Radio: Big Mouths

Populist and popular, radio's right-wing pundit and gross-out wild man have new mega-best sellers

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"He says things a lot of people my age group think," explains Doug Tyler, 33, a New Orleans salesman, "but don't have the nerve to express." He's talking about Stern. Tyler, for instance, approves of Stern's Limbaughian screeds against overconcern for criminal defendants. And while Camille Belchere, an artist in Santa Monica, California, regularly finds Stern's breaches of taste over the top -- "There are some times when it gets to be too much for me" -- always, she says, "the next morning I'll turn it on again." ABC News analyst Jeff Greenfield is more a dittohead than a Howard fan, but he appreciates the appeal of Stern's relentless sex talk. "He is the bubbling up from the subconscious," says Greenfield. "If you're a guy and you look at a beautiful woman, the first thing you think of is the most elemental gamey horndog level of response. That's Howard."

"I appreciate there's an alternative voice," says surgeon Robert Allen, who lives south of San Francisco. "He carries a different message than what we're usually bombarded with in the press." He's talking about Limbaugh. "At times I find him a bit blustery." Anne-Louise Shaffer is a 40ish housewife in Dixon, Illinois, who says that "at first I found him extremely abrasive. But there was nothing more interesting on, so I listened. Does he present both sides? Absolutely not. But it's good to have someone like this."

Limbaugh is ubiquitous at the grass roots in a way that Stern isn't and can never be. Here their careers really are apples and oranges -- although unquestionably a great big apple and a smaller orange. Limbaugh's radio show is carried on 628 stations, all but a few AM, scattered everywhere across America. Stern is on during morning drive time on 15 stations, almost all major FM outlets in the big cities of the West and Northeast. In New York, Stern has the top-rated show on any station at any time of day, with 1.2 million listeners. In Chicago, where Stern is no longer on the air, Limbaugh's is the second-ranked show in town; in Dallas he's No. 1; and in L.A., where both he and Stern are popular, he is pulling in 38% more listeners.

Limbaugh biographer Paul Colford estimates that Limbaugh makes $4 million from radio annually, Stern $9 million. Limbaugh's first book may earn him around $8 million, and his 12-page monthly newsletter, with 370,000 subscribers, grosses $11 million, pushing Limbaugh's annual in come to the $20 million range. Stern could make $12 million this year between radio, television and book money. (His income is the single subject he is loath to discuss publicly.) Up or down, first or third, a dozen FM or 600, the outsiders Limbaugh and Stern are suddenly both very rich men.

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