RADIO REVIEW : Stern in L.A.--Classic New York

The way concerned citizens of the East Coast used to talk about venomously cynical radio personality Howard Stern--back in less shock-proof, pre-Dice, pre-2 Live Crew days--he might have been the Antichrist.

Now that he’s finally made it to Los Angeles, just call him the Anti-Ladd.

That title is in honor of his contrariness to everything represented by Jim Ladd, the infamously hippie deejay holding down the nighttime shift on KLSX-FM (97.1), the station that has imported New York-based Stern to fill in the morning slot via satellite. Stern and Ladd are yin and yang. Evil and good. Goofus and Gallant.

That Stern’s persona is positively hateful goes without saying, but he has a quickness and inherent intellect you won’t find in the overt boorishness of an Andrew Dice Clay. His shtick is subtler, more mellow and less exaggeratedly bigoted, which makes his Stern rebukes both funnier and, at times, more disturbing. Anyone who doesn’t laugh at any of his nonchalant, slice-and-dice remarks truly has no malice in his or her heart. It also follows that anyone who doesn’t cringe upon having chuckled has no heart.

Moral qualms withstanding, does his show (which premiered in Los Angeles Thursday morning) work purely as the kind of politically incorrect comedy where someone finally says what everyone thinks but won’t dare speak?

Only occasionally. Locals previously have been exposed to Stern chiefly through his guest shots with David Letterman, where for a few irreverent minutes he can be a quick and easy guilty pleasure. But Stern’s morning show runs anywhere from four to five hours, with no music and infrequent commercial breaks. Bathroom belly laughs do come along, to be sure, but to share more than one-sixth of your weekday life with him is something like death.

And a dirtied stream of consciousness it is. There’s little structure beyond Stern’s bantering with straight-woman/sidekick Robin Quivers, who guffaws like a slightly more participatory Ed McMahon. Typical bit: She reads a news item about a famous actress who had mastectomies and is now pregnant; he jumps in with a crack about hoping the baby doesn’t get hungry.

On a duller note, far too much time was given over Thursday and Friday to obsessively self-referential Stern reacting to his own L.A. press or taking on drive-time deejays who have “stolen” his act. (Reading a Liz Smith item about a doctor who treats celebrity HIV sufferers, and wondering who they are, he added, “I hope it’s Mark and Brian.”)

But even if his competitors have plagiarized him, Stern isn’t exactly away from the morning pack at this point--although, to his credit, he is more dangerous, less toadying and less of a hostage to format. He derided KLOS-FM’s top-rated Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps as deejays who merely do “stunts.” What, then, would he call antics like Lesbian Dating Game (a regular Stern feature scheduled for next week), or the offer to let Quivers sleep with a male listener if the show reaches No. 1 in the ratings?