Talk radio is most popular on the
AM band. "Non-commercial", usually referred to as "
public radio", which is mainly located in a reserved spectrum of the
FM band, also broadcasts talk programs. Commercial all-talk stations can also be found on the FM band in many cities across the US. These shows often rely less on political discussion and analysis than their AM counterparts and often employ the use of pranks and "bits" for entertainment purposes. In the
United States and
Canada,
satellite radio services offer uncensored "free-wheeling" original programming.
ABC News & Talk is an example of "repackaging" for the digital airwaves shows featured on their terrestrial radio stations.
History Expressing and debating political opinions has been a staple of radio since the medium's infancy.
Aimee Semple McPherson began her radio broadcasts in the early 1920s and even purchased her station,
KFSG which went on the air in February 1924; by the mid-1930s, controversial radio priest Father
Charles Coughlin's radio broadcasts were reaching millions per week. There was also a national current events forum called
America's Town Meeting of the Air which broadcast once a week starting in 1935. It featured panel discussions from some of the biggest newsmakers and was among the first shows to allow audience participation: members of the studio audience could question the guests or even heckle them. Talk radio as a listener-participation format has existed since the 1930s. John J. Anthony (1902–1970) was an announcer and DJ on New York's WMRJ. It was located in the Merrick Radio Store at 12 New York Boulevard in Jamaica, Long Island. After some marital troubles, refusing to pay alimony and child support, he sought professional help and began his radio series where listeners would call in with their problems in 1930. Radio historians consider this the first instance of talk radio. While working for New York's
WMCA in 1945,
Barry Gray was bored with playing music and put a telephone receiver up to his microphone to talk with bandleader
Woody Herman. This was soon followed by listener call-ins and Gray is often billed as "the hot mama of talk radio".
Herb Jepko was another pioneer. Author Bill Cherry proposed George Roy Clough as the first to invite listeners to argue politics on a call-in radio show at KLUF, his station in Galveston, Texas, as a way to bring his political views into listeners' homes. (He later became
Mayor of Galveston). Cherry gives no specific date, but the context of events and history of the station would seem to place it also in the 1940s, perhaps earlier. The format was the classic mode in which the announcer gave the topic for that day, and listeners called in to debate the issue. In 1948, Alan Courtney – New York disk jockey and co-composer of the popular song "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio" – began a call-in program for the Storer station in Miami, Florida (WGBS) and then on Miami's WQAM, WINZ and WCKR. The "Alan Courtney Open Phone Forum" flourished as an avowedly conservative and anti-communist political forum with a coverage area over the Southeastern U.S. and Cuba.
Joe Pyne,
John Nebel,
Jean Shepherd, and
Jerry Williams (
WMEX-Boston) were among the first to explore the medium in the 1950s. A breakthrough in talk radio occurred in 1960 at KLAC in Los Angeles. Alan Henry, a broadcaster in his early thirties, had been hired by John Kluge, president of Metromedia in 1963. Henry had previously worked in such diverse markets as Miami, Florida; Waterloo, Iowa; Hartford, Connecticut; and St. Louis, Missouri. KLAC was dead last in the ratings but Kluge wanted a big Metromedia presence in Los Angeles. He sent Henry from New York to Los Angeles to turn KLAC into a success. The first thing that Henry did was hire the legendary morning team of Lohman and Barkley. Henry had built a strong relationship with programmer Jim Lightfoot, who had joined Henry in Miami. A unique opportunity presented itself when Joe Pyne, who had begun his career as a radio talk personality in Pennsylvania, was fired by KABC in Los Angeles. The speculation was that Pyne was too controversial and confrontational for the ABC corporate culture. Henry hired Pyne on the spot and paid him $25,000 a year, which was then a huge salary for a radio personality. Pyne was given the night show on KLAC. Part of the agreement with Pyne was that Henry and Lightfoot would give him broad control of his program content. The show was an immediate success. Henry encouraged the confrontation with listeners and guests for which Pyne became famous. Pyne coined the line "Go gargle with razor blades," for guests with whom he disagreed. The Pyne show was the beginning of the confrontational talk format that later spread across the radio spectrum. At one point in the 1960s, the Joe Pyne show was syndicated on over 250 radio stations in the United States. In an odd turn of events, Pyne's radio show led him to television. Henry suggested to John Kluge that Joe Pyne should be put on Metromedia's newly acquired TV station in Los Angeles, KTTV-TV. Kluge told Henry to speak to KTTV-TV general manager Al Kriven, but Henry had already done that, and Kriven had adamantly refused. Kluge telephoned Kriven, and Pyne soon became the nation's first controversial late-night talk television host.
The Joe Pyne Show on KTTV-TV quickly shot to the top of the ratings. The format later proliferated on cable television with a variety of new hosts, many of them taking on a similar persona to Joe Pyne. Joe Pyne and Alan Henry were major factors in establishing a new trend in radio and television programming. Alan Henry elaborates on the launching of Joe Pyne on KLAC radio and KTTV-TV in his memoir
A Man and His Medium. Two
radio stations –
KMOX, 1120
AM in
St. Louis, Missouri, and
KABC, 790 AM in
Los Angeles – adopted an all-
talk show format in 1960, and both claim to be the first to have done so. KABC station manager Ben Hoberman and KMOX station manager
Robert Hyland independently developed the all-talk format.
KTKK, 630 AM in Salt Lake City, then known as KSXX, adopted a full-time talk schedule in 1965 and is the third station in the country to have done so. KSXX started with all local talent, and KTKK, which now airs on 1640 AM, has a larger portion of its schedule featuring local talent than most other stations that run a full schedule of talk. In the 1970s and early 1980s, as many listeners abandoned AM music formats for the
high fidelity sound of
FM radio, the talk radio format began to catch on in more large cities. Former music stations such as
KLIF (
Dallas,
Texas),
WLW (
Cincinnati, Ohio),
WHAS (
Louisville, Kentucky),
WHAM (
Rochester, New York),
WLS (
Chicago, Illinois),
KFI (
Los Angeles,
California),
WRKO (
Boston,
Massachusetts),
WKBW (
Buffalo, New York), and
WABC (
New York, New York) made the switch to all-talk as their ratings slumped due to listener migration to the FM band. Since the turn of the 21st century, with many music listeners now migrating to digital platforms such as
Pandora Radio,
Sirius XM Radio, and the numerous variations of the
iPod, talk radio has been expanding on the FM side of the dial as well.
Shock Hot talk, also called
FM talk or
shock talk, is a talk radio format geared predominantly to a male demographic between the ages of 18 and 49. It generally consists of
pop culture subjects on
FM radio rather than the political talk found on AM radio. Hosts of hot talk shows are usually known as
shock jocks.
Clear Channel Communications (which became iHeartMedia in 2015) has a select few hot talk stations under the moniker
Real Radio, while
CBS Radio once had a larger chain of hot talkers known as
Free FM, though the brand was abandoned after a post-Howard Stern attempt to network the format failed within a year. It is usually found on FM radio
active rock,
classic rock, and country stations in morning drive, as the actual hot talk formatted stations have only achieved mediocre success as a whole compared to AM or conservative talk radio, or even FM music radio. It is also effectively a format that is unviable during an average workday in North America, due to the format's tendency to discuss topics wholly inappropriate for a workplace setting, and outside of discussions of attractiveness, largely repels women as regular listeners. In March 2018, CBS Radio's corporate successor Entercom (now
Audacy, Inc.) attempted a hot talk format in San Diego with
KEGY 97.3 The Machine. It featured a weekday lineup devoted to hot talk programs, blocks of
classic rock interspersed with comedy bits during off-peak hours, and coverage of
San Diego Padres baseball. However, the station attracted controversy later that month, when an advertisement for the station's forthcoming morning show
Kevin Klein Live (which invited listeners to "jump ... to a new morning show", accompanied by a picture of the
Coronado Bridge) was criticized for glorifying
suicide by bridge jumping. The ensuing controversy prompted the Padres to scrutinize KEGY's direction; executive
Ron Fowler voiced concerns over the team being associated with KEGY's "shock jock" content, threatening to possibly cut ties with the station and Entercom. Kevin Klein's program never premiered, and the hot talk format was ultimately dropped on April 12, 2018, in favor of a conventional sports format as
97.3 The Fan. In 2019,
JVC Media began to establish a hot talk network in Florida branded as
Florida Man Radio (in reference to the "
Florida Man"
internet meme), beginning with
WDYZ in Orlando. The network has picked up personalities such as
Shannon Burke and
Ed Tyll, with the syndicated
Bubba the Love Sponge serving as its morning show. In 2022, after receiving the station in a trade from Audacy,
Beasley Broadcast Group's
KXTE in Las Vegas shifted to a hot talk format for its weekday lineup, which consists primarily of syndicated morning shows (including
Dave and Mahoney, for which it is the flagship station, as well as
Free Beer and Hot Wings, and
Dave & Chuck the Freak from sister
WRIF in Detroit). The genre has also shown up on
satellite radio and in
podcasting, which typically have more creative freedom due to the lack of indecency rules and lower reliance on corporate advertising. Other U.S. hosts specialize in talk radio
comedy, such as
Phil Hendrie, who voices his fictional guests and occasionally does parodies of other programs.
Political The
United States saw dramatic growth in the popularity of talk radio during the 1990s due to the repeal of the
Federal Communications Commission's post-war
Fairness Doctrine of 1949, in 1987. The mandate of the
Fairness Doctrine was to require that audiences were exposed to a diversity of viewpoints. It had required the holders of broadcast licenses to "present controversial issues of public importance" and to do so in a manner that was, in the commission's view, "honest, equitable and balanced". Its repeal provided an opportunity for a kind of partisan political programming with commercial appeal that had not previously existed. The most successful pioneer in the early 1990s' talk radio movement in the US was the
politically conservative commentator
Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh's success demonstrated that there was a nationwide market for a passionately delivered conservative polemic on contemporary news, events, and social trends, and changed the face of how the talk radio business was conducted. Unrestrained (by the Fairness Doctrine), cheering for one's political party, and especially against the other, had become popular entertainment which rapidly changed the way politics nationally was discussed, perceived, and conducted. Other radio talk show hosts (who describe themselves as either conservative or
libertarian) have also had success as nationally syndicated hosts, including
Hugh Hewitt,
Sean Hannity,
Jon Arthur,
Glenn Beck,
Michael Medved,
Laura Ingraham,
Neal Boortz,
Michael Savage,
Bill O'Reilly,
Larry Gaiters, and
Mark Levin. The
Salem Radio Network syndicates a group of religiously oriented Republican activists, including
evangelical Christian
Hugh Hewitt and Jewish conservatives
Dennis Prager and
Michael Medved; these are mostly distributed in a 24-hour network format among Salem's stations, and they generally earn ratings much less than their syndicated counterparts. In the summer of 2007, conservative talk show hosts mobilized public opposition to the
McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill, which eventually failed. Conservative hosts Limbaugh, Ingraham, Bennett, Prager, Hannity, Beck, Levin, and Hewitt coalesced around endorsing former Massachusetts governor
Mitt Romney for
president at the end of January 2008 (after
Fred Thompson, the described favorite of some of the hosts, dropped out), to oppose the nomination of Senator
John McCain; however, Romney suspended his campaign in February of the same year and endorsed McCain. During the primaries, Limbaugh in particular had endorsed a plan to do whatever it took to prolong the Democrats' nomination by encouraging political conservatives to cross over to the
Democrats and voting for the trailing candidate, a plan he called "
Operation Chaos". Conservative talk show hosts also lent their unified support for congressional candidate
Doug Hoffman, a conservative third-party candidate who was running in
New York's 23rd congressional district special election, 2009, against a liberal Republican (
Dierdre Scozzafava) and a mainstream Democrat (
Bill Owens). The unified support from the conservative base helped propel Hoffman to frontrunner status and effectively killed Scozzafava's campaign, forcing her to drop out of the race several days before the election. This effort backfired on the conservative hosts, as the Democratic candidate Owens won in part thanks to Scozzafava's endorsement of Owens. Local hosts, such as Los Angeles's
John and Ken, have also proven effective in influencing the political landscape.
Libertarians such as
Dennis Miller (based in
Los Angeles), Jon Arthur, host of
Jon Arthur Live! (based in Florida), Patti Brooks
KGMI (based in the Pacific Northwest), Free Talk Live (based in
New Hampshire),
Penn Jillette (based in
Las Vegas),
Jay Severin (based in
Boston,
Massachusetts), and
Mark Davis (based in
Fort Worth and
Dallas,
Texas) have also achieved some success. Many of these hosts also publish books, write newspaper columns, appear on television, and give public lectures. Politically
liberal talk radio aimed at a national audience also emerged in the mid-2000s.
Air America, a network featuring
The Al Franken Show, was founded in 2004. It billed itself as a "progressive alternative" to the conservative talk radio shows. Some prominent examples of liberal talk radio shows either previously or currently in national syndication include:
Dial Global talk show hosts
Ed Schultz (who moved on to hosting on
MSNBC and later on
RT America),
Stephanie Miller,
Thom Hartmann, and
Bill Press;
Norman Goldman (not with Dial Global and is a self-described independent) is still included on syndication stations – see
WCPT (AM). Goldman began as the high-rating fill-in host and "Senior Legal Analyst" for Ed Schultz before launching his show;
The Young Turks; Fox former co-host of Hannity and Colmes,
Alan Colmes, First Amendment Radio Network libertarian host
Jon Arthur, and
Mike Malloy, progressive radio
WFTE FM's
Dorothy And Dick, and Premiere's
Randi Rhodes (not on radio 2015). In some markets, local liberal hosts have existed for years, such as the British talk host
Michael Jackson (who was on the air at
KABC in Los Angeles beginning in 1968 and is currently at
KMZT);
Bernie Ward in
San Francisco; Jack Ellery in New Jersey and Tampa;
Dave Ross in Seattle, and
Marc Germain in Los Angeles. A few earlier syndicated programs were hosted by prominent Democrats who were not experienced broadcasters, such as
Jim Hightower,
Jerry Brown,
Mario Cuomo, and
Alan Dershowitz; these met with limited success, and Air America has been faced with various legal and financial problems. Air America was sold to a new owner in March 2007, hired well-known programmer David Bernstein, and began its "re-birth." Bernstein subsequently left in early 2008, but the struggling network remained on the air with a revamped line-up. On January 21, 2010, Air America radio ceased live programming citing a difficulty with the current economic environment and announced that it would file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy production and liquidate itself. The network ended operations on January 25, 2010. Clear Channel/iHeartMedia, with nearly 1,300 radio stations under its ownership – along with other owners – has in recent years added more
liberal talk stations to their portfolio. These have primarily come from the conversion of AM facilities, most of which formerly had
adult standards formats. Many complaints (all radio stations are required by the FCC to maintain, in their public files, copies of all correspondence from the public relating to station operations – for a period of three years from receipt) have been received from fans of this musical genre (
Tony Bennett,
Frank Sinatra,
big band music," etc.) – but the left-leaning talk programming leans toward a much younger
demographic, a group that advertisers covet. More recently, however, Clear Channel has been dropping liberal formats in favor of their own
Fox Sports Radio network. By 2014, most liberal talk stations had abandoned the format, forcing hosts to find other ways to distribute their programming. Liberal opinion radio has long existed on the
Pacifica network, though only available in a small number of major cities, and in formats that more often act as a volunteer-run community forum than as a platform for charismatic hosts who would be likely to attract a large audience. The one major host to become popular on the network is
Amy Goodman, whose
Democracy Now! interview and journalism program is broadcast nationwide. Conservative critics have long complained that the long-format news programming on
National Public Radio (NPR) shows a liberal bias, although this was disputed once in 2004 by
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a
progressive media criticism organization, which found that, for example, "representatives of think tanks to the right of center outnumbered those to the left of center by more than four to one: 62 appearances to 15." National Public Radio itself denies any partisan agenda. Politically oriented talk programs on the network are in the mold of
Talk of the Nation, which was designed to be a soundboard for the varied opinions of listeners. While politically oriented talk is still heard on the AM dial (mostly the conservative format), it has seen some expanding onto the FM dial. One notable example was
WPGB in
Pittsburgh, which switched to a talk format in 2004 after years of having several different music formats, branding itself as "FM News Talk 104.7" due to the relative uncommonness of politically oriented talk on the FM side of the dial even in 2013 while FM talk, in general, has expanded. Owned by Clear Channel and stylized as one of Clear Channel's typical conservative-leaning AM talk stations, WPGB's ratings were steadily high during its time as a talk station, whereas the station's numerous music formats were among the lowest in the Pittsburgh market before switching. Clear Channel, which owns WPGB, has shifted some of their talk stations from full-power FM signals to lower-range translator stations which use AM or
HD Radio subchannel stations to originate those broadcasts; WPGB fired its
morning show in December 2013 and switched back to music in August 2014, selling the format rights to AM station
WJAS.
Insults, advice and mystery There had been some precursors for talk radio show stars, such as the Los Angeles-area controversialist
Joe Pyne, who would attack callers on his program in the early 1960s – one of his famous insults was "gargle with razor blades"; the similar
Bob Grant in New York City; and
Wally George in Southern California. Talk radio also included personal relationship consultants such as
Laura Schlessinger and
Barbara De Angelis both heard on
KFI AM in Los Angeles. Host
Larry Elder on
KABC (AM) was a lawyer before entering the talk radio market.
Leo Laporte offers consumers computer advice. Business and real estate advice shows, paid health supplement presentations and religious programs are widely available.
Paranormal radio shows have had a place on radio for several decades; while the format has never been successful on a full-time basis, it has proven popular in the overnight
graveyard slot. Long John Nebel's program was one of the first to devote itself to the concept before it was further fleshed out by
Art Bell, whose
Coast to Coast AM went on to have comparable popularity to daytime talk hosts of his era. Bell had a long-running, on-and-off relationship with the show he founded, often leaving the show and returning on an erratic basis, also starting up new shows such as
Dreamland, ''
Art Bell's Dark Matter,
and Midnight in the Desert
only to quit them a few weeks into their run; Bell died in 2018. Coast to Coast AM'' continues with
George Noory as the permanent lead host, with a rotating host on weekends. Clyde Lewis and
Jason Hawes also host nationally syndicated paranormal shows.
Sports Sports talk radio can be found locally and nationally in the US; as of 2013, five national full-time sports talk networks exist. The oldest existing network, dating to 1991, is
SportsMap (although it has only been branded as such since 2020 and has rebranded frequently over the years). Market leader
ESPN Radio followed shortly thereafter in 1992, followed by
Fox Sports Radio c. 2000 and the near-concurrent entries of CBS Sports Radio (now
Infinity Sports Network) and
NBC Sports Radio in late 2012 and early 2013. Most of these, however, air on weak, low-budget AM stations; the most successful sports talk stations operate primarily with local programs and supplement their programming with the
broadcasting of sports events, usually involving the local teams in the
major professional sports leagues. This adds significant expenses to the station's operations, and must be balanced carefully with the regular talk schedule, as an incendiary view about the team by a host can lead to that team pulling their broadcasts from the station. Local stations may also hire personalities with
polarizing opinions about sports topics and athletes to make some kind of national impact that might turn off listeners, and in large markets, sports talk stations may be made up of personalities
who pay stations for their show time and their advertising, disallowing any natural flow between each program, along with in-station competitions about whose show has the most impact.
Ratings Pew researchers found in 2004 that 17% of the public regularly listens to talk radio. This audience is mostly male, middle-aged, and conservative. Among those who regularly listen to talk radio, 41% are Republican and 28% are Democrats. Furthermore, 45% describe themselves as conservatives, compared with 18% who say they are progressive/liberals. In 2011, the
Arbitron portable people meter ratings system, compiled data suggesting that out of 11 nationally rated radio formats, talk radio had lost nearly the most market share and ratings continue to slide. In 2013, Arbitron's executive summary noted that " 92% of consumers aged 12 years and older listen to the radio each week" and "news-talk-information and talk-personality remained number one in PPM markets and number two in the rest of the U.S." Some of the
most-listened-to radio programs in the United States are talk radio shows or have talk radio elements like
The Sean Hannity Show and
All Things Considered. ==See also==