Yes it should be show
Back when “Hey Jude” came out my friend and I called the request line over and over using as many ridiculous aliases as we could come up with. Imagine our delight when the DJ played the song and dedicated it to “Ernie sitting in a tree somewhere.”
Diving into my memory bank, one of the more memorable calls involved the only reference I ever heard on the show to a certain classic Canadian power-prog trio.
One day, a caller said he played in a band called Hot Sex, that did Rush covers. Bob replied, “Well, Rush have put out some pretty intelligent stuff; I can hardly imagine it being covered by a band called Hot Sex!” At that moment, the caller’s friend picked up the extension and started yelling, “Slayer is God.”
That kind of thing.
In the early 1990s, some scandals were exposed, including Bob’s own divorce, and multiple radio station cancellations because he did not hold back on his opinion of Bill Clinton (in short, he apparently believed the stories about drug running, serial killing, etc.) and I stopped listening to it even though it was on a station in the city where I moved in 1990s to attend college.
omg my coworker used to listen to that drivel. Larson would claim to get letters from Satan telling him to give up his crusade, and that it was better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Larson probably knew that none of his fans ever heard of Milton.
There was another show on that Christian station that had some preacher from Texas who screamed a lot. He related a story of how people were begging him to save them from a fortune teller. He said “I must have saved 70 or 80 people that day.” He then said the fortune teller came to his service, screamed “I hate you!” and said she was going to bring him a pie and “Ima gonna put POISON in it!” He said “Do me a favor woman, and make mine lemon meringue!”
For some reason I thought of an evening talk show I’d tune into while driving home from work in Houston years ago. It attracted a number of right-wing callers, one of whom was a Hispanic-sounding dude who used to phone in regularly, fulminating about “Beel Clin-tone”.
OK, what has “Beel Clin-tone” done now?
I remember when Vancouver DJ Howie the Hitman had a breakdown on air and started playing Van Halen’s Jump over and over again. Eventually someone from management called to ask what the hell was going on and Howie played the call live on the air. It was… awkward.
We had a sports talk show, and when the host didn’t agree with the caller’s opinion, he would yell “You’re gone!”, and you would hear the sound of a machine gun.
Letting callers go “violently” was a long-time Tom Leykis feature.
Long ago, I used to call into the Classic Rock station and win tickets and other goodies. If I won, I’d say something corny, usually somewhat off-color. One time I said, “Far Out, Man! I’m Sportin’ Wood!”
Well, that was on tape, and they mixed that into one of the station ID spots, so I got to hear myself several times a day for a long time being foolish. 
While stationed in the Army in Monterey a local radion station was promoting advertising and had a commercial about how radio was superior to tv. They said they were building a twenty foot high ice cream sundae and used sound effects to put it in your mind. The final sound was a cherry plopping on top, dropped from a helicopter and the narrator said :”Try doing that on television!” This was in the 80’s, way nefore CGI
That is so cool! Id’a died laughing at that.
I remember when Rush Limbaugh first went nationwide, in the late 1980s, and he would do “Caller Abortions”, accompanied by the sound of a blender, and “Condom Updates”, with the theme song being “Up, Up, And Away.” At that time, I think he really did put non-staged callers on the air.
This leads to another “Bob” story.
MAD magazine had a thing about “First sentence of celebrity interviews” and Richard Gere’s was “Please, it’s not true! Doesn’t anyone have any questions that don’t pertain to this?”
A called to Bob’s show mentioned “that gerbil story that’s going around - people using gerbils for sex instead of another human being” and Bob obviously hadn’t heard about, saying, “People don’t have sex with gerbils!” The next caller said, “Well, that gerbil story’s been promoted on this same station that you’re on here in (names his town).” Bob said, “What?” and the caller said, “It’s been promoted on this same station that you’re on here in town, and it’s kind of sick and it’s not true anyway.” The second caller proceeded to name the preacher who was discussing this, and Bob basically said he was a crackpot.
I remember that advert!
Howard Stern had a few gems.
There were a couple who had taken cat tranquilizers and mainly rambled, asking if this was the needle exchange. Stern amiably let them embarrass themselves on the air.
(before cell phones) A young woman called up with a sexy voice, telling Stern all the naughty things she wanted to do with him. Then, there were sounds of her call breaking up. Stern asked what was going on, and she said her mother was trying to disconnect the phone line. Stern and Robin told her “Don’t let her do it!” She could then be heard telling her mother to stop, then “Oh my god, you are such a bitch!” before the call went dead.
Some caller with OCD (could have been staged, but this was such a random thing) kept repeating he was Dr. Remulac. He’d call, repeat “I am Dr. Remulac” to Stern’s screeners, until they finally let him on the air. Turns out he would talk normally with Stuttering John, but with everybody else, would repeat his identity as Dr. Remulac. Remulac is the home planet of SNL’s the Coneheads.
May I ask what the hell WAS going on?
Wasn’t there a radio call in show where most (if not all) of the callers were fake?
I wish I knew. It’s possible Howie was having a mental health issue or it’s possible he was mad at the station’s management for something pay (or etc.) related. But record of this hasn’t made it into the 21st century, probably because it wasn’t Howie’s proudest moment. He’s still around these days but even if I knew how to contact him I’m not sure I’d want to ask. He was going through some shit, that much was clear.
String, or nothing!