Talk Radio: New Voice of Outrage in the Land : Broadcasting: The once denigrated format has found prominence in this campaign season. At talk-show hosts convention, the vice president faces media’s ‘shock troops.’

Jerry Williams was getting angrier by the minute. The top-rated Boston radio personality was sitting behind Dan Quayle on the dais, listening to him address the National Assn. of Radio Talk Show Hosts, and he wasn’t liking all the rhetoric.

Quayle, sitting casually on a stool with a microphone in his hand, had been doing well with this crowd of about 250, talking about Boris Yeltsin, condemning the cop-killing-themed record by rapper Ice-T, extolling family values. But that wasn’t good enough for Williams, whose latest audience-boosting campaign is lifted directly from the satiric film “Network”: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” So Williams, who’s always mad about something, stood up to speak his mind.

“We don’t want you out on a moral crusade. We want to get jobs,” he shouted. “This business of diverting us with the television shows of the cultural elite is so much hogwash!” The audience burst into hearty applause.

Mr. Vice President, meet the shock troops of the New Media.

Radio talk-show hosts are the pioneers of the once-scorned talk and interview programs that are now being hailed as a new force in American politics--the electronic forums for the vox populi and candidates who seek direct, uncut exposure to voters.

Ross Perot’s prospective candidacy, after all, was launched on Larry King’s CNN show, a radio format brought to TV. Radio talk shows jump-started the national anger over congressional pay-raises and check-kiting, even inciting listeners to send tea bags to Congress in an updated version of the Boston Tea Party. And now the radio hosts, a group of former deejays, entrepreneurs and newspeople who have found new work for themselves, had come to Washington to “network” and, above all, revel in all the fresh attention they’ve won.

They were trailed by print reporters, featured on C-SPAN and nightly news broadcasts, and courted by political leaders and media stars, from Bill Clinton to Sam Donaldson.

Carole Hemingway of KGIL-AM in Los Angeles, after hearing the vice president speak to them, said, “Yes, we are more powerful and I feel terrific about that.”

Even so, the talkmeisters spent an inordinate amount of time convincing themselves and others that they’re worthy of respect. The fourth annual convention last week had some of the boosterism of Black Pride or Gay Pride rallies from earlier eras. “Say it loud,” was the unspoken theme, “I’m a talk-show host and I’m proud!”

Or, as one role model, Ph.D.-and-law degree toting Mark Siegel of Seattle, said, “I believe in this profession; it’s equal to any other media.”

Like other aggrieved minority groups, talk-show hosts were struggling to achieve pride after years of being denigrated, particularly by the snooty print press and established networks.

“Talk shows have been the Rodney Dangerfield of the electronic medium,” said Sam Kopper, a frequent radio guest as a spokesman for the Social Security-bashing American Assn. of Boomers. Naturally, he, too, is preparing to launch his own syndicated talk show. At this rate of growth, there will soon be more talk-show hosts than Elvis imitators.

In fact, about 600 stations are devoted primarily to talk shows, triple the number of a decade ago. But the roving opinion-mongers--who generally lose or change jobs about as often as the rest of us buy new suits--still face barriers in their fight for equality with other media.

For one thing, the talkers in Washington wanted to overcome the stereotype of the loud-mouthed rabble-rouser. Unfortunately, one reason for this stereotype is that the most publicized and successful talk-show hosts often are loud-mouthed rabble-rousers. But the industry’s official leaders were eager to put distance between themselves and their more notorious (and richer) brethren, the Rush Limbaughs and Howard Sterns. Michael Harrison, the editor of a newsletter called Talkers and host of Hartford’s WTIC morning shift, insisted: “The movement in talk radio is away from being outrageous. There’s a growth in talk shows that are intelligent, rational and fair.”

Indeed, the talk-show hosts had no trouble attracting the attention of the Washington Establishment. The outpouring of anti-Establishment rage at traditional politicians and media alike, stoked by the talkers, has prompted the insiders to snap to attention. The talk-show hosts, most of whom had been treated as little more than hired hands by their station managers, now found themselves in the unaccustomed position of being fawned over by Washington’s power brokers and pundits. The members of the Washington elite were eager to placate the same folks who’d spent years bashing them or their kind.

Eleanor Clift, a Newsweek writer and a regular on “The McLaughlin Group,” told them, “Your profession has new respect: You are the new shapers of public opinion.”

The new Walter Cronkites were pleased to hear about their ascension to power, but they were still eager to remind everyone of their outsider, voice-of-the-people status. When Sam Donaldson, ABC’s Grand Inquisitor, made the mistake in his keynote speech of defending politicians and downplaying the most publicized congressional outrages of the last few years, Jerry Williams led a charge.

Standing at the floor microphone, his white hair sloping forward, Williams looked up at Donaldson on the platform and said, “You just don’t get it. We hear every day about the incestuous relationship between the President and the press, and you really described it.” They argued about the congressional pay raise, which Donaldson favored, and Williams shot back, “If you came to Massachusetts, you’d see why our listeners are angry. To them, $90,000 is a lot of money!”

Donaldson struggled to calm the irate talkers. “I live here, but I spend most of the time on the road. I know that people are mad as hell,” he said. He turned to flattery, too, conceding, “You have a better handle on what’s going in your area than I do.” That seemed to work, and in the end, he received strong applause.

Gov. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, donned earphones in the KARN-AM studios in Little Rock and was broadcast live on closed-circuit TV to the talk-show hosts in Washington. The talkers were in the strange position of acting like listeners, waiting in line to ask questions and vent their spleen.

And like talk-show hosts everywhere, Clinton had to endure a few harangues from irate callers. Talk-show host Bobby Lee, a real estate broker who bills himself as “The Mouth of the South,” lit into the Democratic presidential contender for not doing enough to keep jobs from being exported overseas. “What will you do for the soul of the country?” he thundered. In contrast, Perot, while not at the convention, was the icon who had made the new visibility of these talk-show hosts possible. His name was invoked constantly, and he was hailed by Michael Harrison as potentially “the first presidential talk-show host,” thanks to his plans for an electronic town hall.