Talk (2 page)

Twenty minutes after I pulled away from WRGT, Phil was fully cranked as my Lexus IS convertible crossed the scenic 14-mile stretch of the Courtney Campbell Causeway: two lanes headed each way with majestic water on both sides. High up above were military jets from nearby MacDill Air Force Base, flying to far-off places in support of the war on terror. And by the time I passed the sign saying “Welcome to Clearwater,
spring home of the Phillies” and the original Hooters (“Since 1983, delightfully tacky, yet unrefined”), I could almost smell suntan lotion as I neared the beach.

All along my drive on 60 West were the types of businesses that paid my salary. Car dealers, pawn shops, pizza joints and assorted honkytonks—these were my lifeblood, the sort of entrepreneurs who were advertisers on my station. I tried not to lose sight of the fact that the people who walked through their doors were the ones who allowed me to live a pretty damn comfortable life. By the time I could see the Fort Harrison Hotel on my right shoulder, better known as the HQ of Scientology, I was about to cross over the Clearwater Memorial Bridge from which I could see the outline of the beachfront high-rises in Sand Key off in the distance. The distinctive, sleek shapes of the Glanoe, the Meridian and the Ultimar formed the skyline of Tampa/St. Petersburg's most expensive addresses, including mine. Not bad for a former slacker.

On this particular day the sun was shining but my car roof was closed because I wanted to hear every word Phil had to say. If I had been the type to make New Year's resolutions, I would definitely have set national radio syndication as my number-one goal for the coming year. I could already taste that next level of radio, but to get there, I had to keep trusting Phil Dean. Yes, he'd been a pain in my ass for the last several years, but professionally speaking, he hadn't led me astray. Even though following his advice made me increasingly uncomfortable, there was no question that it worked. The ratings didn't lie. And for a year now, we'd been specifically strategizing as to how to take advantage of the political calendar that was about to unfold. My listeners were concentrated in the I-4 corridor, the stretch between Tampa and Orlando, and they had been known to tip the scales in more than one presidential race. As the top-rated
talk host in a mid-sized but hotly contested market, I could very well find myself at the political epicenter of the upcoming election. The stage was set for my career to really pop, and I didn't want to blow my shot. My only concern was whether I'd be able to reach my goal with some shred of dignity intact. That wasn't looking likely.

“Did you ever hear of David Ogilvy, Powers?”

I had a vague awareness of the legendary adman to whom Phil was now referring.

“He's the genius who came up with the slogan, ‘At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in the Rolls Royce comes from the clock,' ” he went on.

As was often the case, I didn't get the connection to talk radio. Phil proceeded to explain that the advertising guru had solved a concern about an old-style clock in what was then the fanciest car of its time.

“The sweeping hand-style clock didn't seem to fit the swanky new car. But instead of running from it, Ogilvy made it the focus. What was a subject of concern now became the chief attribute. Talk about shit from shinola, Powers, this guy took a complaint about a product and turned it into an asset.”

Good story, but I still didn't understand the relevance. Nor did I interrupt. This, I quickly decided, was part of the 90 percent bullshit.

I'd worked with a handful of media consultants over the years, and Phil was easily the best of the lot. Hell, he was legendary. I'm naturally suspect of the entire group of them. I mean, if these guys knew how to do my job, I'd always wondered, why weren't they
doing
it? True, some didn't have the requisite melodious voice, or as we say in radio, “the pipes.” But many of them did have great pitch, far better than mine, which only fueled my suspicion about their advice. Usually, if
any of these clowns had ever actually worked in a radio station, it was on the other side of the glass—the production side, doing technical work with the other folks who at one time ran their high school's filmstrip projector.

“A good talk host hangs up on at least two callers per air shift,” was typical of the shitty advice you got from Phil's competitors. I'd actually heard that pearl of wisdom during a panel discussion at a convention sponsored by
Yakkers Magazine
, the print bible of our industry. In front of a room full of blowhards like me, three consultants sat on their asses and traded wit like that. I never understood the thinking. Exactly which callers was I supposed to hang up on, and why? But I could see the rest of the room rapt with attention, taking notes, and eager to get back to some daytimer in Bumblefuck and hang up on some poor sap who took the time to call.

I once heard a caller say to a host, “If you really think that, you should run for office yourself.”

To which the host said, for no apparent reason, “You're a crumb bum.”

And then—click. He cut him off.

Listening somewhere, I'll bet some B-level consultant got a chubby.

But Phil was different. He didn't throw out lines just to be provocative. He meant everything he said, even the crazy shit. And I was inclined to listen to him because unlike the rest, he
had
been there and done that. Not as a talk host, but in the format where I'd started, as a classic rock DJ. He'd earned his stripes as one of the true progressive rock pioneers, a young guy back in the early 1970s breaking bands like Genesis (before Phil Collins took over for Peter Gabriel), or Emerson, Lake and Palmer (in the era of
Brain Salad Surgery
). When it came to the future of rock music, they used to say that Phil could see around corners.

“Phil Dean gave good ear,” was the way my agent, Jules DelGado, put it. I love that expression. High praise.

Phil Dean had been the top DJ in a big market, Los Angeles, and he'd had it all before flaming out on a combination of drugs and booze. He had been a small step from superstardom—one level below Sterndom—when it all came crashing down. The end came from a missed morning shift after a bender at a strip joint the night before, which not only got him fired in LA but also blacklisted by program directors coast to coast. There's no such thing as being late for work when you are the namesake of a radio program. And in his case, not even a string of more rehab stays than Lindsay Lohan could convince program directors, or PDs, to take a chance on giving him back his own slot.

The story would have ended there for most, but in his case, it really was the best thing that could have happened to him. While no PD was willing to hire him for shift work, they all still wanted his expertise. He became the guy who programmers would solicit before determining their talent and playlists, calling upon the intuitive talents that he'd employed for years. Eventually that work expanded beyond classic rock to other formats, including talk. Which explains why now, at the crack of dawn from a home studio somewhere near Taos, New Mexico, a 65ish Phil was wired to a headset, philosophizing to me about the world of talk radio. He was being paid big bucks to sit on his ass and critique snippets of radio for a select number of jerkoffs across the country, including me. The word on the street was that he had developed a new addiction—food—and tipped the scales at 400 lbs. I couldn't say for sure because I'd never set eyes on him; my vision of him was based on a 20-year-old promotional shot from when he was still on top and wearing some fucking Hawaiian shirt. Which kinda fits our business, one where apart from the biggest
names, the audience never sees the talent and is left to conjure up an image of what the host looks like. In my experience, that's in everyone's best interest because based on the personalities I've met over the years, their physical appearance rarely matches their pipes. There's a reason why people talk about a “face for radio.”

When I'd first arrived in Tampa to do mornings, Phil had come with the territory. Ours was a shotgun marriage if there ever was one. I'd agreed to spend time on the phone with him on a weekly basis as a concession to my new employer, a Christian conglomerate that had just bought the radio station where I worked. I'd been hired to host a music show and had no experience in the talk format, but after my role was recast, I'd been told that Phil would show me the ropes. Coincidentally, Jules had once repped Phil pre-crash.

“You're a perfect match,” he'd told me. “He's fuckin' nuts, like you, but he has flashes of brilliance.” Then he'd hurried off the phone to speak to another client.

Jules was a big mahoff based in New York City who often wound up on Page Six when movie deals got made. He represented all sorts of entertainers in Hollywood and New York, and a few he hoped were up-and-comers like me, a radio guy in Tampa who was probably his smallest client. I was forever fighting for his attention, but I stuck with him because he was wired like no one else, and it had not surprised me to learn that he had once been Phil's agent.

These days there was so much mystique about Phil's client list that I was proud just to be on it, even if I didn't positively know who else was. Although his clients were all said to be in radio, his opinions extended to all forms of communication—print, TV, and Internet. And I frequently received more than a few of those opinions myself.

What I'd never admit to the suits was that I'd actually come to look forward to these calls. They were a bit cathartic, high on entertainment value, and better than any of the 40 or so stations of crap on the terrestrial radio band, especially talk radio. I may be a radio host, but it doesn't mean I want to listen, especially to the format for which my station is known. For the past three years, WRGT had been offering four different hosts during daylight hours, including me, each kicking the shit out of President Summers on account of what we called his “radical socialism.” The only thing that ever changed was the voices and the guests; the message was always the same. Boring? Monotonous? Well, it worked. And it was pretty much the same at every other talk radio station across the country that had the usual mouthpieces. And if the stations didn't feature the biggest names in talk, they employed a B-team of even worse imitators. You'd think it would wear thin, but our P1s—that's radiospeak for our most ardent listeners—couldn't get enough. They may comprise a relatively small segment of society, but there are no more faithful radio listeners than fans of conservative talk. Which is another reason why I needed Phil Dean whispering in my ear. Because the sort of thing they wanted to hear from a guy like me was not exactly the message I was naturally inclined to offer. I suspected that Phil knew my personal politics were not those that he had me spouting, but he didn't seem to care, so long as I towed a consistently conservative line on air.

“It's not what you want to say, Stan, it's what they want to hear. Always remember that.”

Years ago, Phil had seen the whole right-wing thing coming. And I'm talking even before Rush Limbaugh capitalized on the outbreak of the first Gulf War in 1991 and went on to dominate the medium. See, prior to Limbaugh, there weren't
really national talk players, and the stations that carried talk had more diversity of hosts and political viewpoints than you would find anywhere today. It didn't matter if you were left or right. All that mattered was whether you could sustain a good conversation. Personality was king, not ideology. Guys like Irv Homer in Philly. You know what he did before he was a talk host? He was a bartender. Perfect training for that era. Because any good bartender knows both how to initiate a conversation and how to cut off a barfly who, like a caller, stays too long.

Phil was just getting back on his feet as a consultant after another round of detox when a station out in San Diego called and said it was contemplating a flip from talk to classic rock. Phil's job was to recommend some jocks and then establish the playlist. Pretty standard stuff. But before the switchover, he found himself listening to talk, the format he would be abandoning. He tuned in to the station 24/7 for a few weeks' time while driving around in a rental car before finally advising the owner to keep the format and let him change the lineup.

“Fire the food and wine guy, can the real estate show, and replace both of them and your two liberals with some angry white conservative guys,” he told them.

Naturally the station resisted, in part because it was fearful of losing the revenue from the weekend specialty programming—always a ratings loser but a money generator. Also because the two liberals were old timers and they feared a discrimination lawsuit. But when Phil outlined his reasoning, it made such perfect sense that the brass decided the downside of any litigation was outweighed by the financial upside.

“Talk radio is a clubhouse for conservatives,” Phil had explained. “It's an intimate place where people on the right can go and be with likeminded folk while having their opinions reinforced. Without talk, they are homeless in the media.”

Remember, this was pre-Internet and before the explosion of cable TV channels, including the advent of Fox News in 1996. The media landscape back then was Rush-free, Hannity-free and Beck-free, and consisted mainly of the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
and the big three networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS. Americans got their news from the likes of Sam Donaldson and
60 Minutes
, and in the post-Watergate era, the slant was decidedly liberal. A whole generation of reporters had cut their teeth trying to be the next Woodward or Bernstein by bagging an elephant, and this had created a void. Talk radio, Phil recognized, could be a place where conservatives got the red-carpet treatment. But first the welcome mat had to be extended. Well, he rolled it out. The rest is history. And after his advice created big business on the right, a similar model took hold on the left, albeit with less success.