Talk Radio: At the Mike, If Not White Lean Right : Radio: Mike Wallace Talk Radio: The trend toward conservative programming is yet another factor that is robbing minorities of key positions.
On Election Day 1992, Steve West--the only African-American daily talk host at KVI-AM in Seattle and the station’s only host supporting Bill Clinton--was fired. Although Program Director Brian Jennings offered other explanations for ending West’s six-month show, he acknowledged politics indirectly played a role. “You don’t generally put a different political philosophy on right after Rush (Limbaugh) to be successful.”
There are many reasons why minorities have not made it, in significant numbers, in mainstream talk radio--not the least of which is probably old-fashioned prejudice--either prejudice in hiring or a fear of prejudice on the part of listeners. But now there is an added edge. In that very small pool, some are being squeezed out by the conservative trend in radio talk.
On June 24, Joe Madison, with 15 years in talk, lost a 9 a.m.-to-noon slot at WWRC-AM outside Washington in a two-way switch to make room for Pat Buchanan. Madison, a former political director of the NAACP who subsequently took a position in the newsroom, says that the daily talk lineup at the station, with the exception of Larry King, is now mostly conservative white male. “There’s no question I had two things going against me,” said Madison bitterly. “I am black and I have a moderate-to-liberal perspective.”
Program Director Peter Laufer insists Madison will be even more “high profile” as a newsman. Asserting that he wants “a smorgasbord of ideas” and that the local host taking Madison’s slot is “almost hideously middle of the road,” Laufer maintains that the Buchanan show will provide balance because it is “point-counterpoint” with a rotating list of liberal co-hosts.
“(Buchanan) has marquee value and this is show business,” said Laufer, whose station is the flagship for “Pat Buchanan & Company” (noon to 3 p.m.) He also cited the competition from Limbaugh (noon to 3 p.m. on WMAL-AM), whose widely syndicated program has made him a conservative icon, and from Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy (on WJFK-FM 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m.), whose newer talk gig is blossoming.
Come October, Bob Ray Sanders at KLIF-AM in Dallas, native Texan and African-American who says that he is “anti-death penalty, anti-guns, all those things Texans hold dear” will lose his 8-10 p.m. talk show. The Minnesota North Stars hockey team is moving to Dallas, and with a slew of night games, Sanders would have essentially been gone anyway. Asked whether his liberalism was the reason the station didn’t find another berth for him, Sanders replied: “They say not. I’m sure the thing had more to do with ratings even though we have the phones”--callers, being the lifeblood of talk.
“For whatever reason,” he added, “the nature of the beast we call talk radio has emerged as a Right voice.”
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The Times was able to identify only 12 full-time weekday hosts who are members of minority groups among the 1,000 or so general-market talk stations. Three of them are on public radio, which tends to be more liberal. All the minority hosts are black with the exception of Ray Suarez of Puerto Rican lineage, who since April has been host of “Talk of the Nation” on National Public Radio. (In November, 1991, Radio & Records, the industry paper, counted 14 full-time minority hosts among 73 commercial stations in the top 100 markets; 62 others had part-time or fill-in slots.)
Meanwhile, Mexican-born Raoul Lowery Contreras, newspaper columnist based in Oceanside and a former member of the California Republican State Committee, is expected to become the first syndicated minority on mainstream radio next month. He’s conservative--”100% against abortion, for capital punishment,” and, says the ex-Marine, “for a strong pro-American foreign policy.” On immigration, however, Contreras favors “open borders.” American Entertainment Network has lined up about 20 stations thus far to carry the program, the largest in El Paso, Tex.
On Los Angeles radio, the only minority with a full-time talk slot is conservative Errol Smith on KIEV-AM (870) in Glendale, which also airs longtime white conservative George Putnam. In New York, with no daily minority hosts on general market stations, the hot new Sunday night team at WABC-AM is James Golden, who is black, a Limbaugh screener (known on the show as Bo Snerdley) who shares some of the host’s views, and Joel Santisteban, Cuban-American and more to the center.
At KNUS-AM in Denver, morning host Ken Hamblin, a Denver Post columnist, is conservative. At WGST-AM in Atlanta, nighttime talker “Ralph From Ben Hill” is conservative on hot-button social issues--anti-abortion, anti-gay. His show is also defined by sheer outrageousness--sometimes serious, sometimes comic and sometimes you can’t tell the difference.
Nevertheless, a certain reluctance to hire minorities in prominent on-air positions probably has existed as long as talk radio itself.
“It’s obvious to me racism plays a major major (role),” said Ray Taliaferro of KGO-AM in San Francisco. “What else could it be? It simply could not be that after all these years there are so few non-whites holding significant (talk) positions.”
Taliaferro, a liberal, is the longest-running minority radio talk host. As a local official of the NAACP who had appeared as a radio guest, he was sought out back in 1968 by the owner of an Oakland station. Later he moved to KGO where he holds down the 1-5 a.m. slot. The late 1960s was a time when stations were actively recruiting minorities.
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As for what’s been happening since the breakthrough years of the late ‘60s, Derek McGinty at WAMU-FM, a public radio station in Washington, suggests: “Maybe people who are in charge of hiring people are not sure their white listeners will be comfortable calling in and talking to an African-American (as McGinty) or an Asian or somebody who comes from (another) background. . . . “
Indeed white callers sometimes are not comfortable. Hamblin can attest to that. After midnight 10 years ago at KOA-AM in Denver, he mentioned on air he was black. The phone lines went dead, and he had to filibuster his remaining four hours on air.
“Mainstream-culture people (think) their concerns are universal but minority people’s concerns are parochial and limited to minority people,” says Suarez. “But that is such a false notion. There’s no such thing as a Latino gas bill or a black mortgage.”
WILM-AM in Wilmington, Del., (76th in market size) had two African-American talk hosts--that is, until last Friday: John Watson, the morning host, who attended a Virginia high school included in the Brown vs. Board of Education landmark desegregation case, and Carlotta Bradley, a generation younger, who was the evening host. Next Monday, however, Bradley goes on air at competing WDEL-AM during the more prime afternoon-drive, 4-7 p.m. (The other full-time female minority talk host is Karen Denard at KERA-FM, public radio, in Dallas.)
Part of the problem, explains Bradley is that “with the proliferation of satellite talk, local talk show jobs are being lost and so you have fewer slots.”
Still there are some exceptions to prevailing trends. “I wanted a radio station that looked like America,” said Operations Director Drew Hayes of Chicago’s WLS-AM and FM who is white. (The station also carries Limbaugh.)
So he paired Ty Wansley, a liberal who came out of black-formatted urban radio in Chicago, a key adviser of the late Mayor Harold Washington, with conservative Ed Vrdolyak, Washington’s chief adversary on the City Council, in the 3-6 p.m. afternoon-drive slot. Wansley began on WLS with his own show from 7-11 p.m. last fall; he and Vrdolyak became an argumentative team in January. Their show is thriving.
“I really believe America doesn’t want to hear the honesty that is coming out of the African-American and Hispanic communities in the ‘90s,” suggests Wansley. “Whether they hear rap artists say it or they hear talk show hosts say it, they don’t want to hear the raw emotions.”
Yet, reflecting some of the tensions of a minority talk host, Wansley said that as a solo act, “I didn’t want to bring too much of the black emotion, thinking maybe I would go over the edge and come across as too strong, ‘too black.’ Now that I’ve been with Eddie, we’ve brought on people like (former Cleveland Browns fullback) Jim Brown . . . who talks about bringing together Los Angeles gang members as so-called ‘nations’. . . .
“I think this (team) is giving the black community . . . a viable voice via the (general) airwaves,” Wansley added. “Before African-Americans would listen but wouldn’t necessarily call in. They’re thinking they won’t put me on because I’m black or outspoken or perceived as militant. Those same persons call in now saying, ‘Oh well, Ty’s on.’ ”