Radio: The Hot Hot-Line

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Paid-up Burial Policy. Such testimonials from the big cities' lonely ones are only one indication of the new impact of the call-in shows. The appeal seems as strong, no matter what time of day or night the programs are scheduled. Stopping the music and turning to talk lifted Nashville's WLAC Focus into first place in daytime shows, and boosted Baltimore's WCBM into first from 9 p.m. to midnight. And within a year, after shifting to the phone-in format on High Noon, Albuquerque's KOB quadrupled its audience to become the state's top-rated show in that time slot.

The principal ingredient in any successful hot-line show is the personality of the host, and often the more opinionated the better. Declares Ira Blue of San Francisco's KGO: "On the radio, on the telephone, I am God." And yet his highhandedness with call-ins ("Madame, stop before you make me sick") has only whetted his listeners' appetite for more. He has received calls from as far away as Guadalajara, Mexico, and Goose Bay, Labrador, averages 65 letters a day, once received a paid-up $1,000 policy—for his burial. Blue boasts, correctly, "A sponsor who wants to buy a spot on my show couldn't get in for six weeks."

20,000 Callers. Every bit as lava-tongued and popular is Los Angeles' Joe Pyne, an ex-marine with three World War II battle stars, a wooden leg, and a chip on his shoulder. Rather than debate at length with callers who disagree with him, Joe may tell them to "go gargle with razor blades," or "take your teeth out, put 'em in backwards and bite your throat." But the listeners must like it loutish. Pyne, claims his appropriately named station, KLAC, has the highest talk-show rating in the U.S.

A frequent curse of the call-in shows is their monopolization by the same small group of bores. When Lawyer David Fedor, host of Columbia, S.C.'s Open Mike, found himself swamped with right-wingers (one woman pointed out, "If you drop the first four letters from Communism, you get UNism"), he firmly limited callers to a three-minute spiel, a one-minute rebuttal.

To cope with similar problems, St. Louis' KMOX, a trailblazer in talk programming, with countless awards to its credit, including a citation from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, has evolved two basic rules: 1) no caller gets through to the moderator until a preliminary interview determines that he is not a crackpot, and 2) each guest must be an authority in his field, such as Dr. Spock or Bishop Pike. What is avoided is sensation, not controversy. When two nuns, just back from Selma, reported on the march on Montgomery, the station drew 20,000 calls.

Wife Swapping. Such wide appeal has prompted the Methodist Church to sponsor Night Call, the first hot-line show with a nationwide reach. Originally on Salt Lake City's KSL, it is now also broadcast from two of the nation's most powerful (50,000 watts) outlets in Baltimore and Des Moines. Despite its sponsorship and the fact that two of the three moderators are ministers, Night Call isn't pulling any punches; it devoted a program to homosexuality in its first hours.