New KABC Host Vows to Focus on Southland

Debuting his talk show during a rain-soaked evening commute, KABC-AM (790) host Ed Tyll said he intends to focus on Southern California and on the “lives of real people”--those like him who “pay the taxes, work our butts off, that try to keep our families together, that try to just make it go from day [to] day.”

Tyll on Monday took over the weekday 5-7 p.m. slot at KABC, with its former occupant, Larry Elder, cut back to 3-5 p.m. He told listeners that “we are here to entertain ourselves,” that he would bring in “scintillating, somewhat controversial” commentary about local events, and that “I seek your phone calls and response on what is going on in Southern California”--not about Washington or other places, “but about what is going on with us.”

The Disney-owned station’s host complained that “politicians don’t care, corporations don’t care.” He said that he would talk about politics the day before Election Day--when most people do. “You will not hear a lot of talk about the Democrats and Republicans but you will hear a great deal about mothers and fathers, students and workers and delivery people.”

“We want to open a brand-new universe of call-in talk radio in Southern California,” said Tyll (pronounced Till), who previously has hosted talk shows in Atlanta, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and, most recently, Orlando, Fla.

Whether Tyll, who has a rather generic broadcast voice, will bring a whole new world to talk radio or simply the same old thing, remains to be heard.

During the first hour Monday, he turned, like virtually all of talk radio, to the story of British au pair Louise Woodward, who had been freed earlier that day after a judge in Cambridge, Mass., reduced her conviction from second-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter.

In marked contrast to KFI-AM (640) afternoon-drive rivals John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, who have been angrily blasting Woodward for her role in the death of an 8-month-old child, and mocking those who supported her, Tyll said, “I have believed in this woman from Day 1.” He dismissed the “grieving parents,” adding that he has “very weird feelings about whether the parents are involved themselves. . . . I don’t like them.”

Tyll, who has a fiancee but is single with no children, said he would have no problem entrusting children to her.

To give the hour local context, he asked listeners to talk about their child care, how they choose it. “Do you know who is watching your children?”

With a fast-paced style, he was gracious with his first caller, Roberto from a car, who said he was enjoying the show a lot and was on his way from Hollywood to Pasadena to pick up his 2-year-old in the care of a “wonderfully mature lady” before driving on to Long Beach.

He was nice to Julianna, who said, “I don’t think she [Woodward] did it either.”

But Tyll, who had some trouble fiddling with the button to put callers on the air, getting one person instead of another, seemed to have no difficulty pressing the off button with those who offered alternative views. When David said he had several explanations for Woodward’s guilt, he only got as far as the first one.

For most of the second hour--before moving on to a discussion of the Rolling Stones, whom he was going to see at Dodger Stadium that night--Tyll lit into Jackie Robles, the mother of two young girls who were killed by a Metrolink train in Upland recently while Robles was asleep. Noting that illegal drugs had been found in her system, Tyll wanted to know “if there is some reason to not severely punish a mother who, in my opinion, has been criminally negligent and cost the lives of two of her children.”

When a caller named Louise asked, “Are you always so frantic?,” those were the last words she got to say on the air.