Audiences Love to Hate Them

By Richard Lacayo

On politics, sex or race, hardball hosts relish a verbal brawl

They call their guests boobs and liars and taunt callers to "get off the phone, you jerk." They shout, hang up and cut people off in midsentence. They sound off pugnaciously on politics and make brash forays into sex. Among their most frequent targets are homosexuals, women, and ethnic and racial minorities. When challenged, they are apt to say things like, "You come down here, boy, you yellow-bellied, egg-sucking dog, bedwetter, pinko Commie " They are the abrasive breed of radio and television personalities, most of them talk-show hosts, who treat their profession as a verbal adjunct to street fighting. But if their hectoring style wins enemies as well as friends, no matter--the ratings count both.

A new glare of national attention has fallen on these belligerent broadcasters since the murder last month of one of their number, Denver's Alan Berg, who was shot down in the driveway of his condominium. When Denver police assigned 60 officers to investigate Berg's killing, it was an acknowledgment of the hostility his combative style had provoked among his estimated 200,000 listeners. So many officers were needed, said one, partly because Berg's audience provided so many potential suspects. Threats and sometimes violence are indeed an occupational hazard. Ex-Washington Radio Talker Gary D. Gilbert has been assaulted in a restaurant by an angry listener and once had a bomb planted in his car. San Diego radio station KSDO has assigned round-the-clock guards for Dave Dawson, its controversial though less brutal host.

Berg's killing has also added a nasty twist to an ongoing ratings war in Miami, where six news/talk shows crowd the air, four in English, two in Spanish. Soon after Berg's death, Tom Leykis of WNWS told his listeners the real name of a popular, less vitriolic competitor who works at a rival station under the pseudonym Neil Rogers, and urged them to call and harass him. "Rogers," who received death threats in 1980 for his opposition to the arrival of the Cuban boat people, believes that Leykis was enabling listeners to attack him "a la Alan Berg." Leykis' station made an apology on the air.

The insult-artist school of broadcasting traces its roots to Joe Pyne, an ex-Marine who liked to tell his guest victims to "go gargle with razor blades." He perfected his brand of radio ridicule in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, then carried it to syndicated television later in the decade, when hippies and antiwar protesters offered him a steady flow of irresistible targets. A generation of Pyne clones were soon imitating his snarl at other stations around the country, and for a time the style flourished. But Pyne died in 1970, and the popularity of his percussive style declined during the low-key 1970s. The 1980s have witnessed a comeback of sorts, as the decade's mood has become more aggressive and as the air waves, stimulated by MTV and a rejuvenated record industry, have become hotter and more competitive.

The rewards for the hosts can be high, including notoriety and incomes that often range into six figures. Among the most prominent current practitioners:

-- Steve Kane, 45, has the top-rated late-afternoon "drive time" show on Miami's WNWS and says, "I judge my success by the amount of hate mail I get." A former acting teacher, he delivers his mostly liberal views in a rhetorical fist ("Get on your broomstick and take off, you witch").

He talks freely about his personal life, including a recent separation from his third wife, a 21-year-old woman whom he met when she called his show a few years ago to console him on the loss of his girlfriend.

The Orlando station where he worked before going to Miami was picketed after he announced on the air that he often paraded nude before his three young children.

Kane claims to take pleasure from cornering guests and callers "to make them look stupid." Says he: "If people call a talk show, they are fair game."

-- Wally George, 48, host of the late-night Hot Seat on KDOC-TV in Anaheim, Calif., has moved the tough-talk approach to television. Shouting, arms flapping, index finger jabbing, the white-haired former deejay pours his contempt on Communists, liberals, feminists and anyone else he considers a "wimp" or "pervert." If a guest is too exasperating, uniformed security guards hustle the offender away.

George admits to a talent for theatrical touches -- like making guests from the A.C.L.U. recite the Pledge of Allegiance --but insists that his purposes are serious.

"I'm trying to get people to hear the conservative side," he says. He also insists that his on-camera manner is no act:

"What I'm doing on the air is what I do in real life." People must like what he does: the show is now syndicated nationally.

-- Howard Stern, 30, uses humor to sweeten the punch on his afternoon radio show on WNBC in New York City. A communications graduate of Boston University, Stern delights in satire and free-flowing comic patter that needles New York's multitude of ethnic, religious, racial and sexual minorities ("I have nothing against giving gays rights. I just don't want them to have sex together"). Prerecorded skit segments of his show include "Gay Tarzan," in which Jane is a man, and "Dial-a-Date," a spoof of The Dating Game with lesbian contestants. When a mother wrote in to complain about his ceaseless talk about sex, he called her on the air to prod her into specifying the words she found most objectionable. "Is the word suck O.K.?" he asked. "How about stroke?" When he sensed her discomfort about the word orgasm he moved in. "Orgasm! Orgasm! Orgasm!" he whooped. "Some people find me disgusting," Stern shrugs, "while others love me. But they all listen."

Psychologist Jacob Levine, a clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, argues that more is involved in listeners' emotions than disgust or love.

"Some of the people who call in get a certain exhibitionistic satisfaction from the byplay," Levine says. "Others, more neurotic, have a masochistic tendency to be attacked, to feel self-righteous and ignored." Chicago Psychiatrist Jeffrey Hammer suggests that some callers may see in the talk-show host a surrogate father. The host, says Hammer, "takes the position that he knows better. And what do children do? Try to knock father over."

Many hardball hosts maintain that they alone touch the real concerns of their audience. Warren Freiberg, a conservative who conducts a call-in show on WLNR in Lansing, 111., says that his straight talk is welcomed by people who are unmoved by "the educated media, the Walter Cronkites and Dan Rathers of the world." But other broadcasters disagree.

Says Larry King, a Washington-based radio host whose nightly network call-in show reaches 3.5 million people nation wide: "Their purpose is simply to enrage." Miami's Sandy Payton, whose WIOD show is less acerbic than those of competitors like Kane, believes that their appeal is strictly a matter of sensationalism: "Listening to these hosts is no different from slowing down to watch an auto accident."

-- By Richard Lacayo.

-- Reported by Marilyn Alva/Miami and Elaine Dutka/New York

With reporting by Marilyn Alva, Elaine Dutka