The Decline of the Local Hero

It’s afternoon drive time, and on KLSX-FM (97.1), Tom Leykis is talking about drunk driving--with a twist. “Especially if you’re driving drunk right now, call in and tell us why you’re doing it,” he pleads. “Of course, we’ll tell you to pull over to the side.”

In the two hours he allots to the topic, Leykis gets several local calls, including one from the 405 Freeway, where some teenagers are smoking pot and bragging about it. But he also hears from Michael, who’s had a few Scotches, from an interstate near Jacksonville, Fla. Do you worry about getting caught? Leykis wonders. “I pace myself,” the caller replies.

Leykis connects Michael to Lynette, who’s tuned to a station in Seattle. “My husband is a state trooper in Washington. In fact, my husband is training today to catch people like you.”

This is the flourishing yet, for some, troubling new world of radio syndication, where to succeed a host must attract a critical mass of listeners from one end of the country to the other. Distributed by radio powerhouse Westwood One since May 1994, including 16 months when he didn’t have a Los Angeles outlet, Leykis broadcasts from his syndicator’s studio in Culver City, where his show is transmitted to KLSX and 175 other stations.

For four decades, radio has been primarily local, in programming and outlook. Localism was its touchstone, often cited as its source of strength. Localism was also the medium’s distinguishing characteristic from network television--whose advent signaled the end of the heyday of national radio personalities such as Jack Benny, Arthur Godfrey and Kate Smith.

Now radio is increasingly mimicking the networks with programs heard across the land--or at least beyond the local market.

Rush Limbaugh on 599 U.S. stations, Howard Stern on 44 and Don Imus on 106 originate in New York. Art Bell, on 410 stations including KABC-AM (790), broadcasts from his home in the Nevada desert. Dallas-based Tom Joyner on KACE-FM (103.9) is on 32 stations. Ronn Owens is simulcast on Disney-owned KABC-AM (790) and sister station KGO-AM, his 23-year base in San Francisco.

But syndication runs on parallel tracks: outside hosts coming in, and local hosts, having established a base in Los Angeles and Orange counties, spreading their wings nationally. Laura Schlessinger, broadcasting no longer from KFI-AM (640) but at Premiere Radio Networks Inc., her syndicator’s studio in Sherman Oaks, is heard on 445 stations. Sports host Jim Rome, on KXTA-AM (1150), is on 81 stations. Mark & Brian of KLOS-FM (95.5) are on 19 stations. KFI’s afternoon drive team of John & Ken is on 63 stations.

Fueling this transformational sweep are economic forces, the rather cosmic conviction that in the era of the Internet everything is local, the down-to-earth hunch that people who are entertaining in one place are just as likely to be entertaining in another, and the talent themselves. Eyeing the paradigm of radio’s trinity of mega-millionaire superstars--Limbaugh, Stern and Schlessinger--they seek similar success. More money, audience and recognition.

Yet some radio professionals and civic leaders contend that in the rush to syndicate, something is lost: listener understanding of local issues, a sense of community. The need to focus on big-picture subjects that would appeal nationally diminishes the prospect that specifically local topics and public figures can be treated in a significant way.

“The failure to produce more local programs in one of the most diverse, vibrant megalopolises is outrageous,” says Warren Olney, host of KCRW-FM’s (89.9) “Which Way, L.A.?” “It’s an abdication of responsibility to the audience, and it is so serious that it leads me, a lifelong exponent of the 1st Amendment, to open my mind to the idea of some sort of requirements on the part of the licensing agencies, the FCC [Federal Communications Commission].

“To the extent that the airwaves are public,” the public radio host says, “there ought to be some attention given to public service. [The situation] is damaging to democracy and destroys the whole idea of community.”

Bob Moore, vice president and general manager at KLSX, which runs syndicated programming from 3 a.m. (with the live broadcast of Stern) to 7 p.m. (when Leykis’ show ends), counters that he’s giving the listeners what they want, and that in the era of satellite television and the Internet, everything is local.

“What we’ve done is provided the best entertainment we can between 3 a.m. and 7 p.m., and it’s reflected in the ratings,” Moore says. “It’s what people are eating up. People are less concerned about whether North Korea is building a nuclear bomb than whether Robert De Niro is being detained for nine hours [about] an international prostitution ring.”

Still, he says, “we run traffic reports [and] news reports all throughout [our] shows so we can give a real [local] flavor, if it’s El Nin~o [or] a tremendous political event.”

And yet it’s come to a point where in the nation’s second-largest radio market, there is no commanding local voice.

“There is a void right now in Los Angeles,” says Erik Braverman, assistant program director at KABC. “You’re no longer hearing a show that on a daily, consistent basis talks about issues in your community. You don’t hear the activism-type radio that talk radio has become famous for--that grass roots, ‘pick up your phone, do something about it now.’

“There isn’t the 1994 John & Ken [who fanned support for California’s three-strikes, anti-crime initiative]. There isn’t the 1990 Tom Leykis [who did a broadcast from Irwindale to protest the spraying of malathion at the height of the medfly scare]. There isn’t the 1987 Michael Jackson. He had phenomenal ratings, and he was the local voice.”

Along came Limbaugh, who began airing on KFI in March 1989. In fall 1991, he eclipsed Jackson in the ratings. Stern, who had come into the market in July 1991, toppled Mark & Brian from their No. 1 morning-drive perch in summer 1992. Before Stern, KLSX’s morning drive host had been in 21st place.

It was proof that listeners cared more about what was being said, and by whom, than where the program was coming from. The rise of Schlessinger, whose syndication career began with 14 stations in 1994, only confirmed it.

“Great talent is not available for 10,000 radio stations,” asserts Norman J. Pattiz, chairman of Westwood One, whose talent roster also includes Imus on KLAC-AM (570). “So if you have a Don Imus or a Dr. Laura or Rush Limbaugh . . . the demand for that kind of programming and the appeal to the local audience is there for a national personality.”

It was Pattiz, now ensconced in a glossy silver and black movie-set office, who launched the modern era of syndication in 1976. He started his company from his one-bedroom apartment in Westwood, with a 24-hour “Sound of Motown” special, which he sold to 200 stations. “I came from the television business, where syndication was commonplace.”

Beyond the strong economic incentive for personalities--the more stations and the larger their audiences, the bigger their bucks--there is also incentive, even necessity, for stations and major radio group owners to syndicate. Stations get access to major personalities--usually for the cost of giving up a few minutes of advertising each hour. Groups can spread out their talent costs and bring in more advertising dollars.

But the transition from local to national requires certain changes. When John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, whose employer is still KFI, went into syndication early last year with Fisher Entertainment in Santa Cruz, they had already trained themselves not to say KFI or give out its phone number during the body of their show, and to have the screener tell callers not to say where they’re from. So you won’t hear Sandra from Santa Monica, Sam from San Dimas.

“Right,” says Chiampou, lunching in Beverly Hills. “Cities are gone.”

“You have the screener tell callers not to make any overtly local references,” Kobylt says, “because we don’t want to get bogged down in that. Part of that also is we’re selling the show to the other stations, who are skeptical. They’re saying it’s an L.A. show, and we have to prove it’s not an L.A. show.”

Similarly, on Leykis’ show, he has trained his callers to open their conversation with an elongated “Hell-lo Tom!” instead of a greeting such as “Good afternoon”--which might be jarring to some listeners because afternoon on the West Coast is evening on the East Coast. “We’re talking about erect nipples and threesomes, you’d think [program directors] would complain about that. No!” he says with a laugh. “They complain someone said, ‘Good afternoon.’ ”

Amid such fare as Tommy Lee, cybersex, women and the real relationship they have with gynecologists, “obscenity” on radio and what you can get away with--”I am thinking of a word, it begins with . . . “--Leykis occasionally weaves in some local and state issues: a debate on legalizing gay marriages with two California legislators; the matter of Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez and cocaine; the protest over naming a predominantly white school in Riverside after Martin Luther King Jr.; funding of the Sports Arena with Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs.

Still, on a KLSX promo, he mocks those who deride talk radio. “They want to discuss important issues,” he says in faux, high-pitched tones. “City council meetings.”

Others, however, take local issues seriously.

“As you begin to syndicate,” says Alex Nogales, chairman of the Los Angeles-based National Hispanic Media Coalition, “local issues go by the wayside. There’s always been very little attention to Latinos [here], now even less. The [county] hospital situation; the wide differences between ethnic minorities--specifically, black and brown; water, do we have enough, where is it going to come from; where are we going with bilingual education in this city?

“They all want to talk about Monica [Lewinsky],” Nogales continues. “I’m so tired to death of Monica. How many times can we talk about her in one day? There are a lot more things more important to us than whether the president did or not. That’s between him and his wife anyway. We don’t need the chisme--the gossip.

“It’s become a money game,” he adds. “Radio hasn’t become an instrument where you instruct, you inform, you educate a community.”

Craig Wilbraham, senior vice president and general manager at urban music station KKBT-FM (92.3), says that the drift away from localism “matters. . . . An audience wants to know what’s happening in their neighborhood. That’s why Tom Joyner has not taken off mornings at KACE. He can’t penetrate our [“House Party”] morning show audience because [it] deals with local issues. Radio is a local medium, and it’s best served in that regard.”

Still, Wilbraham, whose station is owned by Chancellor Media, is exploring with AMFM Networks, Chancellor’s new syndication arm, going national with afternoon drive host Theo Mizuhara. “Afternoons tend to be more conversational, entertaining,” he says.

Discounting the argument from commercial broadcasters that they’re giving people the kind of programming they want, KCRW’s Olney asserts that “there’s so little discussion of public affairs that people don’t know what to want.”

He ticks off key issues done on “Which Way, L.A.?,” which is 80% to 90% locally driven: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the LAPD and its relationship to the city, race and ethnicity, welfare reform, health maintenance organizations--”a really important story because we have a larger percentage of people involved in HMOs . . . California is the sort of cradle of the HMO.”

Yet when KCRW did its February fund drive, General Manager Ruth Seymour wanted to go in another direction. “I said to Warren, ‘Listen, during the drive we have to go national. . . . We have to go where the audience is--then do what you feel you should be doing the rest of the time.’ ”

Most of the shows dealt with aspects of the Clinton-Lewinsky-Kenneth Starr story.

Larry Mantle, program and news director at KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena, and host of the locally targeted “AirTalk” from 5-7 p.m., worries that “we, as public stations, only serve the public that are already the most informed. The problem is that the general public--the majority of whom never listen to public radio--are on the outside of these issues.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky says he has stopped listening to commercial talk radio, after Jackson’s weekday KABC show was dropped. “It’s irrelevant to me, it’s antiseptic. You could hear the same thing driving through Peoria on the interstate.”

The arrival last July of Owens to replace Jackson, who was dispatched to weekends, drew new attention to the multi-market phenomenon. While a two-city simulcast, with Owens bouncing yo-yo-like up and down the coast each week to give a semblance of localism, hardly qualifies as traditional syndication, there have been some awkward moments: Saying “up here” and “down there”; referring to the mayor and meaning, not Richard Riordan, but Willie Brown.

“I have problems with [a simulcast],” admits KABC President and General Manager Bill Sommers, who took over in December. “And so does San Francisco. With the torrential rains in San Francisco, to talk about just what’s happening in Santa Rosa or Healdsburg . . . Ronn needs to be also cognizant of what’s going on with our flooding. It’s hard to do the programming where you’re going to be very topical and not hurt one or the other.”

He cites last September’s strike of Bay Area Rapid Transit employees in San Francisco. “It’s hard to really talk about BART when we don’t have BART in Los Angeles. So it takes a little while. Ronn has been talking with our programming people, and San Francisco’s programming people, and he’s more focused now.”

In what way? “He’s trying to be more generic to what’s topical in the country in subjects that everyone can relate to--as opposed to just topical things within our city.”

Yet Sommers generally opposes syndication for his lineup. The man who took Mark & Brian national in 1993, when he headed up KLOS, soon found that hosts “lose sight of the localism, and they start to direct their thoughts toward the syndicated market. . . . What if something happens in Los Angeles that a host really needs to cover? Say, something with the district attorney’s office. . . . If the talent knows it’s going to 40 other cities, who cares about it in Peoria?”

Syndication or not, says Kobylt of “John & Ken,” “we would have changed our show anyway. We wanted to get out of politics. I was sick of right wing, left wing, are you liberal, are you conservative? So much of the audience didn’t care . . . I just didn’t want to take the Rush leftovers.

“We did all the California stuff, exhausted it. We covered the fires in a helicopter. We went to the border during the illegal alien uproar. There’s not been one moment when I said, ‘Gee, I wish we were still on a local show’ “--adding that “if half of L.A. is burning down, everyone’s going to want to know it.”

To get permission to syndicate, the KFI hosts presented parent Cox Radio with a log of shows. Chiampou says it revealed that more than 80% of the hours would translate nationally. The other 20% included the 1993 mayoral elections, illegal immigration, affirmative action--”which, granted if something really big breaks, we’d do it.”

“The listener wants to be entertained [with] stuff on families, kids, marriage, more personal issues,” says Kobylt. “It’s more about our personal lives. . . . Does it matter who the governor is that much?”

Mention a batch of local issues to KFI program director David Hall--recently named vice president for product development at Cox, in charge of finding talent for its half-dozen talk-radio stations--and he says with a shrug: “Do you deem these all to be very important? I don’t know that I do. I live in Pasadena. The stadium is not a pressing issue in my life. My daughter doesn’t go to a Los Angeles public school. This is a very big and disparate area. So when you talk about the Los Angeles public schools, nobody in the San Gabriel Valley or Orange County can relate to that.

“If you’re talking about education in a broad way,” he adds, “then an Atlanta parent could relate, and a San Francisco parent. When you say Southern California, do you think folks in Laguna Beach and Boyle Heights care about the same issues?”

“People who live in Los Angeles don’t live in a cocoon,” says Westwood One’s Pattiz. “They live in the U.S. The U.S. is local. Are people more interested in what’s going on in the city council right now than in what’s going on in Washington? The Internet is going to make the globe local. It’s all local.”

In the end, listeners do have some power. “When non-syndicated shows start drawing more listeners than syndicated ones,” says Hall, “the industry will go that way.”

“If people don’t think they’re being served by a show that’s watering down its issues,” offers Joe Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, “then they have to find the shows that do in fact zero in on L.A. issues. We have to find those shows and bolster their ratings.”

And there’s the rub. Which button are you going to punch?