Big in the Morning
The actual debut date of his morning show on KFI-AM (640) is lost to immediate memory but, lawyer that he is, Bill Handel in a flash offers that he signed his contract on July 16, 1993--several weeks after the plum 5-9 a.m. gig began.
To commemorate the five-year milestone in radio’s most competitive morning-drive arena, William Wolf Handel is taking his wife, Marjorie, twin daughters Pamela and Barbara (who turn 3 later this month), parents Leo and Nechama Handel, his father-in-law, his father-in-law’s girlfriend, a battery of friends and several hundred listeners to Las Vegas for Father’s Day weekend.
On June 19, he will broadcast an anniversary show from “the world’s biggest buffet, at the Rio.”
“We thought that would be appropriate,” says the 46-year-old, unabashed, 275-pound, 6-foot-1 host. “A lot of the theme of our show is food-oriented. Oh yeah--because I love to eat. During the 5 o’clock hour, any food purveyor can get free mentions just by feeding us. Honest to God. Commercials go for thousands of dollars a minute--[but] you get a free plug just by feeding the crew.” For listeners, too, there’s lots to digest.
In a morning field dominated by Howard Stern and populated by jokey, light-talk teams--Mark & Brian, Mark and Kim, Kevin and Bean, Minyard & Tilden--the smart and scrappy Handel, along with KFI Program Director David G. Hall, has carved out a niche with an entertaining, often controversial show, dealing with serious issues.
And it’s working. In the most recent Arbitron quarterly survey reported in April, Handel ranked sixth in his time slot with 4.2% of the audience--and fourth among English-language stations, trailing Stern on KLSX-FM (97.1) and just a tenth of a point behind urban station KKBT-FM (92.3) and news station KNX-AM (1070).
“There is no question this is not yuk-yuk radio,” Handel says. “It’s issues-oriented radio where I want to get people as excited by the topics as I am, and as passionate about what’s going on in the world as I am. Have you ever been to a dinner conversation where a few people are sitting around the table really going at it, and it’s just riveting where food is spraying out of people’s mouths, and people are pounding their forks on the table?
“That’s what I want. That’s what I strive to get.”
“Handel Yourself in the Morning” is hardly NPR. It’s not unusual to hear the baritone-voiced host suddenly segue into high-pitched screeches and shouts. Discussing proposed court challenges last week after passage of Proposition 227, dismantling bilingual education, Handel erupted: “Of course the lawsuits have been filed by all the civil rights groups who say kids must be taught bi-ling-ual education. Which of course teaches them nothing about learning English, because immersion is the only way to go.”
Born in Brazil--his father came from Yugoslavia, his Polish-born mother grew up in Brazil--Handel cites personal experience. Arriving in the U.S. at age 5, he spoke only Portuguese. But in the Los Angeles Unified School District, before bilingual education, he quickly learned English. He likes to tag himself a Latino Jewish host.
After graduating from Cal State Northridge with a degree in political science in 1976, he went to law school at night and during the day started a construction company. He got his degree from the Whittier College School of Law in 1979.
But all that hard work took its toll. In 1979, he turned to cocaine. Then one night in 1983, alone at his brother’s house, while “snorting a lot of cocaine, taking a lot of Valium and drinking a lot of liquor to cut the edge,” he started to pray. “ ‘God, let me stop.’ Just about the same time, I ran out of cocaine.”
The next morning he checked into the chemical dependency center at St. John’s Hospital, stayed four weeks, “and never have had a problem since.”
In the early 1980s, Handel became a pioneer in the new field of reproductive law and founded the Center for Surrogate Parenting & Egg Donation in Beverly Hills. That begat a modicum of fame, which led to media appearances and then a show of his own on KABC-AM (790), “Handel on the Law.”
After KFI went all-talk in 1989, he began hosting “Handel on the Law” Saturday mornings. He got another show on Sunday, then a weeknight gig and finally the weekday morning show. Meanwhile, he still does “Handel on the Law” 7-9 a.m. Saturdays on KFI and, via syndication, about 35 other stations.
Handel ceased practicing law two years ago to devote more time to the surrogate center, which he directs. Still, how does Handel handle a full-time radio job and the center? “Alarm clocks.”
As for the issues he cares about, Handel ticks off a litany: “I’m passionate about illegal immigration--against it. I’m passionate about gun control--in favor of it. I’m passionate about gay rights--totally in favor of gay rights. Passionate against people begging for money, that somehow they have the constitutional right to bother me. Being left alone religiously. I’m pretty passionate about the fact that it’s really none of our business who has sex with whom. If I wanted the most moral guy, I’d elect Billy Graham as president, OK?
“I’m not comfortable with this newfound morality in our country. It’s morality according to certain people, which leaves out homosexuality, which leaves out cheating on your wife. It doesn’t stop the job I’m going to do as a talk-show host or a president or anything else. Of course,” he says with a laugh, “I personally wouldn’t [cheat] because Marjorie’s heroine is Lorena Bobbitt. . . .”
One thing for sure you can say about Handel--he is an equal-opportunity offender.
He got Jewish officials mad at him in 1994 when he tried to bring two American neo-Nazis to Auschwitz to show them where his paternal grandparents were killed. In 1996, a gay organization complained that, talking about annoying waiters, he used a pejorative slang word to describe a gay male. At about the same time, Asian American advocacy groups demanded--and got--an apology for what they said were racist comments. Handel argued that his remarks about the shape of Asian American ice skaters’ eyes were “totally sarcastic and 100% hyperbole to make a point” about racism’s absurdity.
“Everyone loves satire,” Handel suggests, “except when it comes to their group.” His voice brightens. “If I can equally offend every single religious and ethnic group in Southern California, I know I’ve done my job.”
He also pokes fun at himself. He’s just broken ground on a new home he’s building in Los Angeles. The two-story house will have its own elevator, and “a 9-foot wall of refrigeration. You’re going to love this: I’m having a Handel family crest over my front door. It’ll be an American eagle with a salmon in one talon and a bagel over the other. And in Latin, it’ll say: ‘We live to eat.’ ”