Let's talk, talk radio! My faves, your faves!

Cafe Society
1

I have been listening to talk radio since I was a young lad working at Bob’s News Stand in the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. The old geezer I worked with was way into WGN, it was I think, with Wally Phillips, and others, talking about politics I didn’t understand, but I was hooked.

I listened to Steve Dahl and Gary Meier out of Chicago and they did a show that was different in tone and content from anything before or since.

When I moved to SoCal a few years later, I stumbled across Michael Benner, who did a late night show about politics and personal development.

Later I was a Ray Briem fan. The guy was a master.

I got out of talk radio for a few years, but when I got a job as a delivery driver, my choices were crappy music radio or talk. That was about the time that Limbaugh was first getting started and I listened to him, and he was obviously a revelation to the medium. Agree or disagree with the man, he changed things forever. These days, I can only stand him in small doses, and then only to see what he is doing. Not too good, IMHO.

I listen to other shows, as a conservative I tend towards the more intellectual and less bombastic: Micheal Medved and Larry Elder are favorites.

We have a couple of local yokels, John and Ken who are about the only people who cover SoCal and California politics, now that the Los Angeles Times and local television have completely abdicated that role.

I like Coast to Coast, I started another thread where I stated that the show is worth a listen.

I like to listen to some of the hosts on KGO, San Francisco. That is one great station! I can get them over the air on a good night, and always on the internet. Ray Taliaferro is interesting, if only for his bumbling veering between idiocy and brilliance. Bill Wattenburg may be one of the best hosts on the air, especially from a doper perspective.

Other hosts that I think are excellent include Tom Leykis, Joe Crummey, Al Rantel, Bill Handel, Tim Conway Jr., and Micheal Jackson. I may have forgotten a few, but these are good for a start.

There are many others that I could mention, but I am interested in how you feel about these hosts and others, and I would especially like to hear from dopers around the country who have local talk radio hosts that they can recommend, who may not be known to a national audience, and that we can all now hear over the internet!

2

Joe Elliot(t?) of Louisville, Ky. Moderate conservative who is the model of civility, respect & involvement in local issues. Alas, WHAS took off his evening show three years ago to replace him with …ick… Mike Savage, which was then replaced with …ick… Mark Levine. He now has a Noon-3 show on the area Salem Communications affiliate which I don’t often catch as that’s sleeping time for me.

As far as national political/issues discussion, I don’t get to listen to him often but my favorite is Dennis Prager.

Does anyone remember Nitecap with Herb Jepko back in the 1970s?

3

Frank O. Pinion and The Large Morning Show In The Afternoon is unique in that it has no format, no prepared topic of discussion, and is more like listening to a group of friends sitting in a coffee shop chatting than listening to a talk radio show. It does have regular segments, such as a movie reviewer, an entertainment reporter, a guy who does a short Tonight Show-type monologue, a veterinarian, and many, many running gags. So many running gags that they occasionally wonder on the air how the show ever gets new listeners, since the jokes sometimes go back years and don’t make much sense unless you’ve been listening forever. It airs on 550 AM KTRS in St. Louis, from 3:00 to 6:00 PM, Central Time.

4

I generally listen to either the local sports-talk radio station, KTCK “The Ticket” in Dallas, which probably talks about 50% sports and 50% other “guy stuff”, or I’m tuned to NPR (Fresh Air with Terry Gross, The Diane Rhem Show, Radiolab, etc.).

5

Big fan of Roe Conn and Richard Roeper on WLS afternoons. He had a good run with Gary Meier years ago as well.

Most of the rest of WLS’ lineup is terrible (Don Wade & Roma, Mark Levin) or Meh (Cisco Cotto, Limbaugh, Hannity), but I love Beyond the Beltway on Sunday nights.

Other than that, I listen to a lot of NPR, with a special love for their weekend shows - TAL, Car Talk, WWDTM, etc.

I listen to talk radio 90% of the time my radio is on.

6

Local sports jocks, Coast to Coast, Clark Howard. Used to listen to Savage from 10PM - 1AM until he got kicked to pick up Dave Ramsay who had been kicked from somewhere else. Savage is hilarious. Rants and raves, talks about his beloved poodle (no shit), Teddy, who he brings to the studio and tells anecdotes about growing up in the Bronx and life in San Fran Sicko. Guy is nuts but I like him. Or I did. Can’t stand Ramsay or Handel. Also, listen to Kim Komando on Sunday nights.

7

Larry Meiller, Wisconsin Public Radio. Wonderful call-in show about ecology, pets, gardening, computers or whatever the topic of the day may be.

8

I really think that “Mike & Mike” on ESPN do a great job of being both entertaining and informative for a national audience while remaining respectful and positive. By far a cut above the rest of “guy radio”.

9

I’m a huge talk radio fan. About 10 years ago I was driving my son to the hospital for a routine scheduled checkup and got stuck in traffic. The usual radio station was playing the usual 50 songs that I’d heard 1,000,000 times before.

I started switching around and even went over to <gasp> A.M!

Well, Paul Harvey and “The Rest of the Story” came on and I was hooked. This was informative, entertaining, humorous, and exactly what I needed at the moment.

I kept listening to the A.M. station and was astounded at the quality of the talk shows, news reports, and all around journalism. I’ve been a fan for over 10 years and rarely, if ever, tune back to the F.M. dial while in the car.

Wonderful stuff.

10

NPR. Big Diane Rehm fan.

11

Seconded. Available online. Two pm to 6 pm CDT weekdays. (Is it 6 pm or 7 pm? I forget, and haven’t listened in a few months.)

12

I don’t think I have ever listened to Thom Hartmann and not learned something. He is passionate but rational and polite to guests who don’t agree with him.

If he has one flaw, he let’s some rambling callers on a little long but a great show. I was sad when he left the NYC market and pleasantly surprised when I accidentally hit the AM button on my radio one day and heard him back on in my area.

13

Mostly NPR. I like The Political Junkie and Science Friday, but lots of their “single issue” shows are good.

The ones I can’t tolerate, though, is when they are interviewing some incredibly self-absorbed “human interest” type people. They usually have low, monotonous voices and they tell us how incredibly thoughtful they are about every FUCKING detail of their oh-so-interesting lives. (I guess that’s the classic NPR show with the two chicks and the Shwetty Balls skit). Last week it was somebody who was a vegetarian turned butcher telling us all about the “experience” and how they just had to be authentic in everything they did. I wanted to puke listening to it (which I only did for a few minutes).

I got turned on to Ronn Owens (sp?) on KGO in SF. a few years ago, and he’s OK. A little bombastic at times, but mostly keeps it real and rational. Not sure how much play he gets outside the SF Bay Area.

So my default is NPR. If they have something I’m not interested in, it’s over to KGO. But sometimes I just can’t take KGO because of the commercials.

I recently did a road trip where a lot of time the only radio I could get was AM right-wing talk radio. It was pure comedy for a few minutes, but quickly turned into unlistenable garbage.

14

Used to love listening to Ronn (and that is how he spells his name.) when I lived in the Bay Area. Fantastic at letting callers get just enough rope to hang themselves, and an absolute master at ending calls naturally. I used to like listening to Gene Burns too. Weird what happened with Bernie Ward. And I agree with Stan Shmenge that Dr. Bill Wattenburg is probably the prototype Doper talk radio host. I haven’t listened to talk radio much in years, so I’m not sure if Dr. Dean Edell is still broadcasting. He struck me as very pragmatic in his advice.

Sports talk to me tends to get repetitive, and much more devoted to shtick than analysis. Those hosts that get into detail, like John Harris or Lance Zierlein for football, are consequently really worth listening to. (Who is like that for baseball or basketball, BTW?) Hopefully LZ will be back on the airwaves again soon.

15

Conservatives and liberals both disgust me with the controls they casually advocate being placed over everyone’s life (including mine!). That’s why this show’s fresh approach makes it a never-miss for me:

http://www.freetalklive.com/index.php

16

Dennis Miller’s show has a fresh perspective I like, and Penn Jillette’s was wonderful for that - I miss it!

17

My all-time favorite talk radio personality was Jean Shepherd.

Most people know him only for the movie A Christmas Story, but he had a long and successful career in talk radio*, telling anecdotes, reminiscing, discussing life in general and talking about books and poetry (I remember one entertaining show where he did nothing but discuss the significance of Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here”).

He was a fabulous, spellbinding storyteller on radio.
*he was of course involved in other things including his PBS TV show and writing a number of books (which are also highly worthwhile).

18

Paul Harris, who was much better when he had a regular time slot. He was talk radio for people who don’t like talk radio: no politics, no politicians.

19

I assume this guy was on regular radio somewhere & not just the Internet- Voice of Reason by John Andersen (sp?). He died of a heart attack this past year & his main focus was that he believed in God & Christ BUT he believed Christ was never bodily coming back, that 70 AD wrapped up “End Times prophecy”, Satan & demons do not exist as personal entities, Hell is final destruction of the unrepentant. Guests ranged from Dominionists (Gary DeMar & James B. Jordan) to Emergent pastor Brian McLaren. There were some anti-Zionist guests, alas, and one of the show sponsors was a Revisionist book publisher.

20

Not Jim Rome !!!