THE ‘80s A Special Report :...

“What is the most disgusting thing that you have ever put into your mouth?” might not be the preferred topic of discussion around the Christmas dinner table or even in the locker room at the YMCA, but it did mark one of the nadir’s in radio broadcasting during the ‘80s.

KFI-AM’s Tom Leykis, an itinerant talk show host who has done stints in Phoenix and Miami before landing in Los Angeles two years ago, assumed the dubious distinction of being the first talk show host in decades to get his station fined by the Federal Communications Commission for indecent programming. Not only did he devote three hours one Saturday afternoon last winter to a discussion of disgusting oral fixations, he also threw the phones open to a lively give and take on sexual secrets and penis measurements.

KFI management paid the fine without comment last month and kept on broadcasting.

But Leykis’ topics were not altogether new.

The godfather of indecent programming, New York’s Howard Stern, outdid Leykis by getting himself chastised by the FCC twice--once in 1987, when the commission first began cracking down and again in October, when KFI was fined. Stern, the most notorious of the so-called “shock jocks,” spawned a trend in radio in the mid-’80s that appears to be growing rather than fading with the beginning of a new decade, despite the FCC’s newfound vigilance. Though not nearly as ribald as Stern, popular Los Angeles deejays such as KLOS’s Mark and Brian and KQLZ’s (Pirate Radio) Scott Shannon have become bolder on the sexual innuendo front as the ‘80s have waned.

Polite conversation and clever comedy appear to be as anachronistic in current radio waves as Arthur Godfrey and Fred Allen. The question America’s shock jocks seem more prone to want to answer for their audiences nowadays is: “What is the most disgusting thing that we can make come out of our mouths?”

The Taste Makers project was edited by David Fox, assistant Sunday Calendar editor.