TALK SHOWS BOOMING ON AM STATIONS

Gentlemen, start your mouths.

The dwindling audience that still prefers AM radio to the smooth stereo of FM had better get used to jawboning because music is steadily dying out on the AM band. No fewer than five Los Angeles stations now offer all-talk and/or all-news and at least a half-dozen more devote at least part of their programming to talk shows.

The San Fernando Valley’s KGIL-AM (1260) became the latest outlet to enter the all-talk derby this month with something it calls “Challenging Talk.”

The challenge to listeners is to spend most of the day with NBC’s packaged Talknet programming, beamed by satellite from East Coast hosts like Bruce Williams and Sally Jessy Raphael during the midday and evenings.

But during morning and afternoon drive time, Ventura Freeway commuter prisoners can get some locally produced Valspeak from two KGIL talk hosts: Stan Bohrman (6 to 10 a.m.) and Jim Simon (2 to 6 p.m.).

“We’re concentrating on call-outs rather than call-ins,” Simon told The Times. “There are two good, solid all-news stations in KFWB-AM (980) and KNX-AM (1070). And KABC-AM (790) concentrates on sports talk.

“So what we’re trying to do is call out with fast 4- to 5-minute shots to people of interest rather than have people call in. When a story comes across the wire, we start calling.”

Some of the more notable call-out interviewees during the first two weeks of challenging talk included:

--A court clerk who discussed notable scofflaws following the report that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III failed to show for a jaywalking ticket.

--A Tujunga beekeeper who lamented the discovery of killer bees in the San Joaquin Valley.

--A black security guard at the Capetown Times in South Africa who was the only one in the newspaper office at 2 a.m. when Simon rang to see how apartheid was faring during the Soweto riots.

“He was not a shouter,” Simon said. “He was very controlled, but a little nervous about talking. He did tell us, though, that he thought Ronald Reagan was a racist.”

Simon, who was program director at all-talk king KABC-AM (790) from 1973 through 1976, doesn’t see KGIL immediately toppling its new rival from its lofty position in the Arbitron stratosphere. Partially as a result of its Dodger baseball franchise, KABC consistently finishes second only to KIIS-FM (102.7) in the Arbitron listener ratings.

The first serious KABC challenge came almost a year ago from KIEV-AM (870), which went from a daytime-only outlet to 24 hours a day. Recently, the Federal Communications Commission authorized the station to double its power from 5,000 to 10,000 watts, which should give it a wider audience.

The Glendale station sells much of its air time to any talk-show host who can hustle up his or her own sponsors. That accounts in part for KIEV’s often bizarre free-form talk-show hosts, ranging from an on-air hypnotist and singles counselor/author Susan Block (“Advertising for Love: How to Play the Personals”) to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich and Charles Bronson’s ex-wife, Harriet.

One Sunday-evening host claims to go into a trance, his body and mind being taken over by a 2,000-year-old spirit who schmoozes about life in 1985 A.D. from the viewpoint of a Greco-Roman ghost.

And KFOX-FM (93.5) joined the talking-radio ranks about a year ago as well, concentrating on a block of sports talk along with a healthy helping of country music.

Last month, the Redondo Beach station engineered something of a Southern California coup when it began offering Los Angeles its first gay talk show at 4 p.m. Sunday afternoons.

Even KMPC-AM (710), the only 24-hour-a-day station with a Big Band/nostalgia format in Los Angeles, now delivers the Mutual Broadcasting Network’s “Larry King Show” after midnight.

“I’m getting a little tired of moving every other year,” said ex-KGIL morning deejay Dick Whittington. “It’s embarrassing. It really is. But I think I’ll never age. I’m getting to be a damned war horse.”

(Sweet) Dick Whittington, who bailed out of the morning drive slot July 15 to make way for Bohrman’s new all-talk show, probably holds the record for more station hopping than any other deejay in town. In 25 years of Los Angeles radio, he’s done stints at KLAC-AM (540), KGBS-AM (1020), KHJ-AM (930) and KNOB-FM (92.7) as well as KABC, KIEV and KNX. This last year at KGIL marks the fourth time Whittington has come and gone at that station.

“I first came down here from San Francisco in 1960 to host a game show called ‘The Wedding Game,’ ” Whittington said. “I was going to be the Pat Sajak of my time. It lasted four weeks and I had a wife and children to feed, so I had to do something.”

What he did was get into radio, establishing himself as one of those few Los Angeles deejays, like Robert W. Morgan and Gary Owens, who developed a cult following that jumped with him from station to station and format to format.

“They are pretty loyal,” he said. “Somehow they get my home address and I get messages in my mail box.”

Whittington said he has had offers from stations in Chicago and St. Louis but prefers hanging around Southern California in hopes of adding some more call letters to his multipage resume. If nothing else pans out, there’s always the possibility that the wheel of fortune might finally spin Whittington into the game show kingdom.