RADIO : The Talk of the Town? It’s White : In L.A.’s melting pot market, minority radio talk show hosts need not apply . . . : except maybe on weekends

“I don’t think there’s been any real commitment to change since the riots. It’s very evident that there are no new minority voices (as talk-show hosts) on the air. I believe the commitment should be there (and) all of us general-market stations are very exposed on this issue.”

Howard Neal, vice president and general manager, KFI-AM (640), April, 1993

*

Entering KFI’s mid-Wilshire offices, the first two faces you see are black: the gray-haired security guard at the front desk and, up the plush, orange-carpeted steps to the main floor, the perky, post-college receptionist.

Yet a photo display of the station’s talk talent on June 8 told another story: a sea of white faces, including Rush Limbaugh, the conservative velociraptor of talk radio, who has snapped up 616 stations so far for his syndicated program--or more than half the stations in America that do talk. Appropriately, Limbaugh was at the top.

As the hour neared 4 p.m., talk-show host Daryl F. Gates--at KFI, the former Los Angeles police boss is still known as “Chief”--was heard through the station speakers saying that if Los Angeles elects Michael Woo as mayor this day, Los Angeles will become “a Third World City.”

At her desk, the receptionist sounded a long, low “Booooooooooooo.”

To a large degree, the photos on KFI’s wall reflect what is happening at other talk stations in Los Angeles and the nation.

Scattered among the 1,000 or so general-market stations with talk or news/talk formats, The Times was able to identify only a dozen minority hosts in full-time weekday slots--three of them in non-commercial radio. Weekenders and fill-ins, whose influence is considerably less than that of a weekday host, were not counted.

While the Los Angeles market’s adult listening audience is measured at more than 40% minority, there is only one full-time minority talk host on the three stations that define themselves as mainstream talk radio.

He is Errol Smith, 37--and he has to pay for one day out of the five that he’s heard on KIEV-AM (870), a small station in Glendale. At L.A.’s two talk-radio mainstays, KFI and KABC-AM (790), there are no weekday minority hosts. Tom Hall has had a weekend overnight show at KABC for 15 years; Mark Whitlock, a staffer at First African Methodist Episcopal Church, began a regular weekend gig at KFI in July. (In September, Hall gets a more prominent role at KABC as host of a 9-p.m.-to-midnight show on Saturdays and, most likely, an afternoon slot on Sundays.)

Station executives say they recognize a need for minority hosts. But they say that openings are rare, and that it’s difficult to find candidates who are qualified. And before anyone goes weekdays, they add, they have to prove themselves on weekends or in another market.

So the minority communities of Latinos, blacks and Asian-Americans--a 59% majority in Los Angeles County alone--wait.

Kerman Maddox, a business consultant who has a Sunday evening talk show on KGFJ-AM (1230), a black-formated or urban station on La Brea Avenue near Olympic Boulevard, recalls driving to KABC not long ago to be a guest on the Hall show. “As I’m driving, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Now, there are people that listen (to Hall) but, c’mon, give me a break. Saturday night at midnight? Doesn’t count. He’s not on every day like (KFI’s) Ken & John, like Daryl Gates, like Rush. You cannot convince me there’s no one in this market who cannot do that work effectively through the week, mainstream, prime time.”

While talk radio is open to guests and callers of any ethnicity, it is the host who sets the agenda and steers the conversation in the direction he (and the hosts are mostly he ‘s) chooses.

“We need diversity of opinion if we’re all going to get to know each other and get along,” says Esther Renteria, who chairs the Los Angeles-based National Hispanic Media Coalition. “There is a different amount of influence if you’re there 300 days a year--your platform is so much broader.”

“By staffing the airwaves with this sort of homogeneous pool of middle-aged white guys, (programmers) are stifling the most important element of talk, which is the flow of new ideas,” says Randall Bloomquist, Radio & Records’ talk-radio editor. “It’s a real mistake not to have not courted (minorities), to have not gone out and said, ‘Gee, there’s a black deejay and he’s on a music station but here’s a guy who’s outspoken, has a strong personality, I want him.’ ”

National Public Radio has a talk-show host of Puerto Rican lineage in Ray Suarez, but “Talk of the Nation,” though carried on 130 stations nationwide, has no berth in Los Angeles. At KCRW-FM (89.9) in Santa Monica and KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena, station officials say that carrying it live would cut into music and local public-affairs programming.

“What about all the minority stations?” asks KCRW’s general manager, Ruth Seymour, whose only full-time interview/talk show is Warren Olney’s widely acclaimed “Which Way L.A.?”

In Los Angeles’ 80-plus station market, there are four black stations, seven Spanish-language stations, four Asian-language stations and one multi-lingual station in Spanish and Asian languages.

Counters Joe Hicks, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: “What is one left to assume--that the (rest) are white stations, listened to by white people? That kind of Balkanization of the airwaves can’t be tolerated.”

Minority hosts would “bring a different perspective,” suggests Sandra Evers Manly, president of the Hollywood-Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP. “I happen to live in South Central . . . you don’t hear the good things aired.”

Joe Madison, a former national political director of the NAACP and former morning host on WWRC-AM outside Washington, who was bumped at the end of June to make room for Pat Buchanan: “You may get talk-show personalities who are white male suburbanites, and their images of what goes on in the inner city is a ‘drive-by’ mentality. They don’t have any depth of understanding of what goes on in the community. They only know what they see on the 6 o’clock news, or read in the newspaper, or if they venture in periodically.”

Madison acknowledges the “drive-by” imagery. Like a drive-by shooting? “And (it) can be just as dangerous,” he replies.

KABC President and General Manager George Green short, taut, athletic-looking--is in a hurry. A veteran at the station for 33 years, he has been its chief executive since 1979, sales manager before that. A meeting outside the building awaits--and he’s edgy about talking about “this very sensitive topic.”

Yet when asked why KABC has no full-time minority hosts, he plunges in. “It’s real easy,” says Green. “One, I get letters all the time from our listeners who complain, ‘How come you don’t have a major talk host--a Hispanic or black or Asian?’ And I say, ‘Fine. Well, who would you like me to fire--Michael Jackson?’ ‘Oh no, don’t do that. . . .’ ‘And how about Ray Briem overnight?’ ‘No, don’t.’ There are some treasures on the air we have to protect.

“Two, if we had a whole bunch of articulate, informative talk hosts beating my doors down, that would be one thing. You would think I have resumes all over the place, and (tapes) of work. There are none.”

Green talks about bringing in Jorge Jarrin, who flies the KABC helicopter, delivering traffic and weather reports. “We made him a star . . . a major presence in our key drive-time periods.” He mentions Yolanda Gaskins, “a black newsperson in afternoon drive, and she’s heard during ballgames,” and Steve Gonzalez, “a recent hire” who does news on weekends. He cites the industry’s Minority Advertising Training program, which he co-founded in 1992, a program of college internships. Last fall, the station hired Truman Jacques, communications director for the city of Inglewood and a part-time TV broadcaster, to host “Religion on the Line,” Sunday nights from 10 to midnight.

“In my opinion, we have too few minorities on the radio station, OK? That is not by choice--and it’s a whole lot of difference if it’s by choice,” Green says. “Is there an immediate need? The answer is no . . . . Is there a long-range need? Yes. You’ve got a large Hispanic population, 38% of the market--should we stay in tune with that? The answer is yes .”

Does he see the need to actively recruit? Green replies that the station did that with Gonzalez.

What about talk hosts? “We are constantly looking for qualified talk-show hosts.”

At one point Green turns the table. “Do you know the names of any good black or Hispanic talk-show hosts?” Among the names mentioned was Madison, who at that point still had his talk job.

“You know these people,” Green responds, “and I’ve never heard one name.” (Madison, however, says that he applied to Green in 1989 and was told “no openings.”)

In a separate interview, KABC program director Diane Cridland, who comes from Indiana and has been at the station three years, agreed that “particularly in a city like Los Angeles, which is a very mixed city, (there’s) a great deal of need” for minority talk hosts. But she noted that “99.9%” of the tapes the station gets come from white males.

“Since (minorities) are not out there, coming up through the ranks, we really need to look for them in non-traditional places--people who are active in the community. . . . I’m talking to people in other markets, other cities.”

In July, a few weeks after Green and Cridland were initially interviewed, KABC announced that Steve Edwards was leaving his afternoon show for a TV job. Cridland moved Dennis Prager into that slot and replaced him in the 9 p.m. to midnight slot with weekend host Joel Roberts. “Dennis (gets) the most tremendous response. People love him,” Cridland said.

If one phrase rings hollow among some minority radio personalities and would-be talk hosts, it is the assertion by station executives that nobody’s beating down the doors.

“Baloney,” scoffs Carl Nelson, news director at KJLH-FM (102.3), a black-formated station in the Crenshaw area, who does a talk show from 5-6 a.m. “I say, ‘Why don’t you call the Southern California Journalists Assn.? They can supply you with a list of journalists, talk-show hosts.’ I know people who have tried to get jobs at the so-called mainstream stations, and they’re told, ‘You’re good; we’ll put you on the A list.’ And they never get the call.”

“People always claim there’s a lack of qualified hosts. That is so old, “ insists Ron Brewington, Los Angeles bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks. “Why waste your time when you know they’re not going to hire you? Each year at USC there’s a minority journalism conference. A lot of these recruiters, they come and they look and they talk, and that’s all they do . . . So you say ‘phooey’ and go about your business.”

Evelyn Fierro, a former mayor of South Pasadena who ran the East Los Angeles campaign for Bill Clinton, has applied at KFI. A graduate of San Jose State with a degree in journalism and a 1980 law degree from Whittier College (a classmate was KFI morning-drive host Bill Handel), Fierro began as a consumer reporter at KNX-AM (1070), stayed home to raise her son for seven years, then worked nine years as a writer-producer at KNBC-TV Channel 4. She feels that with her politics and being Latina, she has “a very special perspective.”

“I talked to Howard Neal, and he kept saying, ‘You don’t have to sell me.’ And then I met with (KFI program director) David Hall. We really connected.”

Yet a few weeks later, Fierro said she had “grown skeptical” because “so often so many stations are paying lip service.”

In the large sweep of Howard Neal’s top-floor office at KFI, there is only one photo on the wall--a framed 1989 Sunday Calendar cover of Mother Love (comedian Jo Anne Hart), a black woman who had been on weeknights delivering a mix of street-wise and humorous advice. She left after 15 months for TV.

Neal is also African-American.

With program director Hall sitting in, Neal, who also manages KOST-FM (103.5), is asked about his April quote in Calendar that the stations are “exposed.” His answer is as careful and low-key as the man himself: “We probably all have not done the necessary things in finding, preparing, teaching, training minorities for major-market radio. In our business, in almost every facet, you would normally need to start out in smaller markets. You just cannot come to Los Angeles, and I don’t care who you are, and expect to be placed on a 50,000-watt, clear-channel radio station.”

Of course, he concedes, someone like Gates is an exception. So is KFI advice host Marilyn Kagan.

The youngest of 12 children, Neal, 46, grew up in Santa Monica and Pacoima, the son of a municipal custodian. He graduated from Cal State Northridge, and after college entered a CBS executive minority training program. Before coming to KFI 11 years ago, he had been local sales manager at KFWB-AM (980).

Part of the problem, Neal maintains, is voice. “We’ve all been accustomed to hearing predominant white voices on general-market radio. Radio itself has segmented black from white, urban (from) general market. Those who have qualified, and could qualify to cross that line into general market, don’t want to start at the bottom. They just say, ‘I don’t want to be relegated to weekends or nighttime.’ ”

And then seeming to come at the issue from the flip side, Neal allows: “One of two things is going to happen: Either the KFIs, the KABCs, are going to do the right thing and allow it (minorities as major talk hosts) to happen or you will have black stations that will convert into talk-radio stations” and draw away audiences. “It’s going to happen, because there is a tremendous need and a tremendous presence of minorities (here).”

He maintains that there’s “commitment” for more minority presence “from the radio station, from (owners) Cox Enterprises” and himself, noting his activity in Black Media Network, an all-media group that promotes training and placement for African-Americans. Neal insists callers are just as important as the host, and denies that KFI’s conservative posture plays any role. “The access of blacks and Hispanics being able to get in and voice their opinion on the telephone line--that’s as important as having a black talk host or a Hispanic talk host. . . . I don’t subscribe to this thing about liberal balance. What I care about is that when an opinion is aired on this radio station, we allow the opposite side to be heard.”

As an African-American, Neal says he’s subject to some pressure from the community, but “I think most people (who) are my friends, they understand . . . they look at Howard Neal as a person . . . always cognizant, always involved in minority projects. Is the commitment just to get a black or Hispanic on the air, or is it to get the person that can deliver, just like Rush or just like Bill Handel? . . . People would look at me and say, ‘You can’t be a Tom and say what white people say: “I can’t find anybody.” ’ What I say is, ‘Bring me a tape of someone you’ve heard. . . .’ ”

“I’d pick up the phone in a heartbeat if I heard someone on any station--even KABC--that would be perfect on KFI,” jokes Hall, who has been point man for hiring talent at KFI. In September, he becomes program director at KIRO-AM/FM in Seattle.

At 27, Hall, who began his radio career in Sacramento at age 12 as a gofer, is a bit unusual--he never went to college. By 18, he was working a full-time overnight shift at a music station in San Jose. An adopted child raised in an Anglo family, Hall found out as a teen-ager that “my real mother is Hispanic--Elisa Ortiz.”

Before he joined KFI three years ago, he was news director at KFBK-AM in Sacramento, the station from which Limbaugh rocketed to stardom.

Asked if, because of Los Angeles’ demographics, he felt he would get increased ratings with minority talk hosts--or whether the core audience, which tends to be conservative, might be turned off--Hall replies: “I don’t think it matters. Do people watch Oprah (Winfrey) just because she’s black or do they watch her because she’s a good host? Here’s the better question: Do you think people watch Geraldo Rivera because he’s Hispanic? He’s a living, breathing tabloid. It’s the same in radio.”

For as long as Tom Hall has been on KABC, there are still those who can tune in and not know he is African-American. Hall neither parades nor hides ethnicity. His voice is standard radio baritone. Professionally he sees himself as a broadcast journalist--”just another talk-show host who happens to be black.”

“I have made whatever reputation I have based on my ability to talk about practically anything with anybody,” says Hall, whose regular slot has been 12:05 to 5 a.m. Sundays and Mondays. “Whether it’s politics or talking about the space shuttle or Rodney King.”

After all, before he got to KABC, he had been an interviewer, writer and producer of a TV documentary team, traveling the world. “I interviewed people like (Prime Minister) Ian Smith when Rhodesia was still Rhodesia . . . we interviewed Golda Meier, Anwar Sadat.” . In the nighttime Los Angeles market, he’s No. 1 on weekends. The first Saturday of the Gulf War he drew an extraordinary 19% of the available audience.

Asked about the paucity of minorities in major talk spots, Hall mentions narrowcasting. “It may be some stations feel they would be narrowcasting to only African-Africans if they used a black talk-show host. That seems strange.”

No one at KABC ever suggested that to him, he adds quickly, “but I’ve picked up that impression at different levels, even from some of the callers, (who) when I first started were surprised that I had the breadth of knowledge.”

Only infrequently, when the topic demands, does he describe himself as “a person of color. . . . My feeling is when everybody else on the station starts talking about their ethnicity, then I’ll talk about mine. Ken and Barkley aren’t (saying) they’re two white guys. . . .”

Errol Smith nicknames his show: “The National Assn. for the Advancement of Sane People.” KIEV promotes this political conservative as “politically incorrect.”

He may sound like Rush Limbaugh but Smith is so nice , both on air and off, you sometimes forget the harshness. Like when he referred to Lani Guinier on air in late May as President Clinton’s “strait-jacket candidate” before the withdrawal of her nomination as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Or when he talks off-air about the need for a voice like his because “the thinking of the black community is controlled by the church . . . Afro-centric” philosophy and the “civil rights establishment, (which) in many ways have a vise grip on the minds of the black community.”

Yet each Tuesday now, he has with him two African-American guests who differ with his point of view. On a recent show, urging people to “forget about the past,” the “years of oppression,” to be “pragmatic” and “cancel all programs trying to repair inequities,” Smith was so “battered” by his in-studio guests that he pleaded: “They’re beating up on me, folks. I’m going to give out the (call-in) numbers. I need help .” In his voice was laughter.

Co-owner and chief executive of a thriving custodial services contracting company, author of the book “37 Things Every Black Man Needs to Know,” Smith found his talk-show calling after “doing radio stations around the country” promoting his 1991 advice book for black men. He also did guest interviews on KFI. He tried to parlay that into his own show but couldn’t.

Smith began investigating KIEV, a station that sells its air-time to program producers, who may choose to recoup their expenses by selling advertising. Then came the rioting in the spring of 1992. “I got on the phone (to his own salesman), I said, ‘Look, the timing is excellent. You’ve got to move on this right away. I’d like to get this deal together.’ ”

“Head to Head With Errol Smith” began airing a month later, 3-4 p.m. Tuesdays, for which Smith paid about $1,400 a week. In February, because his phone board was lighting up, the station invited him to host three more days at no cost--and no salary; it would seek the advertising. In June, Smith went five days. He still pays for one day a week; on the other four, he says he splits advertising revenue the program draws with the station.

“My audience tends to be conservative blacks who love me, conservative whites who love me and liberal blacks who just call to throw rocks at me,” Smith says.

An up-by-the-bootstraps guy, Smith, who was born in Harlem and grew up in a variety of neighborhoods from downtown Brooklyn to the South Bronx, brings a message of “self-reliance” and “business enterprise.” And that appeals at KIEV. Says program director Dick Sinclair: “He built his businesses from scratch; he’s not a silver-spoon guy.”

Now Smith sees another future. “I’d like to do become a syndicated broadcaster, go national.”

The first time Mark Whitlock took over the mike at KFI in late May, he asked listeners to phone in their answers to this question: “Why do you hate blacks?”

“Let’s examine the stereotypes,” said Whitlock, executive director of the Renaissance Program at First A.M.E., which helps new businesses start up in the inner city. “There’s no wrong answers. The wrong is physical or verbal abuse that blacks have had to tolerate . . . the glass ceilings in corporate America . . . the retaliation by those who have financial power over those who have not.”

It was a bit rocky. Whitlock used organization-speak--”We must begin to dialogue “--and he was a little flustered: “Now this microwave-- radiowave-- destined for racial understanding will probably be a little bumpy. . . .” He got that right.

The first caller was John from San Diego. “Why do I hate blacks? . . . They’re an aggressive race, prone to violence . . . criminal activity as well.”

“Then how do you account for the Charles Mansons of the worlds?” Whitlock responded. Back and forth they went 18 times; at the end it was unclear if John had been moved.

On a show in June, he dealt with hate crimes, and later Whitlock confided he wasn’t particularly proud of it. “You get caught up in your emotions. I found myself almost wanting to retaliate. I don’t know if the white audience understands the pain of the African-American. And as insensitive as they were, I found myself trying to be empathetic. I was caught in the middle. There’s so much ignorance about African-Americans, about Latino-Americans, it almost became overwhelming.”

Whitlock, who used to be an executive at an insurance company and came to KFI management’s attention when he appeared as a guest on Bill Handel’s show last spring to discuss the Reginald O. Denny beating trial, says radio needs the voice of “a militant--a militant without being violent, but militantly raising the issues that impact our community.”

Of course, it’s not all black and white. He did an hour on Mayor Richard Riordan and promises that discussions of City Hall will be a regular feature. He did a lighthearted take on the proposition that “Women Should Be Submissive.”

When he got his regular slot, noon to 3 p.m. on Sundays, Whitlock said KFI program director Hall told him he might be “a little controversial” for his listeners. Hall was right.

In the second of his three hours July 11, Whitlock was discussing the upcoming sentencing of Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell in the federal trial for violating the civil rights of Rodney G. King. Whitlock argued that they should get the maximum sentence. One caller called him a “black racist.” Another delivered a long racist diatribe, ending with the N-word slur and “C’mon, boy. . . .’ ”

Whitlock had let the caller go on and on because he wanted his listeners to hear all that was being said. But finally, he couldn’t take anymore, and hung up.

Monday: Minority hosts in the rest of the nation.