio," says Glenn Fisher, who syndicates a number of young talk personalities aimed directly at the 18-to-45-year-old audience. "All our shows are consistent in one regard. You would never know whether [the hosts] are Democrats or Republicans, liberal or conservative. They get stuck in traffic, they get parking tickets. They fight with their wives. ... It's much more similar to the daytime TV shows, the Maurys, the Jerry Springers."

That vision is alive and well at WTKS-FM in Orlando, which bills itself as "Real Radio 104.1." The station's lineup includes Stern in the morning and the Monsters of the Midday show, featuring an ensemble cast of Bubba "Whoopass" Wilson, "Dirty Jim," and "The Sexy Savannah." On the station's Web site, there's a photo of the hosts naked from the waist up.

"There's sexual content, parody, songs," says program director Chris Kampmeier. "The show is not really topic-driven; [it's] very stream of consciousness ... it's more sitcomlike." The cast members may fight among themselves or invite a sex therapist on the air. They also make live concert appearances together as a band. The bottom line is that Monsters of the Midday is tops in the Orlando market in both the 18-to-34 and 25-to-54 age groups, says Kampmeier, adding that WTKS is "the only talk station in America that is number one among persons 18 to 34."

In the Portland, Maine, area, Cary Pahigian runs two very different talk stations. One of his outlets, WGAN-AM, goes more traditional, with talent like Schlessinger, Limbaugh, and Carr. The other, WZAN-AM, skews hipper, with hosts like Don and Mike - two syndicated talkers who play on-air games like Strip Trivia - and the like-minded Tom Leykis, syndicated out of New York. The result: WZAN's 30-something average listener is about 10 years younger than WGAN's. "I don't view these new `hot talkers' as anything more than rock 'n' roll without the music," says Pahigian.

Until recently, WNEW-FM was "the Rock of New York," the city's most famous progressive music station. Now, its talk lineup includes Gold, Leykis, and Opie and Anthony, two former Boston radio personalities who were booted out of this market in 1998 after perpetrating a tasteless on-air hoax: announcing that Mayor Thomas Menino had died in a car accident. Opie and Anthony haven't cleaned up their act: On one recent show, the conversation ran the gamut from chatter about masturbation to the hosts' plans to bus a group of homeless people out to a fancy shopping mall. They've just found a more receptive format in "hot talk."

And though it's ostensibly about sports, it's no accident that WEEI's new morning show in Boston - home of "Nigel" the hooligan - sounds like a kissin' cousin of hot talk. It's "an entertainment-based show," says program director Jason Wolfe. "They've got a lot more production elements," such as sound effects and music, "adding to the comedic value of the programming."

Asked about the audience for WEEI's "sports talk/guy talk" lineup, Wolfe says his station shares a sizable group of listeners with WBCN and classic rocker WZLX-FM. "I would say we've taken more listeners from music stations than anywhere else," he says. "We try to pattern ourselves to have a kind of FM sound on the AM dial."

It was WEEI - where the major shows generally finish first or second among 25-to-54-year-old men - that replaced the Imus show with Gerry Callahan and John Dennis last September, claiming that the 59-year-old I-Man was losing his edge and turning off younger male listeners. "This is not broadcasting we're doing, it's narrowcasting," Glenn Ordway, host of WEEI's Big Show, told the Globe. "It's about what guys our age talk about in bars and on golf courses."

Like hot talk, the sports/guy talk format - pioneered by New York's WFAN-AM in the late '80s - is tailored for the new talk universe. It aims for a younger listener and is more about attitude and atmospherics than content, tending to be cruder and ruder than traditional talk. And it's working. Rick Scott, president of a Washington-based sports-radio consulting firm, estimates that there are 220 such sports-talk stations in the country. And Harrison, of Talkers Magazine, calls sports talk the "second most prolific talk-radio format in America."

New York's WFAN - or "the Fan," as it's affectionately called - is reported to be the highest-grossing radio station in the country, and it stands as perhaps the clearest symbol of talk's economic clout. In terms of ratings, talk is consistently among the top two or three categories in radio, says publisher Harrison, ranking with adult contemporary and country music formats and averaging around 15 percent of all radio listeners.

The explosion of talk radio in the past two decades is nothing short of remarkable. In 1982, according to New York City radio consultant Walter Sabo, there were about 60 full-time talk stations. Today, there are roughly 1,300 stations programming significant amounts of talk, says Harrison, who estimates that approximately half of American adults listen to talk at least one hour a week.

Several crucial factors explain this expansion, according to Harrison. First, the old AM music stations, which were losing listeners in droves to the higher-quality FM sound, began switching to talk formats because they "had nothing to lose." The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the late '80s freed broadcasters from the constraints of presenting both sides of a controversial issue and allowed opinionated, ideological talk to flourish. And finally, talk emerged as a kind of electronic meeting place at a time when Americans were finding themselves increasingly isolated from their neighbors and their communities. "It's sort of the precursor of the Internet," says Harrison.

Talk radio quickly began paying economic dividends. Citing listener surveys, Harrison says talk provides advertisers with about "three times the bang for the buck" as music formats. That means that an increase of one rating point in a talk-radio show brings about as much consumer response to advertisers as three rating points in music radio, a phenomenon Harrison attributes to talk's more active audience and, perhaps, to talk listeners' greater attention to commercial messages on their favorite shows.

Advocates for the hot-talk and sports-talk formats are equally bullish on the economics for younger demographics. Consultant Scott calculates something called a "power ratio," a formula that compares ad revenue to ratings, and concludes that because it draws an affluent and active audience, sports radio has a stronger power ratio than any other format.

Fisher, the radio-show syndicator, reiterates Harrison's point that talk listeners tend to stay tuned during commercial breaks more than does a music audience. Music-radio fans, lured by promises of 15 songs in a row without an interruption, are more likely to dial-surf once the station stops the music, he says. But Fisher, who is 31, insists that the key to turning former music-radio fans into talk listeners lies with changing the subject. His peers, he says, are disenchanted with politics. "The way to reach our generation is not to talk about the Senate and Congress and Capitol Hill."

In the wake of its huge growth spurt, and driven by the idea that there is a new youth market out there for the taking, talk radio is splintering into subgenres, chasing smaller slices of the demographic pie. Harrison compares talk to music in the '70s, when rock 'n' roll was divided into hard rock, soft rock, and disco. The main trend, he says, "is diversity, splitting into different formulas. Talk is becoming the other giant genre of radio instead of a format."

Talk radio has traditionally "appealed to people over 55," says Sabo. (Talkers Magazine's Talk Radio Research Project indicates that 56 percent of current talk listeners are 45 and older, an audience split almost evenly between male and female.) But "the next trend in talk is targeted talk" directed at younger listeners.

Not everyone is thrilled with this turn of events. "Hot talk" doesn't "address a specific interest or need out there," says Harrison. "It addresses a vacuum in terms of entertainment." "They've turned to youth and crime and sex, and a lot of local stuff," says Carol Nashe, co-founder of the National Association of Talk Show Hosts. "I can't say talk radio is as interesting or challenging to my brain as it used to be." Talk radio has become "entertainment based," says Bob Newman. "And more specifically, the entertainment has been sex based. ... The PDs [program directors] looked at where the demographics were skewing and wanted to get younger."

Over at the headquarters of the fledgling WTKK on Morrissey Boulevard in Boston, Peter Smythe, group operating officer for Greater Media Radio, is creating something of a hybrid between traditional talk and FM talk. Blaring Jimi Hendrix guitar riffs, for example, are used to lead into Jay Severin's afternoon talk show. "If the kids hear that music ... " Smythe says, his voice trailing off as he envisions listeners surfing the FM dial until Hendrix stops them in their tracks. "I think I'm tapping into a whole new market that doesn't know anything about talk radio."

WTKK loves to roll out the vital stats: Nearly three times as many adults in the treasured 25-to-54 demographic listen to FM as to AM; AM radio reaches only about a third of adults aged 25 to 54; and the median age of FM radio listeners in Boston is much younger than that of AM listeners.

In fact, WTKK's lineup is not particularly youth-oriented and is considerably more mainstream than much of the emerging FM talk culture. The format was built around the fading Imus, and the lineup includes former Globe columnist Mike Barnicle, the old NECN talk team of Herald columnist Margery Eagan and Cambridge City Councilor Jim Braude, as well as Herald gossip columnists Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa. All are well-known local personalities, but they don't exactly speak for or to members of the MTV generation.

Still, as the man running Boston's first FM talk station, Peter Smythe is a trailblazer who sees WTKK positioned to reap the benefits of what has suddenly become the most important issue in talk radio - the "age wave," that mother lode of young music radio listeners who make one of the most appealing targets for talk programmers and advertisers.

On WNEW-FM, Radio Chick Leslie Gold runs through a typical day of new talk topics. The first is a smirking discussion of female celebrities - ranging from Oprah to Aretha Franklin - who carry too much poundage. Then she segues into a game in which she asks callers to tell her when they knew a major TV show was going downhill. (Caller "Vinnie" insists he knew Friends was running out of ideas when Chandler and Monica started steaming up the sheets.) As the station breaks for a commercial, an announcer proudly identifies WNEW as "the cul-de-sac of dementia."

Maybe talk radio is in for a long, happy siege of dementia. But for all this momentum behind the drive for younger listeners and salacious/celebrity/lifestyle talk, some observers believe the jury is still out. WRKO program director Al Mayers says fragmentation seems inevitable, but nobody knows how small the slices of audience can get and still be profitable. The business is still waiting, Mayers says, for someone to target "a 25-to-34-year-old group and make it successful."

Talkers Magazine's Michael Harrison knows that the traditional issues format that catapulted talk to prominence earlier in the decade is in retreat. But he also believes that everything moves in cycles and that a cataclysmic event could very quickly consign "hot talk" and conversations about fat celebrities to foolish irrelevancy.

"The next act is the crash of the stock market and the downsizing of the economy," Harrison says, and that's when he predicts people will return to discuss the big issues. "Bad times," he says, "spawn wonderful movements."