Talk Show Host

In some editions of Wednesday's Today section in The Sun, the outcome of a national competition to select a talk show host for the America's Talking channel was unclear. Bill McCuddy of Baltimore did win a job as host on the new all-talk cable channel, which will debut July 4.The Sun regrets the errors.

Chris Hayes, an editor at large of The Nation and host of the talk show bearing his name on MSNBC, was raised in a working-class neighborhood but attended some of the most exclusive schools on the planet. "I grew up in the Bronx," says the affable, 33-year-old anchor of "Up With Chris Hayes. " "My mother was the daughter of an Italian deli owner. But I'm also hugely a product of the meritocracy, and for that reason I have my own affection for it. " Both experiences provided fodder for his much-discussed first book, "Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy.

Robin Miller, former Baltimore cabbie and sedan service entrepreneur, is back on the road with a "full-tilt white Lincoln stretch," trading as "Robin's Limousine," based in Westminster. He got on the car phone the other day from Crystal City, Va., to offer an explanation for the appearance of all those Grey Poupon jars on limousine dashboards."That's a prom kid thing," Miller snarls. "Every prom kid, after the prom and the dinner that follows, has a need -- a crying need, a burning need -- to ride around Fells Point or downtown, yelling 'Whoo!

Bryan Nehman, co-host of the "Brian and Bryan Show" on Washington's WMAL radio, has been hired by Baltimore's WBAL to replace Dave Durian during morning drive time. Nehman previously anchored morning news on the politically conservative talk and news station in the nation's capital from 2001 to 2011. He's been at the station 12 years. He started as a street reporter, and "was put in the news anchor chair right after 9/11," Nehman said Thursday. "Bryan is one of the brightest young men that I've met, and he is the guy who's going to lead WBAL into the next 20 years of broadcasting," Dave Hill, program director at the station said.

SO HERE IT IS. THIS will definitely be my last column about WOLB talk show host C. Miles. But it's not by choice, mind you."Man, I've been fired!" Miles told me Tuesday afternoon, in the first conversation we've had since we debated the shooting death of James Quarles in August 1997. Sun editors had heard for days rumors that Miles had been fired. They were trying to confirm or deny them up to Monday night. Dennis O'Brien, swing-shift rewrite man, was able to get Miles' home number and called him. Moments later, O'Brien paged me."

Ellen Sauerbrey's seven-week stint as a radio talk show host )) left her wanting more."If things work well for me . . . I'll be greatly looking forward to coming back on in the fall," the former Republican gubernatorial candidate said yesterday, before her final 8-11 broadcast last night on WBAL-AM (1090)."I've gotten great feedback. If calls mean anything, I've got a great audience," she said, adding, "three hours of being able to say what's on your mind isn't bad."On Monday, Orioles broadcaster Jon Miller begins a nightly sports conversation show in the time slot -- at least until the strike ends and baseball action returns.

Staff writer Sylvia Badger recently interviewed comedian and talk show host Joan Rivers, who was in town for a performance at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Here's what Joan had to say on a number of subjects.Q: If you were interviewing Joan Rivers, what would be the first question you would ask her?A: "Are you sleeping with anyone?"Q: Well?A: Just say that I burst into tears after that question.Q: Is it true there has been a coolness between you and Oprah Winfrey since you won the 1990 Emmy for outstanding talk show host?

HARRISBURG, Pa. - If you somehow missed the hundreds of waving flags and the signs that read "Ditzy Chicks" and "Deport the Anti-War Protesters," you couldn't escape it once Bob Durgin started talking. You knew you were in talk radio country. "I want to send a message to the war protesters," the talk show host told a cheering crowd of thousands on the steps of the state Capitol yesterday. "I'm not going to call them un-American ..." "Un-American!" someone yelled for him. "Traitors!" shouted another.

Slavery is still an emotional subject for most Americans. Other than in academic settings, most people avoid mentioning it, especially in racially mixed company.Not so for radio talk show host Les Kinsolving. His repeated references to slavery caught my ear recently. ''Three thousand black people owned slaves,'' he asserted, then followed the claim with the statement that, ''Black soldiers served in the Confederate army.''When I called the station to challenge these statements and at least add some historical context, Mr. Kinsolving questioned my sources and motives.

Conservative talk shows sow distrustTalk-radio provides a valuable service by giving citizens access to the public airwaves.However, when the debate is controlled by biased ideologues, whether they be liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans, it becomes little more than propaganda.In Maryland, we have conservative propaganda being broadcast daily by WCBM radio.This radio station's constant, hypercritical and personal attacks on President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, without providing any balanced counter-analysis, allows WCBM's conservative talk-show hosts to promote their right-wing political agenda.

Ron Smith, who came to Baltimore 38 years ago as a weekend TV anchorman but found his greatest success on radio as WBAL's "Voice of Reason," died Monday night of pancreatic cancer at his home in Shrewsbury, Pa.. He was 70. Mr. Smith spent more than 26 years on WBAL's airwaves, most of it in the afternoon drive-time period until a move to mornings last year, passionately talking politics from a conservative point of view. But it is not his politics for which he will likely be remembered as much as the informed conversation he helped create on Baltimore radio — and the way he publicly shared his final days with listeners of WBAL and readers of The Baltimore Sun. On Nov. 28, after continuing on-air for more than two months despite having been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer that had metastasized throughout his body, Mr. Smith signed off at the 50,000-watt news-talk station for the last time in his signature straightforward, no-nonsense, radio style.

H.L. Mencken once observed that newspapers, by nature, are bellicose and do not speak in support of anyone or anything unless they absolutely can't help it. There are any number of public figures in Maryland and beyond who would attest to this. But on rare occasion, we have the good fortune to encounter someone who merits words of praise, and so exceptions have to be made. To leave such thoughts to obituary writers alone would, at the very least, deny the living the potentially defibrillating shock of reading them in this forum.

Ron Smith went on WBAL radio Thursday, just as he has for the past 27 years. But the conservative talk-show host, who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, opened his show telling listeners — with characteristic bluntness — that he was abandoning his chemotherapy treatments. Instead, Smith will remain on the air while undergoing palliative care designed to make what time he has left as comfortable as possible. And then he simply went on with the show. "That's the way I've conducted my career," Smith, 69, said Thursday from his home in southern York County, Pa., where he's been doing most of his broadcasting work since announcing his inoperable Stage 4 cancer diagnosis on Oct. 17. "I have never been one to hide anything.

Fans who looked closely at Maryland's sideline during the season-opening football game may have been puzzled by what they saw on cards held up by team managers. Was that really a photo of TV talk-show host Regis Philbin, and — if so — what could Philbin, a Notre Dame graduate, possibly have to do with Maryland football? Yes, it was a color photo of the co-host of "Live! With Regis and Kelly. " But why the school chose to display Philbin's image remains as much of a local mystery as which color uniforms the Terps will wear on a given week.

Fresh from hosting the MTV Video Music Awards, the news of a second television show on E! and tabloid reports linking her with rapper 50 Cent, late night comedian Chelsea Handler has never been hotter. Since bursting onto the talk-show scene in 2007 with "Chelsea Lately," Handler has quickly established herself as one of the funniest women on television. Her tongue-in-cheek style has allowed her to sneak in playful jabs while interviewing some of the biggest names in show business.

To get to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, you have to drive right past the Watergate Hotel. The complex squats like a giant, gray concrete toad near New Hampshire and Virginia avenues, where it looms both literally and figuratively over the production of Frost/Nixon being staged barely one block away. The Watergate is visible from the Kennedy Center terrace. Stroll outside either before or after the show, and it's easy to imagine that you can peer into the windows of the former Democratic National Headquarters, where a botched burglary in 1972 eventually toppled a presidency.

In the radio talk-show world, the Israeli-Palestinian accord is no Michael Jackson, Princess Di or Stuart Berger."Good news is of no significance," says Allan Prell, WBAL's morning talk-show host. "People react only if it's terrible news."Bad news is something we can deal with by talking about it. If it's good news, we just accept it and say, 'Isn't that nice?' "The signing of the landmark accord Monday in Washington amid much hoopla and ceremony brought out pundits and presidents and diplomats talking about the possibility of a broader peace after years of conflict.

In some editions of Wednesday's Today section in The Sun, the outcome of a national competition to select a talk show host for the America's Talking channel was unclear. Bill McCuddy of Baltimore did win a job as host on the new all-talk cable channel, which will debut July 4.The Sun regrets the errors.New York City -- Last night, Bill McCuddy, 37, took another step in a journey he hoped would land him the holy grail of talkers.When he was 15, the Chicago native spent the summer working with summer stock theater in northern Michigan, After a year at Northwestern University, he left school to work at a radio station in Hilton Head, S.C. He's been performing stand-up comedy at clubs throughout the United States for about six years.

The February pastoral, all soft light and tired fields, stops abruptly at Marc Steiner's doorstep. Whatever sanctuary his home along an actual country lane in Sparks would ordinarily offer, he's missing it, as his phone rings and rings and rings. The longtime talk-show host, whose name to many was nearly synonymous with public radio station WYPR, is freshly fired. He paces the tight living room, taking calls from family members who want to make sure he's OK, from co-workers who point out the support piling up online, from friends and fans who just don't get it. He runs agitated fingers through thick graying hair and removes wire-framed glasses to rub away a trace of tears.

Amy Angell Hunt, a former radio talk-show host and longtime volunteer, died April 30 of complications associated with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The longtime Severna Park resident was 79. Born and raised in Roanoke, Va., Amy Glenn earned a bachelor's degree in English from Roanoke College in 1949. She attended the college with her twin sister, Bettye Glenn, who died in 1996. Mrs. Hunt was one of the first female talk-show hosts at radio station WSLS in Roanoke when she was hired in 1950.