In Los Angeles, a woman phones in to announce that she is turned on by butchers and visits three a day. In New York, a woman brags that she helps her husband seduce his girl friends. In San Francisco, a woman introduces her singing dog, complete with piano accompaniment. What is this—entertainment or therapy? Perhaps both. In any case, it "is enough to keep millions of Americans chained to their radios for hours every day and night. In a time when some of the TV talk shows are suffering from ratings problems, radio's talk shows are grabbing ever larger audiences. Their secret is simple: people like to hear themselves talk, and to feel that somebody, somewhere, is talking to them.
Telephone talk shows began in the early '60s, but most of them died with the decade, victims of various technical problems, high costs of production and, most important, audience ennui. Now bolder, brassier talk jockeys and new approaches have not only revived the shows but often make them the most important part of a station's programming. By switching to an all-talk format, Manhattan's WMCA has jumped from 20th to seventh among AM stations. "Just in the past few months," says Robert Henabery, director of program development for ABC-owned radio stations, "the potentialities of talk have begun to be realized. I can see new programs centering on specific interests like food, sex, sports—anything that attracts a group of advertisers."
Anything goes so long as enough people listen to it. Some of the new talk jockeys—or t.j.s—still play music, but it is always subordinate to their dialogue with listeners. Others, like Don Imus of New York City's WNBC, subordinate even the dialogue to their own versions of zany nightclub comedy. Chicago's Larry ("the Legend") Johnson has made a success out of calling odd people or faraway places to entertain his estimated 120,000 weekly listeners on station WIND. What's the weather like in Miami? Larry the Lege will call the Miami weather bureau and find out. Do the papers say that Princess Margaret is taking a salary cut? Call Buckingham Palace.
San Francisco's Russ ("the Moose") Syracuse attracts an estimated 50,000 listeners from midnight to dawn with KSFO's on-the-air lonely-hearts club. "This is Love Line," he announces. "Use your index finger and dial this number. Radio romance can be yours for the price of a phone call." A few of Syracuse's callers only want a weekend date, but not many. He claims to have fostered 13 marriages and twelve engagements. "How many disk jockeys," he asks, "get that kind of satisfaction?" Quite a few, if they measure satisfaction in terms of the emotional response they evoke from their listeners.* As Marshall McLuhan has pointed out, radio is a "hot" medium, involving more listener participation to complete its communication than such "cool" media as films or TV. "The people feel they possess you," says Ellen Morphonios Rowe, a criminal court judge in Miami who runs a late-night show on WKAT. "They really feel you belong to them."