Emotion Rides the Radio Airwaves in the Lonely Hours

The caller’s life was a soap opera. Her marriage had just collapsed. In an almost helpless voice, she was telling the late-night talk-show audience--20,000 listeners on KFI-AM radio--about her new man.

“This guy,” she began, “is what I always wanted my husband to be.”

But the words rang hollow. “Oh, God, “ muttered the show’s host, psychologist Laura Schlessinger, cringing at her studio microphone. A computer to Schlessinger’s right glowed with a list of waiting calls--evidence of Los Angeles’ roiling emotions. A clock overhead ticked off seconds of air time.

The caller began to open up, conceding that her new beau was overly critical. “Our last fight,” she said, “was (because) I had gotten scuff marks on his kitchen floor, and I thought . . . “

“Dorothy, Dorothy!” Schlessinger interrupted. “Find the door, and run! . . . This is a warning signal: Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep!”

The dialogue was part of another busy night in the existential realm of late-night radio talk shows, a nether world of fleeting intimacies and turmoil. From politics to sports, war trivia to child-rearing, late-night talk radio is a sounding board for anyone with a thought and a telephone. It is a chance, with the workday done and the kids put to bed, to reach out through the darkness, through the night’s loneliness, and touch someone.

Talk shows fill all or some of the night on nearly a dozen Los Angeles stations, in several languages. They meet federal requirements for public service broadcasting and are inexpensive to run, said KFI spokesman Bill Lewis. “You don’t need a record library,” he said. “You don’t need anything but telephone lines.”

Most shows develop ardent, if narrow, followings, or wink out of existence like shooting stars. Armchair political scholars--mostly an older crowd--tend to ring up the city’s two nocturnal titans: KABC’s Ray Bream, who has dominated his wee-hour time slot for a quarter-century, and KMPC’s Larry King, a newer arrival via long-distance syndication from Washington.

Schlessinger’s program, running live from 9 p.m. to midnight and on tape at 4 a.m., is a highly rated forum for lonely hearts and troubled psyches. At any given moment, 20,000 people are listening, and as many as 100,000 tune in during the live session. Callers hail from as far away as Canada, Florida and Connecticut on nights when atmospheric conditions are right for them to receive the radio station’s signal.

“Nighttimes are a lot more intense” than days, said Schlessinger, 43, a state-licensed therapist who has worked all hours during her 15 years in radio. “That’s when most of us start to dwell on things.”

Like most talk shows, Schlessinger’s is run by a small team. Engineer Casey Bartholomew, a 21-year-old Fullerton College radio student, alerts everyone to commercial breaks and news spots while monitoring sound levels. He occupies a small, darkened studio in the KFI complex near Koreatown. The room is crowded with vast control panels, enormous reel-to-reel recorders and eerily glowing dials and gauges, which Bartholomew mostly ignores as he watches Schlessinger on the air through a giant window.

Next to Bartholomew sits Carolyn Holt, 34, who screens the calls and punches the nature of each problem into a computer, along with the caller’s name, age and city of residence. After almost two years, Holt claims she can tell by the telephonic fervor when there’s a full moon. “I’ll say, ‘Is there a full moon?,’ ” she said, laughing. “And generally, there is.”

On this night, the moon was not yet in the final quarter, but all six incoming lines were jammed several minutes before air time. Holt typed frantically at her keyboard while assuaging raw emotions.

“See if you can stop crying, Marie, long enough to tell her that,” Holt instructed one caller whose sister was dying. Seconds later Holt was quizzing another woman about a love affair. “Are you afraid to leave? What’s the problem?”

Schlessinger was in the main sound studio, a large chamber kept nearly dark, with just a tiny desk lamp, to minimize distractions. Her computer screen showed the calls queuing up. With certain necessities in place--her logbook, a cup of tea and a censor button--Schlessinger opened the show with two humorous stories, and then the calls hit the air.

A man from Fountain Valley, remarried after a divorce, was hurt because his teen-age son suddenly wished to live with his real mother in Ohio.

A woman from San Diego had found a mysterious videotape in the closet--her husband’s footage of a woman in sexy lingerie, posing seductively on a bed. And the star of the film was his boss’s wife.

A young caller from Laguna Hills was burned out. Her best friend had become pregnant, married a man who abused her and now complained constantly, threatening suicide.

Schlessinger dealt with the travails by alternately dispensing thoughtful advice, quick-witted one-liners or--in a few cases--blunt rebukes.

A distraught man had just learned that his 19-year-old daughter was raped several years ago by an in-law. “The first instinct,” he said stiffly, “is to kill.”

“Not a good plan,” Schlessinger admonished.

The call lasted several minutes. She urged him to find out why the daughter had decided to talk about it now--what did she need emotionally?--and urged that he go to the authorities. “Call back if you need to talk,” she urged softly. “Hang in there, Dad.”

Disconnecting the call, she exhaled audibly.

As the night moved on, the panoply of problems seemed only to worsen. Schlessinger gesticulated with both arms; she rolled her eyes in occasional moments of exasperation.

A tiny-voiced woman complained of being “too wimpy.” A 22-year-old had fended off sexual advances from her teen-age stepson. A 14-year-old boy was forbidden to see his grown sister. A 12-year-old girl was angry about her mother’s domineering, live-in boyfriend.

“Where’s your dad?” Schlessinger asked her.

“In jail.”

“What did he do?”

“He beats up women.”

At 11:56, the phone lines were still flashing. The next-to-last conversation was with a gay West Hollywood man, Michael, who was caring for a friend with AIDS. Michael was drained. He kept giving and giving, he said, and “the people I love keep dying.”

Schlessinger gazed downward. Her eyes teared up. She talked about self-renewal, how you can’t give if you’re empty, if you’re not creative. Upon learning that the caller had put off applying for a film job he wanted, she gave him a next-day deadline for mailing two resumes.

“That’s it?” Michael asked.

“What did you think I was going to do? Come over and make you spaghetti?”

He chuckled, sounding happier. “You do make me laugh.”