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Chapters
1 EARLY DAYS
2 BIRTH OF THE MODERN CALL-IN TALK SHOW
3 TALK RADIO GETS A BAD REPUTATION
4 THE KILLING OF ALAN BERG
5 THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE GETS THE AXE
6 THE RISE OF CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO
7 PUBLIC RADIO SLOWLY EMBRACES TALK RADIO
CHAPTER THREE
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Radio historians generally agree that the first station to adopt a fulltime call-in talk format was KABC-AM, Los Angeles, in 1960. Morton Downey like to feature strippers on his talk program |
Other early call-in talk format pioneers included KVOR-AM, Colorado Springs and KMOX-AM, St. Louis.
Long John Nebel at WOR-AM |
At WOR in New York, talk radio took a more strident tone with the addition of highly opinionated hosts such as Long John Nebel, Bob Grant, Wally George and Morton Downey. The discussion of issues in the news would have invoked the FCC's Fairness Doctrine requiring stations to present competing points-of-view. So, WOR "shock hosts" made a play for ratings by being outrageous, insulting and bombastic. |
No talk host equaled the vitriol of Joe Pyne who took his KABC-FM daily program into national syndication in 1964. On his show, Pyne would ridicule homeless people as "stinky bums" and college professors as "Soviet Communists." A typical Joe Pyne comment was: "Why don't you take your teeth out, put them in backwards, and bite your throat." |
Joe Pyne in the 1960s |
Though this cruel and outlandish programming brought in listeners and advertisers, it branded the radio talk show host as a nutty, slightly dangerous oddball. Talk radio is still tainted by this image today.