Just What Do Talk Shows Listen for? : Radio: Even if your phone call passes the screening, don’t forget the genre’s first commandment: Thou shalt not be boring.

Dial, busy, hang up. Dial, busy, hang up. That liberal is calling Rushnames and Rush needs help, but you can’t get through.

Dial, busy . . . no, it’s ringing.

“Hello, what do you want to tell Rush today?”

That liberal is a jerk and Rush is a great American and . . .

“Sorry, the lines are full. Call back later.” Click.

You had your chance and blew it, mainly because you forgot the first commandment of talk radio: Thou shalt not be boring.

As with most talk shows, callers to “Rush Limbaugh” are screened, but those close to the show insist they are not screening out Limbaugh critics. Callers who disagree with Limbaugh actually have a better chance of getting through because they provoke lively debate, they say.

Limbaugh has said on the air that he views calls the way disc jockeys view records: Each must be brief and entertaining or the listener will switch stations.

In that respect, Limbaugh is no different than liberal talk-show hosts like Tom Leykis. “I prefer those who don’t agree,” said Mike Dooley, Leykis’ call screener. “To us, a call is like a record--three minutes--and people will either listen to it or turn away.”

Talk shows themselves are hot topics nowadays, mainly because of a speech by President Clinton last month after the Oklahoma City bombing. He denounced some shows as “purveyors of hatred” that contribute to an attitude “that violence is acceptable.”

That denunciation itself became a hot topic on talk shows, with Limbaugh prominently defending the conservative camp. “Liberals intend to use this tragedy for their own gain,” he said the same day Clinton spoke. A day later he told his radio audience, estimated that day at 20 million, “We need to reduce the hysteria that surrounds all of this.”

Little research seems to exist on who listens to talk radio, and on who is likely to get on the air with their point of view.

About two years ago, Richard Hofstetter, a professor of political science at San Diego State University, surveyed San Diego County and found that about one-third of adults had listened to political talk shows at one time or another. The more interested in and informed about political issues and candidates, the more a listener tended to tune in.

Most were mainstream in their views, Hofstetter said. Eighty percent said they disagreed with the talk show host at least occasionally, but 30% to 40% said they disagreed often.

“That was surprising,” Hofstetter said. “That suggests this is a sort of titillating, cheap thrill for these listeners. I think what’s happened is people stuck in automobiles want to listen to something besides music.”

But only about 5% of these listeners had ever called a talk show, Hofstetter said, too small a sample to generalize. “All you can really say is that they’re more highly motivated.”

For some shows, motivation is all it takes to get on the air.

“We don’t weed out calls,” said a spokesman for KIEV, a Glendale radio station that sells its broadcast time to talk-show hosts ranging from a chef to longtime conservative broadcaster George Putnam.

“People call in and want to talk to George, and that’s fine. Unless there’s a real obvious problem, we just put them through. George handles them himself.

“We don’t ask for names, ages, sex, leanings, incomes or anything. Other stations worry about that because they’re worried about demographics. They want to go to advertisers and show who’s listening.”

But most shows use call screeners, who say they are less interested in callers’ opinions than whether they can state them quickly and clearly.

“It’s not very exciting,” said Dooley. “You check to make sure you can hear them, that they’re not on some cell phone in the canyon. And they’ve got to have something to say. A lot of people call and just want to say ‘Hi’ to Tom. Some people, you can’t even understand them. Sometimes they’re not even on the same topic or they think they’re calling another talk show. An hour of that and you have no listeners.

“The wacko factor is quite low. Well, actually we do get a good share of wackos. Most of the time you can tell they’re living on another planet--mostly people who want to talk about UFOs, space aliens, government conspiracies above and beyond the reasonable stuff. Before the Oklahoma bombing, we didn’t let any conspiracy theorists on.”

The screener’s nightmare is letting a con artist through, said Dooley. People call pretending to be celebrities. Others say something on the air entirely different than what they told the screener. Fans of New York radio personality Howard Stern have taken to calling talk shows, conning their way onto the air and then mentioning not only Stern’s name but a specific part of his anatomy. One succeeded in a live CNN interview during coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.

“I’ve been doing ‘Air Talk’ for 10 years,” said Larry Mantle of KPCC in Pasadena, “This is public radio; we don’t get many crackpots. The only problem we ever had was with the Howard Stern fans, but they never said anything on the air other than ‘What do you think of Howard Stern?’ I guess even our Howard Stern people are more refined.”

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Many talk shows and stations keep their screening guidelines secret. How you screen calls is a reflection of your audience, and audience demographics are the basis of competition for advertising.

“You’re basically looking to shape the show however the producer tells you,” said one screener, who asked not to be identified. “We screen out older people. They can be very compelling, but for us they make for a lousy call. The wrong demographics. They sound old.

“Either you identify and agree with a caller or you really hate that caller and want to call and tell them how nuts they are. But no one wants to hear an old person call and just be old.”

Even shows hosted by psychotherapists are concerned about screening to preserve the show’s pace and demographics. The truly mentally ill are screened out.

“There’s one guy in particular who’s way too sick for our show, and we’re a psychology show,” said Georgiann Keller, screener for KFI’s “Marilyn Kagan Show.” “He needs a full-time psychiatrist to live with him. Then I have a regular obscene caller who calls me. He has his phone connected to some phone-sex line. He comes on with a little-girl voice and then plays this phone sex.

“Sometimes, since we’re a psychology show, we will give people more of a benefit of a doubt and put them on the air. But generally, you still want callers to get right to a point. That’s what listeners want. They don’t care about your great-aunt Minnie. Get to the bottom line. All the rest of the story doesn’t really matter.”

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The current boom in talk radio has been with shows that talk politics. Murray Levin, a Harvard University professor of political science who wrote “Talk Radio and the American Dream” in 1980, said shows today are not much different than their predecessors.

“When I studied talk radio, there was no issue that aroused as much anger and emotion as homosexuality. The talk-show hosts, they knew this. They would talk more about it than the subject warranted. They’d get heated debates and would push people to further extremes. That boosted ratings.

“I think the Oklahoma City bombing is a godsend to them. It’s a tremendous increase in ratings. The bombastic shows screen out rational people so they can get as many crazies as possible.”

So is it true? You don’t have to be crazy to get on the air, but it helps?

Not so, said Sandy Sandfort, a San Francisco free-lance writer and former lawyer who made a project out of repeatedly getting onto Limbaugh’s radio show. His guidelines for success are making the rounds of the Internet, and they make a distinction between being passionate and being crazy.

To break through to Limbaugh or any talk-show host, Sandfort recommends:

* Listening to the show long enough to absorb its culture and language.

* Devising a different way to approach your topic. If everyone’s talking about what the President should do about terrorism, you should talk about what the President should not do.

* Being passionate about your subject, but avoiding name-calling and frothing at the mouth. Passionate but polite is the most effective approach.

* Writing down the points you want to make, but not reading a prepared statement.

* Not conducting the call as if it was a phone conversation. Get to the point, stay on the topic and don’t ask “How are you doin’?”

* Sitting up straight. It makes a difference in how you sound.

* “War dialing,” that is, continuous redialing until you finally are connected. It can take half an hour or longer.

Some callers may only want a moment of celebrity by hearing themselves over the air, but there is also a benefit for the those with a serious political purpose, Sandfort said.

“I think Limbaugh is infuriating,” Sandfort said, “but if you have a point of view you want to express, you’re talking to 5 (million) or 6 million people when you talk to him.”