Talk Radio

Posting this week's sports media notes while wondering whether I should be concerned how the cactuses in the background of the Accenture Match Play golf telecasts make me think of Quick Draw McGraw: * I was having a discussion this week with a colleague about radio sports talk shows, and he was of the opinion the best shows were the ones that had the most guests and took the fewest calls. In fact, he said it was optimal for a show to take no calls from listeners at all. I wouldn't go that far, but I would agree some shows lean too heavily on callers.

H ey, Mark, I don't think the Orioles should trade Brian Roberts ... Mr. Flip enjoys radio. After all, a guy who wears a bag on his head is just made for the medium. He listens to sports talk radio. He likes it almost as much as those A to Z weekends they used to have on music stations (ABBA to ZZ Top!). However, he doubts we have enough sports in Baltimore to fill the air without a lot of the same talk hour after hour. Bob, I'm really impressed with how Cam Cameron is bringing along Joe Flacco ... Even before this week's move that morphed 105.7 FM into The Fan, with basically an all-sports lineup of local talk hosts, how many times did you hear somebody call in to one of the shows and start by saying, "I haven't heard anybody bring this up yet ... " followed by something that you had heard 20 times in the past two days?

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.

No matter what happens, Brian Wilson can't seem to stay away from Baltimore for long. From 1984 to 1988, he was among the most popular radio personalities in town. Tomorrow, seemingly a dozen jobs and just as many addresses later, he returns to Charm City's airwaves, as the afternoon voice of WHFS-FM. "It's like this elasticized umbilical cord," he says from the WSPD studios in Toledo, Ohio, where he'll continue to hold down the afternoon drive-time slot he's had since 2005. "I got out of town after '88, then snapped back in the early '90s, then left for New York, then boom, back to Baltimore.

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.

A year into his new gig at Sirius Satellite Radio, Howard Stern has a lot more money, a fiancee and what he says is far greater peace of mind. What he doesn't have, according to trade magazine Talkers, is his former stature as the most important talk radio host in America. Talkers' annual "Heavy Hundred" list drops Stern from the No. 1 spot last year to No. 12. "He's still doing very well," says Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers. "But this list is about what's hot - and you just don't hear about Stern the way you did before he went to satellite.

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.