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Talk radio

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Talk radio is a radio format which features discussion of topical issues. Most shows feature a regular host, who interviews a number of different guests.

Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting conversations with listeners who have placed telephone calls to speak with the program's host or guest. Listener contributions are usually screened by a show's producer(s) in order to maximize audience interest and, in the case of commercial talk radio, attract advertisers.

Generally, the shows are organized into segments, each separated by a pause for advertisements. (In public or non-commercial radio, sometimes music is played in place of commercials to separate the program segments).

History

Expressing and debating political opinions has been a staple of radio since the medium's infancy. Aimee Semple McPherson began her radio broadcasts in the 1920s; by the mid-1930s, Charles Coughlin's radio broadcasts were reaching millions per week.

Talk radio as a listener-participaton format has existed since at least the mid-1940s. Working for New York's WMCA in 1945, Barry Gray was bored with playing music and put a telephone receiver up to his microphone to talk with bandleader Woody Herman. Soon followed by listener call-ins, this is often credited as the first instance of talk radio, and Gray is often billed as "The Father of Talk Radio".

Joe Pyne and John Nebel were also among the first to explore the medium in the 1950s.

Two radio stations—KMOX, 1120 AM in St. Louis, Missouri, and KABC, 790 AM in Los Angeles—adopted an all-talk show format in 1960, and both claim to be the first to have done so. KABC station manager Ben Hoberman and KMOX station manager Robert Hyland independently developed the all-talk format.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, as many listeners abandoned AM music formats for the high fidelity sound of the FM radio dial, the Talk Radio format began to catch on in more large cities. Former music stations such as WLW (Cincinnati, Ohio), WHAS (Louisville, Kentucky), WHAM (Rochester, New York), WLS (Chicago, Illinois), KFI (Los Angeles, California), WRKO (Boston, Massachusetts), WBAP (Ft. Worth and Dallas, Texas), and WABC (New York, New York) made the switch to all-talk as their ratings slumped due to listener migration to the FM band.

Talk radio is not limited to the AM band. "Non-commercial" usually referred to as "public radio", which is located in a reserved spectrum of the FM band, also broadcasts talk programs. Commercial all-talk stations can be found on the FM band in Los Angeles, Boston and other cities. The commercial FM talk stations often feature hosts such as Tom Leykis and Howard Stern whose audiences are comprised of more men than women. These shows often rely less on political discussion and analysis than their AM counterparts, and often employ the use of pranks and staged phone calls for entertainment purposes. In the United States and Canada, Satellite Radio broadcasters syndicate many conventional "AM" talk radio shows, as well as produce their own original talk shows.

Talk radio in the U.S.

In the United States, talk radio is dominated by right-leaning political commentators; according to A.C. Nielsen, the top four programs are those of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Glenn Beck.

Politically oriented talk radio

The United States saw dramatic growth in the popularity of talk radio during the 1990s. The repeal of the FCC "fairness doctrine" in 1987—which had required that stations provide free air time for responses to any controversial opinions that were broadcast—provided an opportunity for a kind of flatly partisan (and often intentionally inflammatory) programming that had not previously existed. Talk radio provided an immediacy and a high degree of emotionalism that seldom is reached on television or in magazines. Pew researchers found in 2004 that 17% of the public regularly listens to talk radio. This audience is mostly male, middle-aged, well-educated and conservative. Among those who regularly listen to talk radio, 41% are Republican and 28% are Democrats. Furthermore, 45% describe themselves as conservatives, compared with 18% who say they are liberal.[1]

The most successful pioneer in the 1990s talk radio movement was the politically conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh's success demonstrated that there was a nation-wide market for passionately-delivered conservative (and in most cases, partisan Republican) commentary on contemporary news, events, and social trends. Other radio talk show hosts (who describe themselves as either conservative or libertarian) have also had success as nationally-syndicated hosts, including: Ben Ferguson, Lars Larson, Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Ingraham, Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Larry Elder, Michael Reagan (adopted son of former President Ronald Reagan), and Ken Hamblin. The Salem Radio Network syndicates a group of religiously-oriented Republican activists, including evangelical Christian Hugh Hewitt and Jewish conservatives Dennis Prager and Michael Medved.

Libertarians such as Free Talk Live (based in Florida), Penn Jillette (based in Las Vegas), and Mark Davis (based in Ft. Worth and Dallas, Texas) have also achieved some success. Many of these hosts also publish books, write newspaper columns, appear on television, and give public lectures (Limbaugh, again, was a pioneer of this model of multi-media punditry).

There had been some precursors for talk radio, such as the Los Angeles-area controversialist Joe Pyne, who would attack callers on his program in the early 1960s – one of his famous insults was "gargle with razor blades!"; the similar Bob Grant in New York City; and Wally George in Southern California [2]

Politically liberal talk radio aimed at a national audience has also emerged, although it has resulted in low ratings, and business failure. Air America Radio, a network featuring The Al Franken Show, was founded in 2004; it billed itself as a "progressive alternative" to the conservative talk radio shows. Some prominent examples of liberal talk radio shows currently in national syndication include: The Ed Schultz Show, Alan Colmes, Lionel, Thom Hartmann, Bill Press, and Stephanie Miller. In some markets, local liberal hosts have existed for years, such as Bernie Ward in San Francisco and Mr. KABC in Los Angeles. A few earlier syndicated programs were hosted by prominent Democrats who were not experienced broadcasters, such as Jim Hightower, Jerry Brown, Mario Cuomo and Alan Dershowitz; these met with limited success, and Air America has been faced with various legal and financial problems.

Left-wing opinion radio has long existed on the Pacifica network, though only available in a small number of cities, and in formats that more often act as a volunteer-run community forum than as a platform for charismatic hosts who would be likely to attract a large audience. Conservatives long complained that the long-format news programming on National Public Radio shows liberal bias, although the network denies any partisan agenda, and is actually under influence from Republican leadership at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Clear Channel organization, with nearly 1,300 radio stations under its ownership - along with other owners - has in recent years added more liberal talk stations to their portfolio. These have primarily come from the conversion of AM facilities, most of which formerly had adult standards formats. Many complaints (all radio stations are required by the FCC to maintain, in their public files, copies of all correspondence from the public relating to station operations - for a period of three years from receipt) have been received from fans of this musical genre (Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, big band music," etc.) - but the left-leaning talk programming leans toward a much younger demographic, a group that advertisers covet.

Other topics and formats

Other topics of discussion in talk radio include:

Other hosts specialize in talk radio comedy, such as Phil Hendrie, who voices his own fictional guests and occasionally parodies other programs.

George Noory, Art Bell and others take turns hosting the late-night talk radio show Coast to Coast AM, which deals with a variety of paranormal topics. Jeff Rense, who hosts an Internet radio show, also features paranormal matters, conspiracy theories, and some politics.

Some shock jocks such as Don and Mike, Opie and Anthony, Ron and Fez, Howard Stern, Don Imus, and Tom Leykis, are also considered talk radio hosts.

Sports talk radio can be found locally and nationally (with the networks ESPN Radio, Fox Sports Radio, and Sporting News Radio. Sports talk stations like WFAN in New York City and WEEI in Boston have done well in the ratings (aided by baseball and football game broadcasts).

Talk radio in the UK

Talk radio in the United Kingdom is popular, though not as much as music radio. Nationwide talk stations include BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Five Live and talkSPORT. Many BBC Local Radio stations offer a talk format, for example, BBC London, the BBC's flagship local station. Other notable commercial talk stations include London's LBC which pioneered the newstalk format in Europe. LBC currently operates two services in London - LBC 97.3, a newstalk station on FM; and LBC News 1152, a rolling news station on AM, and UTV's Talk 107 in Edinburgh, the first commercial talk radio station launched in the UK outside of London.

Talk radio expanded dramatically when the BBC's monopoly on radio broadcasting was ended in the 1970s with the launch of Independent Local Radio.

Some notable presenters include Clive Bull, Nick Ferrari, Steve Allen, Nicky Campbell, Simon Mayo. Pete Price on Magic 1548 is also known as the DJ who rushed to the aid of a regular caller who died live on air during a call [3]. Previously, he kept a suicidal teenager talking for 45 minutes before meeting him to convince him against that course of action [4].

Talk radio in Canada

In contrast to talk radio stations in the United States where syndicated programs tend to make up a significant part of most schedules, privately-owned Canadian talk radio stations tend to be predominantly local in programming and focus. There is no Canadian content requirement for talk radio, or "spoken word", programming.

The only nationally-syndicated, politically-oriented weekday talk radio show in Canada is Adler On Line, hosted by Charles Adler and heard on eleven stations across the country. Until 2006, Peter Warren's Warren on the Weekend waa heard Saturdays and Sundays. Both programs are or were distributed by the Corus Radio Network and, coincidentally, both hosts had hosted different morning call-in programs in the same time slot on Winnipeg, Manitoba's CJOB 680 before they became nationally syndicated (Adler's show still originates from CJOB and retained its original title, while Warren was based in Victoria, British Columbia.) Prior to Adler On Line, Corus had syndicated Rutherford, hosted by Dave Rutherford and originating from its Calgary station, QR77. Rutherford is no longer syndicated nationally but continues to air in Calgary, Edmonton, and London.

Other Canadian talk radio programs which have been syndicated to different markets include:

  • The George Stroumboulopoulos Show airs on Sunday nights on stations in Toronto and Montreal.
  • The Home Discovery Show, a call-in home renovation program hosted by Shell Busey.
  • Renovations Cross Canada, a weekend program about home renovations hosted by Ren Molnar. It is the most widely distributed talk radio program in Canada.
  • Love and Romance, a relationship advice program hosted by Sue McGarvie.
  • Prime Time Sports, a sports talk program hosted by Bob McCown. A three-hour program originating from The Fan 590, usually only the third hour is broadcast nationally.
  • The 'X' Zone, a nightly show about paranormal topics hosted by Rob McConnell. It is also syndicated throughout the United States.

The two largest talk radio networks in Canada are the publicly-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's English language CBC Radio One and French language Première Chaîne. These stations typically produce their own local morning and afternoon programs and regional noon hour programs to go along with the network programming that is aired during the rest of the day. Both networks are commercial-free.

Privately-owned talk radio syndication networks in Canada are generally formed for the purposes of sharing programs across a group of stations with common ownership, although some are formed to distribute their one or two talk radio programs to a number of stations regardless of ownership. The largest of these is the Corus Radio Network. Others include the CHUM Radio Network and the Standard Radio Network.

Syndicated programs from the United States which air on Canadian radio stations include:

Talkback radio in Australia

In Australia, talk radio is known as talkback radio. The most popular station broadcasting talkback radio is historically Sydney's 2UE, whose right-wing hosts, particularly John Laws, are widely syndicated across the continent, though it has in recent years been eclipsed by Sydney's 2GB after the defection of 2UE most popular talkback host, Alan Jones.

See also

References

  • David C. Barker; Rushed to Judgment: Talk Radio, Persuasion, and American Political Behavior Columbia University Press, 2002
  • Stephen Earl Bennett; "Americans' Exposure to Political Talk Radio and Their Knowledge of Public Affairs" in Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Vol. 46, 2002
  • Christopher L. Gianos and C. Richard Hofstetter; "Political Talk Radio: Actions Speak Louder Than Words," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Volume: 41. Issue: 4. : 1997. pp 501+.
  • Ian Hutchby; Confrontation Talk: Arguments, Asymmetries, and Power on Talk Radio Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996


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