The Hot Hot-Line

It is just before 1 a.m., any 1 a.m. from Monday through Saturday, and the din from the next-door Bowladrome has died away when Larry Glick climbs to the second-floor studio of Boston's WMEX ("the ever-new Wee-Mex, Home of Modern Radio"), eases himself into his chair, its torn plastic cushion oozing sponge rubber. Around him are ashtrays half-filled with cigarettes left by the daytime rock 'n' roll D.J.s. Staring at him is the control panel held together with electrical tape. On the scarred horseshoe table sits a six-line beige telephone, equipped with six lights that will flicker when the telephone calls come in.

But first he relaxes as his taped introduction is played over the air: "Well, it's night and everything's all right. Just as right as it can be. Ladies and gentlemen, you're tuned to the new WMEX in the new Boston. The station in a growing Boston, headquarters for the nighttime Glicknics. A Glicknic is a thing called happiness, and happiness is a thing called Larry Glick."

This is Glick's signal to turn himself on, and hunching toward the mike, a big smile spreading over his face, he greets the great unseen listening audience in his deep, friendly baritone: "How do you feel? I really mean it. How are you getting along with your wife? How are you getting along with your boy friend? We'll discuss all these things. CO 2-9600. You call us. You're the star of this show." And before he is done, the lights do go on. The fans are calling in, and Larry Glick's all-night hot-line show is in business.

2 1/2 Years on the Bottle. Glick's telephone call-in program is just one of dozens that are proliferating across the U.S., giving the platter parades and baseball broadcasts a run for the ratings. Glick, 43, now with his eighth radio station since 1953, has become a glib, gemuetlich master of the new formula. All he has to defend himself against his telephone callers is a tape-delay device, which gives him a four-second time lag in which to erase obscenities from the air. To ease the strain, there is an occasional celebrity visitor such as Songstress Edie Adams or Rocky Marciano.

The rest is up to the listeners, and for Glick's fans it provides nighttime fare that combines all the appeal of a stormy town meeting with the piquancy of listening in on the party line to real-life drama. "Oh Larry," begins one mother's voice, "my boy's been on the bottle for the last 2 1/2 years; what am I going to do?" Another caller wants to wipe up the Viet Cong, the next discusses self-hypnotism, a third knocks himself out with his own imitation of Bobby Kennedy, and then along in the wee small hours comes a dope addict, who swears he would have committed suicide long ago if Larry had not made him feel that he "belonged to a family."

Paid-up Burial Policy. Such testimonials from the big cities' lonely ones are only one indication of the new impact of the call-in shows. The appeal seems as strong, no matter what time of day or night the programs are scheduled. Stopping the music and turning to talk lifted Nashville's WLAC Focus into first place in daytime shows, and boosted Baltimore's WCBM into first from 9 p.m. to midnight. And within a year, after shifting to the phone-in format on High Noon, Albuquerque's KOB quadrupled its audience to become the state's top-rated show in that time slot.

The principal ingredient in any successful hot-line show is the personality of the host, and often the more opinionated the better. Declares Ira Blue of San Francisco's KGO: "On the radio, on the telephone, I am God." And yet his highhandedness with call-ins ("Madame, stop before you make me sick") has only whetted his listeners' appetite for more. He has received calls from as far away as Guadalajara, Mexico, and Goose Bay, Labrador, averages 65 letters a day, once received a paid-up $1,000 policy--for his burial. Blue boasts, correctly, "A sponsor who wants to buy a spot on my show couldn't get in for six weeks."

20,000 Callers. Every bit as lava-tongued and popular is Los Angeles' Joe Pyne, an ex-marine with three World War II battle stars, a wooden leg, and a chip on his shoulder. Rather than debate at length with callers who disagree with him, Joe may tell them to "go gargle with razor blades," or "take your teeth out, put 'em in backwards and bite your throat." But the listeners must like it loutish. Pyne, claims his appropriately named station, KLAC, has the highest talk-show rating in the U.S.

A frequent curse of the call-in shows is their monopolization by the same small group of bores. When Lawyer David Fedor, host of Columbia, S.C.'s Open Mike, found himself swamped with right-wingers (one woman pointed out, "If you drop the first four letters from Communism, you get UNism"), he firmly limited callers to a three-minute spiel, a one-minute rebuttal.

To cope with similar problems, St. Louis' KMOX, a trailblazer in talk programming, with countless awards to its credit, including a citation from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, has evolved two basic rules: 1) no caller gets through to the moderator until a preliminary interview determines that he is not a crackpot, and 2) each guest must be an authority in his field, such as Dr. Spock or Bishop Pike. What is avoided is sensation, not controversy. When two nuns, just back from Selma, reported on the march on Montgomery, the station drew 20,000 calls.

Wife Swapping. Such wide appeal has prompted the Methodist Church to sponsor Night Call, the first hot-line show with a nationwide reach. Originally on Salt Lake City's KSL, it is now also broadcast from two of the nation's most powerful (50,000 watts) outlets in Baltimore and Des Moines. Despite its sponsorship and the fact that two of the three moderators are ministers, Night Call isn't pulling any punches; it devoted a program to homosexuality in its first hours.

Obsession with sex can range from titillation to the repellent. On Kansas City's Counsellor's Corner, the Rev. R. Lofton Hudson found himself counseling a woman who complained that she was being "pressured" into a neighborhood wife-swapping group. Bob Raiford, on Washington's WTOP, waded unblinking into a discussion of aerosol contraceptives. And when New Orleans' WSMB's Larry Regan asked one deviate caller if he had considered going to a psychiatrist, he got the reply, "Go to a psychiatrist, hell. I go with one."

Occasionally such lurid dialogue performs a public service. An agitated mother told Speak Up in Durham, N.C., that two strange women had just tried to recruit her junior high school daughter to "date men for money." No sooner had she hung up than a second mother called in to say, "And I thought I was the only one." Then came a third and a fourth parent and, finally, the chief of police himself. The next night, as he promised, the prostitution ring, including a 13-year-old, was broken up by the cops.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.