Gunning Down a Talk-Show Host

He called himself "the man that Denver loves to hate" and delighted in insulting his listeners. He liked to boast that his enemies included the Ku Klux Klan, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the American Nazi party and a legion of crank callers. His Denver radio station, KOA, even kept a list of people who had threatened his life. Thus when combative Radio Talk-Show Host Alan Berg, 50, was gunned down in his driveway late one night last week, many wondered at first which of his listeners was the killer.

Berg, a onetime Chicago trial lawyer, earned influential friends and an estimated audience of 200,000 during the decade he dominated the Denver radio scene with his attention-grabbing, listener-baiting style. Said he: "I stick it to the audience and they love it." The morning after Berg's death a steady stream of mourners filed slowly past his rented condominium. Fans telephoned Berg's KOA outlet from some 30 states. Callers were comforted by KOA disc jockeys sobbing their way through their own shows. A blind man was led to Berg's garage door so that he could put his fingers into the bullet holes. Of this bizarre circus atmosphere, Peter Boyles, a radio talk-show host and close friend of Berg's, said, "Alan would have loved it." And, no doubt, would have had plenty to say about it.