Talk Radio

Stand-up comedy. Late-night talk. Personal tragedy. Inevitable comeback. Tell-some book. TV weeper of the week. QVC merchandising. Talk radio.Oh, and bulimia too.Been there, done that, and kept the eyeliner on straight and the manicure unchipped throughout."

She stakes out her positions in no uncertain terms, beating up on liberals in general and Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton in particular. But she also lambastes conservatives who displease her, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich.She's highly opinionated but also informed and articulate, and persistent enough to be a distinctive presence in the cut-and-thrust world of Baltimore talk radio.If you tune in, you know her name -- or as much of it as she's willing to reveal: "Helga from Westminster."

If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of talk radio in Baltimore preparing to lower its voice. Tom Marr is departing the local airwaves. He says he'll break the news to his WCBM listeners this afternoon, and then he's heading for Philadelphia."

Diane Rehm is what the good Lord had in mind when he invented talk radio: What she thinks has never mattered.She has opened her microphones to a range of voices that includes Ross Perot and Maya Angelou, Twyla Tharp and Desmond Tutu. And her respectful silences create a vacuum for what does matter in talk radio: the thoughts and opinions of her guests and her listeners."I have some views that happen to be different from the majority of talk-show hosts out there," says Rehm, host of "The Diane Rehm Show" on WAMU (88.5 FM)

You probably heard that Ellen Sauerbrey has joined the WBAL talk-radio lineup.What you didn't hear is that WBAL is asking for a new position on the AM radio dial because, well, 1090 is way too close to the center.It's no secret that throughout this great nation -- founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of lower capital-gains taxes -- talk radio has adopted a strong right-wing slant.But maybe you thought that Baltimore, considered to be a Democratic stronghold, would be different.

Jim Simon, 61, a broadcasting executive regarded by some as the father of talk radio, died Tuesday in Fountain Valley, Calif., after a stroke. In the 1970s, he helped take KABC Radio in Los Angeles into an all-news-and-talk format.

At last talk radio has found a subject worthy of it: talk radio.If the Group of Seven cannot manage the dollar-yen relationship or even try, it cannot justify the cost of meeting.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton said yesterday that he fears a rising tide of intense, anti-government suspicion is corroding America's ability to govern itself. And he looked to talk radio, of all places, for help."Part of your birthright as an American is to have a healthy suspicion of the government," Mr. Clinton said. But "we're going through a period now when it is much stronger among certain groups than it has historically been."Many talk shows feed the "anxiety and lashing out" that infects American discourse, Mr. Clinton said.

Ron Smith greets a visitor to WBAL with a newspaper tucked under his arm. If you think it might be The Sun, the New York Times or the Washington Post, you haven't been paying much attention to his radio talk show over the past 10 years. So, of course, it's the conservative Washington Times.Mr. Smith, 53, has been a con- servative voice on Baltimore's most powerful radio station since the first dittohead was just a gleam in Rush Limbaugh's eye. Since 1985, this former Marine and stockbroker has been a full-time part of the talk lineup on WBAL (1090 AM)

Leading a team of investors, Grotech Capital Group Inc. agreed yesterday to pour about $20 million into a new company to buy four radio stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It is the fifth multimillion-dollar deal for the Timonium-based venture capital firm since December.The new company, Nassau Broadcasting Partners L.P., is acquiring WPST-FM, a top-40 pop music station, and talk radio WHWH-AM from New Jersey-based Nassau Broadcasting Corp., pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission.

Reflecting on my 24 years hosting a radio talk show, I realize once again how timing is everything in life. In 1984, when I worked Saturday nights and as a vacation fill-in, talk radio was pretty primitive. There was no Internet, no cell phones, not even fax machines. The programs we did back then were drastically limited, both in who was likely to call in and in the ways we hosts collected news and opinion pieces to talk about on the air. The callers were stay-at-homes, the proverbial little old ladies in tennis shoes, or, late at night, insomniacs of one sort or another.

I've recently come to understand that sports talk radio is like a bad drug for me. I know it leaves me feeling empty and angry most of the time, but it's addictive. And try as I might, I can't shake the habit. I keep chasing that artificial high. Unlike Mr. Flip, I do think changing the format for 105.7 FM to sports talk can work. We might be reaching the point of oversaturation, but if McDonald's, iTunes, eBay and Amazon have taught us anything, it's that the public appreciates having more choices, not fewer.

WYPR's firing of Marc Steiner generated much gnashing of teeth and bemoaning of the state of public radio. I don't have an opinion on Marc Steiner one way or the other; I don't listen to WYPR because its progressive tilt does not appeal to me. However, in nearly all press and opinion accounts, the comparisons of Mr. Steiner's show with conservative talk radio were vapid at best, and at worst a slur upon conservative talk-radio listeners. Baltimore Examiner columnist Michael Olesker described Mr. Steiner's show as a format where "smart, informed people shared the news and the cultural trends of the day. ... It wasn't a chorus line of ditto-heads echoing each other's cheap shots; it was a true marketplace exchange of ideas."

Turn the radio dial these days and hear show host Troy Duran talking up buying opportunities in stocks of little-known companies that mine gold, uranium and more obscure minerals like molybdenum. Or hear Bob and David Hanson on another program saying that now is the time to buy that vacation home or investment property. But Duran is not an investment professional, and the Hansons aren't impartial experts. Their shows are paid advertisements. Increasingly, this is the sound of talk radio.

Like witch doctors conjuring up zombies in a bad B-movie, certain members of Congress are trying to bring the Fairness Doctrine back from the grave. Forget it, folks. Changing times already have put a stake through its heart. I don't say that as an enemy of fairness or balance. I say it as a realist and a former broadcast industry insider who has seen media and political giants humbled by the new media. My education began when I ran the community affairs department at a CBS-owned TV station in Chicago for two years in the early 1980s.

When Rutgers University women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer announced yesterday that the team had accepted an apology from Don Imus, she expressed hope that the furor would be a catalyst for change. But the speediness and manner of his dismissal from CBS and MSNBC, after calling the players "nappy-headed hos," may foreshadow a ripple effect on talk radio, industry observers say. "What's different about this firing compared to that of other insult jocks is that people internal to the organizations - women and African-Americans at NBC and CBS - came forward and said, `I am in this organization, and I do not want to be associated with this kind of man,'" said Sheri Parks, a University of Maryland professor who teaches courses on race and gender.

For conservative radio talk-show hosts, the power shift in Congress is not necessarily a cause for gloom. In fact, some of the hosts say, the new Democratic majority presents them with a golden opportunity. "It probably gives talk radio another two years of things to talk about," said Frank Luber, co-host of The Sean and Frank Show in the mornings on Baltimore's WCBM. The station broadcasts shows by several conservative commentators, including Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who was widely criticized recently for his mimicry of Michael J. Fox's ads in support of Democratic candidates' backing stem-cell research.

There are very few saints among people of any race, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. None should be above criticism. Increasingly, however, there are tighter and tighter restrictions on what you can say about more and more groups. San Francisco radio talk-show host Pete Wilson discovered this recently when he criticized a city supervisor and his female friend who had a baby together. The man is gay and the woman is a lesbian, so they are not lovers in a committed relationship.

The 2006 primary election campaign, now in its final hours, lived up to its billing as a series of well-contested races. There was a little bit of almost everything, some of it zany, some quite serious. We have had the nursery rhyme as mud, a family drama involving car keys and octogenarian drivers, lawn signs that eclipse houses and, in the background, war. The Court of Appeals ruled we can't vote early, but Marylanders ought to be queuing up to cast their ballots Tuesday. We'll be choosing leaders for the next two to 30 years.

Allan Prell was back on the radio the other night and, as he might say, it was a glorious occasion. He laughed riotously at his own jokes. He made fun of callers foolish enough to share details of their personal lives. And he was oh so naughty. Baltimore remembers naughty Allan. His provocative and often hilarious morning talk show aired on WBAL Radio from 1982 to 1999. Since then, he's worked for stations in Denver and Seattle, before returning to his home in Northern Virginia. Tuesday night, he filled in on the nationally syndicated Jim Bohannon Show out of Washington.