by Ira Glass
2001: While writing freelance columns for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, Mr. Ziegler also gets work at a small twenty-four-hour Comcast cable-TV network in Philly, where he’s a writer and commentator on a prime-time issues-related talk show. Although Comcast is “an evil, evil, evil company, [which] created that network for the sole purpose of giving blow-jobs to politicians who vote on Comcast legislation,” Mr. Z. discovers that “I’m actually really good at talk TV. I was the best thing that ever happened to this show. I actually ended up winning an Emmy, which is ironic.” There are, however, serious and irresolvable problems with a female producer on the show, the full story of which you are going to be spared (mainly because of legal worries).
2002: John Ziegler is hired as the midmorning host at Clear Channel’s WHAS in Louisville, which Arbitron lists as the fifty-fifth largest radio market in the U.S. According to a local paper, the host’s “stormy, thirteen-month tenure in Louisville was punctuated by intrigue, outrage, controversy and litigation.” According to John Ziegler, “The whole story would make a great movie—in fact, my whole life would make a great movie, but this in particular would make a great movie.” Densely compressed synopsis: For several quarters, Mr. Z.’s program is a great success in Louisville. “I’m doing huge numbers—in one Book I got a fifteen share, which is ridiculous.” He is also involved in a very public romance with one Darcie Divita, a former LA Lakers cheerleader who is part of a morning news show on the local Fox TV affiliate. The relationship is apparently Louisville’s version of Ben & J.Lo, and its end is not amicable. In August ’03, prompted by callers’ questions on his regular “Ask John Anything” feature, Mr. Z. makes certain on-air comments about Ms. Divita’s breasts, underwear, genital grooming, and libido. Part of the enduring controversy over John Ziegler’s firing, which occurs a few days later, is exactly how much those comments and/or subsequent complaints from listeners and the Louisville media had to do with it. Mr. Z. has a long list of reasons for believing that his P. D. was really just looking for an excuse to can him. As for all the complaints, Mr. Z. remains bitter and perplexed: (1) “The comments I made about Darcie’s physical attributes were extremely positive in nature”; (2) “Darcie had, in the past, volunteered information about her cleavage on my program”; (3) “I’ve gone much further with other public figures without incident. . . . I mocked [Kentucky Governor] Paul Patton for his inability to bring Tina Conner to orgasm, [and] no one from management ever even mentioned it to me.”
Here, some of John Ziegler’s specific remarks about Darcie Divita are being excised at his request. It turns out that Ms. Divita is suing both the host and WHAS—Mr. Z.’s deposition is scheduled for summer ’04.
John Ziegler on why he thinks he was hired for the Live and Local job by KFI: “They needed somebody ‘available.’ ” And on the corporate logic behind his hiring: “It’s among the most bizarre things I’ve ever been involved in. To simultaneously be fired by Clear Channel and negotiate termination in a market where I had immense value and be courted by the same company in a market where I had no current value is beyond explicable.”
(after what Ms. Bertolucci characterizes as “a really big search around the country”)
Mr. Z. explains the scare quotes around “available” as meaning that the experimental gig didn’t offer the sort of compensation that could lure a large-market host away from another station. He describes his current KFI salary as “in the low six figures.”
Mr. Z. on talk radio as a career: “This is a terrible business. I’d love to quit this business.” On why, then, he accepted KFI’s offer: “My current contract would be by far the toughest for them to fire me of anyplace I’ve been.”
Compared with many talk-radio hosts, John Ziegler is unusually polite to on-air callers. Which is to say that he doesn’t yell at them, call them names, or hang up while they’re speaking, although he does get frustrated with some calls. But there are good and bad kinds of frustration, stimulation-wise. Hence the delicate art of call screening. The screener’s little switchboard and computer console are here in the Airmix room, right up next to the studio window.
JZS Producer Emiliano Limon: “There are two types of callers. You’ve got your hard-core talk-radio callers, who just like hearing themselves on-air”—these listeners will sometimes vary the first names and home cities they give the screener, trying to disguise the fact that they’ve been calling in night after night—“and then there are the ones who just, for whatever reason, respond to the topic.” Of these latter a certain percentage are wackos, but some wackos actually make good on-air callers. Assoc. prod. and screener Vince Nicholas: “The trick is knowing what kooks to get rid of and what to let through. People that are kooky on a particular issue—some of these Zig likes; he can bust on them and have fun with them. He likes it.”
Vince (who is either a deep professional admirer or a titanic suck-up) states several times that John Ziegler is excellent with callers, dutifully referring to him each time as “Zig.”
’Mondo Hernandez confirms on-record that Vince’s screener voice sounds like someone talking around a huge bong hit.
Vince isn’t rude or brusque with the callers he screens out; he simply becomes more and more laconic and stoned-sounding over the headset as the person rants on, and finally says, “Whoa, gotta go.” Especially obnoxious and persistent callers can be placed on Hold at the screener’s switchboard, locking up their phones until Vince decides to let them go. Those whom the screener lets through enter a different, computerized Hold system in which eight callers at a time can be kept queued up and waiting, each designated on Mr. Z.’s monitor by a different colored box displaying a first name, city, one-sentence summary of the caller’s thesis, and the total time waiting. The host chooses, cafeteria-style, from this array.
In his selections, Mr. Z. has an observable preference for female callers. Emiliano’s explanation: “Since political talk radio is so white male-driven, it’s good to get female voices in there.” It turns out that this is an industry convention; the roughly 50-50 gender mix of callers one hears on most talk radio is because screeners admit a much higher percentage of female callers to the system.
One of the last things that Emiliano Limon always does before air-time is to use the station’s NexGen Audio Editing System to load various recorded sound bites from the day’s broadcast news onto a Prophet file that goes with the Cut Sheet. This is a numbered list of bites available for tonight’s John Ziegler Show, of which both Mr. Z. and ’Mondo get a copy. Each bite must be precisely timed. It is an intricate, exacting process of editing and compilation, during which Mr. Z. often drums his fingers and looks pointedly at his watch as the producer ignores him and always very slowly and placidly edits and compresses and loads and has the Cut Sheet ready at the very last second. Emiliano is the sort of extremely chilled-out person who can seem to be leaning back at his station with his feet up on the Airmix table even when he isn’t leaning back at all. He’s wearing the LA Times shirt again. His own view on listener calls is that they are “overrated in talk radio,” that they’re rarely all that cogent or stimulating, but that hosts tend to be “overconcerned with taking calls and whether people are calling. Consider: This is the only type of live performance with absolutely no feedback from the audience. It’s natural for the host to key in on the only real-time response he can get, which is the calls. It takes a long time with a host to get him to forget about the calls, to realize the calls have very little to do with the wider audience.”
NexGen (a Clear Channel product) displays a Richterish-looking sound wave, of which all different sizes of individual bits can be highlighted and erased in order to tighten the pacing and compress the sound bite. It’s different from ’Mondo’s Cashbox, which tightens things automatically according to pre-set specs; using NexGen requires true artistry. Emiliano knows the distinctive vocal wave patterns of George W. Bush, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and certain others well enough that he can recognize
them on the screen without any sound or ID. He is so good at using NexGen that he manages to make the whole high-stress Cut Sheet thing look dull.
Vince, meanwhile, is busy at the screener’s station. A lady with a heavy accent keeps calling in to say that she has vital information: a Czech newspaper has revealed that John Kerry is actually a Jew, that his grandfather changed his distinctively Jewish surname, and that this fact is being suppressed in the U.S. media and must be exposed. Vince finally tries putting her on punitive Hold, but her line’s light goes out, which signifies that the lady has a cell phone and has disengaged by simply turning it off. Meaning that she can call back again as much as she likes, and that Vince is going to have to get actively rude. ’Mondo’s great mild eyes rise from the board: “Puto, man, what’s that about?” Vince, very flat and bored: “Kerry’s a Jew.” Emiliano: “Another big advent is the cell phone. Before cells you got mostly homebound invalids calling in. [Laughs] Now you get the driving invalid.”
’Mondo and Vince clearly enjoy each other, exchanging “puto” and “chilango” with brotherly ease. When Vince takes a couple days off, it becomes difficult to get ’Mondo to say anything about anything, Doritos or no.
Q: (based on seeing some awfully high minute-counts in some people’s colored boxes on Vince’s display): How long will callers wait to get on the air? Emiliano Limon: “We get some who’ll wait for the whole show. [Laughs] If they’re driving, what else do they have to do?”
Q: If a drunk driver calls in, do you have to notify the police or something?
A: “Well, this is why screening is tricky. You’ll get, say, somebody calling in saying they’re going to commit suicide—sometimes you have to refer the call. But sometimes you’re getting pranked. Keep in mind, we’re in an area with a lot of actors and actresses anxious to practice their craft. [Now his feet really are up on the table.] I remember we had Ross Perot call in one time, it sounded just like him, and actually he really was due to be on the show but not for an hour, and now he’s calling saying he needs to be on right now because of a schedule change. Very convincing, sounded just like him, and I had to go, ‘Uh, Mr. Perot, what’s the name of your assistant press liaison?’ Because I’d just talked to her a couple days prior. And he’s [doing vocal impression]: ‘Listen here, you all going to put me on the air or not?’ And I’m: ‘Umm, Mr. Perot, if you understand the question, please answer the question.’ And he hangs up. [Laughs] But you would have sworn this was Ross Perot.”
4
Historically, the two greatest ratings periods ever for KFI AM-640 have been the Gray Davis gubernatorial recall and the O. J. Simpson trial. Now, in early June ’04, the tenth anniversary of the Ron Goldman/Nicole Brown Simpson murders is approaching, and O. J. starts to pop up once again on the cultural radar. And Mr. John Ziegler happens to be more passionate about the O. J. Simpson thing than maybe any other single issue, and feels that he “know[s] more about the case than anyone not directly involved,” and is able to be almost unbearably stimulating about O. J. Simpson and the utter indubitability of his guilt. And the confluence of the murders’ anniversary, the case’s tabloid importance to the nation and business importance to KFI, and its deep personal resonance for Mr. Z. helps produce what at first looks like the absolute Monster talk-radio story of the month.
Some of his personal reasons for this have been made clear. But the Simpson case also rings a lot of professional cherries for Mr. Ziegler as a host: sports, celebrity, race, racism, PC and the “race card,” the legal profession, the U.S. justice system, sex, misogyny, miscegenation, and a lack of shame and personal accountability that Mr. Z. sees as just plain evil.
On June 3, in the third segment of the John Ziegler Show’s second hour, after lengthy discussions of the O.J. anniversary and the Michael Jackson case, Mr. Z. takes a phone call from one “Daryl in Temecula,” an African-American gentleman who is “absolutely astounded they let a Klansman on the radio this time of night.” The call, which lasts seven minutes and eighteen seconds and runs well over the :46 break, ends with John Ziegler’s telling the audience, “That’s as angry as I’ve ever gotten in the history of my career.” And Vince Nicholas, looking awed and spent at his screener’s station, pronounces the whole thing “some of the best talk radio I ever heard.”
This annoys Alan LaGreen of Airwatch enough to cause him to snap at ’Mondo on an off-air channel (mainly because Alan LaGreen now ends up having to be the KFI Traffic Center during an interval in which he’s supposed to be the Traffic Center for some country station); plus it pushes ’Mondo’s skills with the Cashbox right to their limit in the hour’s segment four.
Some portions of the call are untranscribable because they consist mainly of Daryl and Mr. Z. trying to talk over each other. Daryl’s core points appear to be (1) that Mr. Z. seems to spend all his time talking about black men like Kobe and O.J. and Michael Jackson—“Don’t white people commit crimes?”—and (2) that O.J. was, after all, found innocent in a court of law, and yet Mr. Z. keeps “going on about ‘He’s guilty, he’s guilty—’ ”
“He is,” the host inserts.
Daryl: “He was acquitted, wasn’t he?”
It turns out to be impossible, off the air, to Q & A Mr. Ziegler about his certainty re O.J.’s guilt. Bring up anything that might sound like reservations, and Mr. Z won’t say a word—he’ll angle his head way over to the side and look at you as if he can’t tell whether you’re trying to jerk him around or you’re simply out of your mind.
It’s different if you ask about O. J. Simpson l’homme, or about specific details of his psyche and marriage and lifestyle and golf game and horrible crimes. For instance, John Ziegler has a detailed and fairly plausible-sounding theory about O.J.’s motive for the murders, which boils down to Simpson’s jealous rage over his ex-wife’s having slept with Mr. Marcus Allen, a former Heisman Trophy winner and current (as of ’94) NFL star. Mr. Z. can defend this theory with an unreproduceably long index of facts, names, and media citations, all of which you can ask him about if you keep your face and tone neutral and simply write down what he says without appearing to quibble or object or in any way question the host’s authority on the subject.
(For instance, you cannot ask something like whether Ms. Simpson’s liaison with Marcus Allen is a documented fact or just part of Mr. Z.’s theory—this will immediately terminate the Q & A.)
“That makes no difference as to whether or not he did it.”
“O.J., Kobe: You just thrive on these black guys.”
It is here that Mr. Z. begins to pick up steam. “Oh yeah, Daryl, right, I’m a racist. As a matter of fact, I often say, ‘You know what? I just wish another black guy would commit a crime, because I hate black people so much.’ ”
Daryl: “I think you do have more to talk about on black guys. I think that’s more ‘news’ ” . . . which actually would be kind of an interesting point to explore, or at least address; but Mr. Z. is now stimulated.
“As a matter of fact, Daryl, oftentimes when we go through who’s committed the crimes, there are times when the white people who control the media, we get together and go, ‘Oh, we can’t talk about that one, because that was a white guy.’ This is all a big conspiracy, Daryl. Except, to be serious for a second, Daryl, what really upsets me, assuming you’re a black guy, is that you ought to be ten times more pissed off at O. J. Simpson than I am, because you know why?”
Daryl: “You can’t tell me how I should feel. As a forty-year-old black man, I’ve seen racism for forty years.”
Mr. Z. is starting to move his upper body back and forth excitedly in his chair. “I bet you have. I bet you have. And here’s why you ought to be pissed off: Because, out of all the black guys who deserved to get a benefit of the doubt because of the history of racism which is real in this country, and which is insidious, the one guy—the one guy—who gets the benefit of all of that pain and suffering over a hundred years of history in this country is the one guy who deserves it less than anybody
else, who sold his race out, who tried to talk white, who only had white friends, who had his ass kissed all over the place because he decided he wasn’t really a black guy, who was the first person in the history of this country ever accepted by white America, who was actually able to do commercial endorsements because he pretended to be white, and that’s the guy? That’s the guy. That’s the guy who gets the benefit of that history, and that doesn’t piss you off, that doesn’t piss you off?” And then an abrupt decrescendo: “Daryl, I can assure you that the last thing I am is racist on this. This is the last guy who should benefit.”
In case memories of the trial have dimmed, Mr. Z. is referring here to the defense team’s famous playing of the race card, the suggestion that the LAPD wanted to frame O.J. because he was a miscegenating black, etc.
TINY EDITORIAL CORRECTION Umm, four hundred?
John Ziegler is now screeching—except that’s not quite the right word. Pitch and volume have both risen (’Mondo’s at the channel 7 controls trying to forestall peaking), but his tone is meant to connote a mix of incredulity and outrage, with the same ragged edge to the stressed syllables as—no kidding—Jackson’s and Sharpton’s. Daryl of Temecula, meantime, has been silenced by the sheer passion of the host’s soliloquy . . . and we should note that Daryl really has stopped speaking; it’s not that Mr. Z. has turned off the volume on the caller’s line (which is within his power, and which some talk-radio hosts do a lot, but Mr. Z. does not treat callers this way).
(Mr. Z. means the first black person—he’s now so impassioned he’s skipping words. [It never once sounds like babbling, though.])
