BobLassiterAirchecks.com

Two things happened over the weekend before this Monday show: (1) David Duke won a seat in the Louisiana State Legislature. (2) A violent mob overran the Florida State Fair; eyewitnesses say that the instigators were largely black, the victims largely white, but the media and the black community sweep that fact under the rug and downplay the entire thing. Bob sees them as related: The event at the fair was racism, and by pretending it never happened, the black community plays right into the hands of David Duke and the people who put him into office.

DOWNLOAD - This Weekend in Racism

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• Station: WFLA 970AM
• Date: February 20, 1989
• Time: 1:02:41
• Format: mp3
• Size: 14.4MB

Courtesy of Keith Newman & the General

This is one of Lassiter’s Friday, live-studio-audience shows, and it’s one of the weirdest and most chaotic (and all-around entertaining) we’ve posted in quite a while. An old man in Mango confuses everyone about the whereabouts of Evans Park, and that’s just for starters. Bob buys everyone lunch from the snack machine, a man describes how God let him smell the Devil, “Fez Whatley” hangs out, Lionel drops by for dueling banjos, and the Weasel compares Bob to the Ayatollah Khomeini. And more, all in one wild program.

DOWNLOAD - Where Is Evans Park?

• Station: WFLA 970AM
• Date: February 17, 1989
• Time: 1:41:07
• Format: mp3
• Size: 23.1MB

Courtesy of Keith Newman & the General

Bob and Mary went looking for a house to buy over the weekend…and the experience was so appalling that the Mad Dog has to come in and detail the ludicrous price of real estate. If he can’t afford space just for himself and Mary (and Sophie), what do people with three and four kids do? This isn’t even about investment, just about having a place you can call your own. Once again, as relevant today as it was when it was broadcast.

(Note: Bob keeps giving the date as Monday, May 7, 1989; May 7 was a Sunday that year. This is the May 8 show.)

DOWNLOAD - Affordable Housing

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• Station: WFLA 970AM
• Date: May 8, 1989
• Time: 1:14:29
• Format: mp3
• Size: 17.1MB

Courtesy of Keith Newman & the General

What do you like about them? What don’t you like? As Lassiter loves to do, he’s set up this topic so he can challenge everybody on every side. When people talk about what they like, Bob points out the problems with those things; when they say what they don’t like, Bob explains why those things aren’t really as bad as they seem. (This show is just a few days after the death of Dick Norman, and he’s talked about a bit, too.)

DOWNLOAD - The Times We’re Living In

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• Station: WFLA 970AM
• Date: January 31, 1989
• Time: 1:41:19
• Format: mp3
• Size: 23.3MB

Courtesy of Keith Newman & the General

Radio Host Hits Listener at Festival

Joshua L. Weinstein
LARGO - Controversial radio talk show host Bob Lassiter hit a 19-year-old listener with the back of his hand after the man screamed close to the microphone during a live broadcast at the Largo Renaissance Festival on Saturday, police said Sunday.

The man, Phillip Woodrow Mattox of St. Petersburg, told police that he received free tickets to the festival from the Lassiter show, broadcast on WFLA-AM, and that he screamed “because I have been a regular caller on the show for the last two years. I have been asked by the producers to scream.”

Mattox told police that Lassiter “seemed to recognize the scream,” and that after the scream, Lassiter “turned to his side and punched me in the mouth.”

Officials at WFLA-AM did not return telephone calls from the St. Petersburg Times on Sunday, but according to a statement that Lassiter, 43, made to police, “I was closing my radio show … when I heard a loud scream that appeared to be coming from my left rear directly into my ear.

“As I am the frequent target of threats of physical violence, I react first, ask questions later. I swung with my left arm, backhanding a young man before I ever made eye contact. He was stunned and left the area.

“I followed, approached, said I failed to find it funny, advised him that what he did was actually in violation of federal law and told him that I never wanted to see him again.”

According to Lassiter’s statement, Mattox “was just in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.”

Mattox gave police a somewhat different version of what happened after Lassiter hit him:

“He put down his microphone and ran ahead of where I was walking. He began poking his index finger in my chest, saying, ‘Don’t ever let me see you again. If I ever see you under different circumstances, I will beat the hell out of you.’”

Mattox’s shout made it onto the air.

“I happened to be in my car at the time he (Lassiter) was ending his live broadcast,” festival general manager Tim Ruedy said Sunday. “I heard a loud scream, so all I could say is I heard the loud scream over the air.”

Largo police are investigating the matter, police spokesman Dennis Crandall said Sunday.

You’ve heard about it. You’ve talked about it. You’ve frequently requested it. Now, finally, here it is: Bob broadcasts remotely from the Largo Renaissance Festival. Bob is wearing a period costume, the Muffy is with him, and they’re discussing the sights, sounds, and smells of the big event and taking calls. And yes, it does contain that most infamous moment, at the conclusion of the show…

DOWNLOAD - At the Renaissance Fair

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• Station: WFLA 970AM
• Date: April 15, 1989
• Time: 27:15
• Format: mp3
• Size: 6.3MB

Courtesy of Keith Newman & the General

Belinda, Bob’s hairdresser, stops in to cut his hair and trim his beard in the midst of a show on irresponsible asshole drivers. There are also some digressions on obnoxious sports fans (a fight at the Bucs game), Michigan and Wisconsin, and O.J.’s scheduled TV interview the following night.

DOWNLOAD - Asshole Drivers with Belinda

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• Station: WSUN 620AM
• Date: October 10, 1995
• Time: 1:15:17
• Format: mp3
• Size: 17.3MB

Courtesy of Rich Marino

It took only four hours for the jury to acquit O.J. Simpson, with the verdict announced the day after they began deliberations. Bob, Sharon, and the callers discuss what the verdict means; what the trial tells us about race, celebrity, the legal system, and America; and what they’ll all do now that the trial they’ve devoted so much of their time to is over. (Part of this file was previously posted under the title “OJ Verdict, Recut.”)

DOWNLOAD - The O.J. Jury Comes Back

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• Station: WSUN 620AM
• Date: October 3, 1995
• Time: 1:22:32
• Format: mp3
• Size: 19MB

Courtesy of Rich Marino

After the long, long fiasco that was the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the jury finally begins deliberation. With Bob following the trial as closely as he has, it leads to lengthy discussions of how long the jury might be out, of what they might say, and of racism and racial issues as a whole.

DOWNLOAD - The O.J. Jury Goes Out

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• Station: WSUN 620AM
• Date: October 2, 1995
• Time: 52:42
• Format: mp3
• Size: 12MB

Courtesy of Rich Marino

IN ONE CITY, SUPPORT FOR GULF ACTION, BUT NO FERVENT PATRIOTISM

By William E. Schmidt, Special to the New York Times

With lots of American flags and a homemade sign that read ‘’Send a message to our troops in the Persian Gulf,'’ Lydia Munger and her friends set out on a mission this week, a campaign to flood soldiers and sailors in the Middle East with cheerful postcards from back home.With lots of American flags and a homemade sign that read ‘’Send a message to our troops in the Persian Gulf,'’ Lydia Munger and her friends set out on a mission this week, a campaign to flood soldiers and sailors in the Middle East with cheerful postcards from back home.

But after several hours of campaigning at O’Hare Airport on Wednesday, Lydia, who is 12 years old, and her mother, Mary, said they managed to persuade just 13 people to stop and scribble a greeting. ‘’People either are too busy to care, or they just aren’t very patriotic,'’ Mrs. Munger said.

In some parts of the country, the confrontation in the gulf has prompted outbursts of patriotic fervor: flag-waving demonstrations and huge yellow ribbons tied to trees. In Chicago, to judge by the calls to radio call-in shows and by television and newspaper interviews, people say they strongly support President Bush’s decision to send troops to the Middle East, but their mood has not translated into demonstrations of patriotism.

General Ambivalence

Despite all the troops dispatched to the Middle East, the thousands of reservists summoned to active duty and the way the story has dominated newspapers, television and radio, it just does not feel here as if America is going to war.

In private conversations, there is ambivalence and uncertainty. There is, among some, a mood of almost studied indifference - perhaps it is wishful thinking - that all of the hard language is just words.

‘’There’s not going to be any war,'’ said Ron Magnussen, a house painter who was drinking a glass of beer at the Jump Inn, a tavern on the city’s North Side. ‘’You know we’re not going to bomb them, since it would kill all the hostages. Both sides realize there is too much at stake to go to war.'’

For others, those with friends or families overseas, or reservists awaiting a phone call, the mood is tinged with apprehension.

‘’Did you ever notice that those who are the most gung-ho, who say we ought to go on in clean him out, are those who don’t have anything to lose?'’ asked Bill Jackson, a Chicago building manager and the father of a son whose Naval unit in San Diego is on alert for duty in the gulf.

‘People Are Uneasy’

On radio station WLS-AM, Bob Lassiter, the host of a call-in show, said he thinks a lot of people are genuinely afraid. ‘’People are uneasy, on edge,'’ he said. ‘’I hear it on the air, and I think you can feel it on the street.'’

Twice on Friday, he said, he had to cut people off when they began to spout obscenities, during heated discussions about the Middle East, the topic that is dominating all other conversation on his program. ‘’I'll usually go weeks at a time before I have to hit the dump button,'’ he said. ‘’I think a lot of people are just plain scared.'’

With others, there is a wariness about what it is exactly that America has gotten itself into. Even among those who say President Saddam Hussein of Iraq needs to be taught a lesson, the troop movements and rumors of war in a distant place inevitably evoke comparisons to Vietnam and the specter of a protracted, unresolved and divisive standoff.

‘’Let’s just not get stuck over there like we did in Vietnam,'’ said Barbara Krafcisin, who tends bar at an American Legion post on the North Side.

I know that there’s a bit of unrest out there in Lassiter Land. Between the holidays and the kickstarting of the new year, George (the working girl’s favorite) and I are pretty busy people who’ve unfortunately had to defer to our jobs, families, and other basics of life. But we’ve found a temporary workaround solution that should help us get more files posted in the next few weeks.

So, while it may take just a little while longer to get started, look for a block of WPLP airchecks in the near future. Meantime we’ve posted a few news articles from Lassiter’s Chicago era. Enjoy!

STUPID STUNTS OF THE YEAR
One last look back at the biggest jokers in Chicago’s broadcast deck during 1990:

MIKE KIRSCH

Gonzo reporter Mike Kirsch was thrown out of an Indianapolis hospital when he tried to photograph AIDS patient Ryan White on his death bed.

JOHN COLEMAN (who left to found the Weather Channel)

In his parting shot as weatherman, John Coleman sabotaged WMAQ-Channel 5’s switchboard by taping an “I’m out of here” message on the answering machine.

ED TYLL

Shrill Ed Tyll falsely announced that he had resigned as a talk host because of supposed death threats against him.

TERRY SAVAGE

“Financial analyst” Terry Savage took a day off from WBBM-Channel 2 to observe Rosh Hashanah and turned up live on a CNN talk show to plug her book.

ED VOLKMAN

Disc jockeys Ed Volkman and Joe Bohannon fabricated a call from a listener who claimed that she and her husband, a television station employee, were hypoing the ratings as a “Nielsen family.”

BOB LASSITER

Talk host Bob Lassiter angered Polish-American activists by airing an “offensive and insulting” joke about Polish women.

WLS radio recharges with high-voltage talk

By Katherine Seigenthaler
January 9, 1990

Remember the good old days at WLS-AM, when erstwhile morning “Superjock” Larry Lujack, furious over afternoon deejay Steve Dahl’s on-air jibes, walked into Dahl’s studio and threatened to ram his head against a wall?

Well, it seems the good times have returned to Chicago’s oldest station, folks, featuring a different cast of characters and a revised approach to vitriol.

Back in the mid-’80s, the contempt between Lujack and Dahl (now afternoon drive jock on WLUP-AM 1000) was palpable, as real as Dahl’s contract disputes with station management or the internal turmoil that was shaking the foundation of once-bedrock WLS (890).

Today, however, when razor-tongued mid-morning deejay Stacy Taylor slings carefully aimed arrows at late-afternoon host Bob Lassiter, or when the morning drive team of Don Wade and Roma (just Roma) rip each other apart and then devour their listeners, the station’s powers-that-be nod in conspiratorial delight.

The confrontations are part of WLS’ carefully-designed new format-talk radio with a one-two punch.

Six months ago, the station dumped its tired adult contemporary music format and introduced its audience to an eclectic lineup of Chicago-based and syndicated talk talent.

So far, the change has generated considerable attention, although no visible improvement in the all-important Arbitron ratings.

The latest quarterly ratings, released last week, gave WLS a 1.4 share of the Chicago listening public. That’s exactly the same share the station received last quarter, before the format change.

“I’m not topping trees, but I’m very pleased,” said station general manager Tom Tradup of the recently released figures. “We knew we’d lose some listeners at first, but we’ve obviously gained some or the ratings would have gone down. And I can guarantee you, more people will be listening tomorrow than are listening today.

“Sometime within the first year, we’re easily going to have a 2.0 share, and hopefully we’ll be well on our way past that.”

Though the anticipated 2.0 share is a far cry from the 4.0-and-better ratings WLS enjoyed when Lujack was in his heyday, it would certainly be an improvement.

But only time will tell whether a solid audience will stick with back-to-back hours of intense discussion on everything from abortion to luxury cruise lines.

The station calls it “high-powered, issue-oriented talk.”

Listeners bold enough to participate can expect to be verbally horsewhipped, more often than not. Those who choose to sit back and listen to the antics are likely to be alternately enraged, delighted or frustrated-but rarely bored.

Wade, of Wade and Roma (heard weekdays 5:30-9 a.m.), sounds as though his face is frozen in a scowl. He barks at rambling listeners: “Will you get to the point!” An irascible political conservative, he has been recommending lately that American jurisprudence give Gen. Manuel Noriega the same swift justice Romanians gave executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and the day the U.S. invaded Panama, Wade crowed, “”Pineapple Face’ is down in flames!”

Roma is as liberal and sensitive as Wade is hard-edged. She is a yogi, and sometimes draws a heart near her name when signing autographs. She speaks in a soft, wavering voice but rarely backs down when confronting her partner, whom she likes to address alternately as a “hatemonger” and “fearmonger.”

Taylor (weekdays 9 a.m.-1 p.m.), a recent California transplant who has been known to refer to an elevated train as a trolley, is the most even-tempered of the station’s talent, but rapier-witted nonetheless. A social conservative, he particularly enjoys taking stabs at his more liberal colleague, Lassiter, whom he once said “rolls over like a spayed cocker spaniel” and pants with delight whenever someone criticizes the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Lassiter (weekdays 3-7 p.m.) is perhaps the most unpredictable of the local hosts. Calling himself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, there is no subject too mundane for him to formulate a passionate opinion. He still gets calls from peeved Chicagoans who cannot forgive his diatribe on the lack of good pizza in this town.

“Some people like me, some people despise me, some people will never catch on to what I’m trying to do and that’s just fine by me,” he has said.

Filling in the gaps during the week are syndicated shows: talk phenomenon Rush Limbaugh (weekdays 1-3 p.m.), the arrogant arch-conservative who is fast becoming one of the most popular radio personalities in the U.S.; Sally Jessy Raphael (weekdays 7-9 p.m.), who specializes in warm, fuzzy advice; and Tom Snyder (weekdays 9 p.m.-midnight), whose pointedly opinionated New York-based talk show has aired on WLS since 1985.

Lean on minority voices

If it seems the talent lineup is long on white, male conservatives and short on liberal and minority points of view, Tradup said the station is trying to correct this.

“We’re far from where we’ll be in the near future in terms of airing women and minority opinions,” Tradup said.

WLS already has been highly criticized by the gay and lesbian community because of inflammatory comments Wade made in September, and Tradup is sensitive to charges that the station endorses racist attidudes.

Wade, in a conversation with Sandra Johnson of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power insisted on the air that he was “a homophobe and proud of it,” and said gays with AIDS were criminals who should be quarantined.

“Don was severely reprimanded for his statements, and is very lucky he didn’t lose his job,” Tradup says. “He understands that we won’t tolerate that kind of thing.”

Tradup and program director Drew Hayes also are quick to clear up another charge, which is that the deejays are shock jocks.

“Our talent is more honest than most,” Hayes said, “but the intent is to tackle serious issues, not shock people just for the sake of it.

“Whereas, if Louis Farrakhan were a guest of Bob Collins, and he talked about the need to kill all white people, Collins would say, `How nice to have you on the show,’ ” Hayes said, refering to WGN-AM (720) host Bob Collins, the ratings king of morning drive.

In fact, Hayes recently created a minor furor at the station the week after Christmas when he pulled Rush Limbaugh’s show midway through because the host was railing against women “farding” in their cars.

“Farding” is an archaic term for applying cosmetics. Limbaugh later admitted he had intended that the word be mistaken for the slang term for flatulence, and said he was embarrassed by the incident.

“Calls from listeners were split down the middle as the whether we should have pulled the show,” Hayes said, “But we pulled it because it was not in good taste. It wasn’t obscene, but it was gutter slang used for the sole purpose of shocking the audience, and that’s not what we’re all about.”

Sharpening the cutting edge

What WLS jocks across the board tend to do is push and probe the corners of the envelope, and the station’s management is betting their style will become the standard for Chicago talk radio in the ’90s.

The 65-year-old station, recently named a “Legend” by the first annual Marconi Radio Awards last fall, has a reputation for operating on the cutting edge of radio.

Founded in 1924 by Sears, Roebuck and Co., it aired its famous “National Barndance” a year later, which ran for 35 years and was the precursor of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.

The station was one of the first to broadcast rock ‘n’ roll, and for years was one of Chicago’s leading popular music stations.

Now WLS is venturing further into unchartered waters, and, if history is on its side, Chicagoans might spend the next couple decades screaming at their car radios.

WLS-AM tries to talk its way out of radio `wasteland’
Robert Feder
The long nightmare is over at WLS-AM (890).

After years of negligent programming, bad management and embarrassing ratings, the 50,000-watt sleeping giant has reawakened as “Talkradio 890.” With most of its key players in place, the Capital Cities/ABC-owned station officially switched to an all-talk format on Aug. 23 - about two weeks ahead of its scheduled debut on Labor Day.

Geared to listeners between the ages of 35 and 64, the new WLS has little in common with “The Rock of Chicago,” as the station was known in its heyday - except for its call letters and the presence of strong personalities.

With Don Wade and Roma in the morning and Bob Lassiter in the afternoon, the station’s hyper-opinionated hosts often come off as too eager to ridicule or hang up on callers who disagree with them.

That may explain why WLS president and general manager Tom Tradup has been passing out

copies of “The WLS Creed,” written in 1938 by the station’s first boss, Prairie Farmer magazine publisher Burridge D. Butler.

“As long as it is our privilege to direct the destinies of WLS, we will hold sacred this trust that has been placed in our hands,” Butler wrote. “When you step up to the microphone, never forget this responsibility and that you are walking as a guest into all those homes beyond the microphone.”

Underscoring Butler’s message, Tradup said: “The ultimate goal of the station is to make everybody - the hosts and the callers - a little more civil. I think it’s important that we treat all of our listeners with respect.”

Tradup, 38, a native of Syracuse, N.Y., came to Chicago by way of programming positions in Dallas, Washington, New York and Kansas City, Mo. With carte blanche over hiring and about a $1 million promotion budget, he hopes to position WLS somewhere

between talk rivals WGN-AM (720) and WLUP-AM (1000).

“We’re an issue-oriented talk station designed to deal primarily with issues in the Chicago area,” he said. “WGN does a kind of `light information’ - like neighbors talking over the backyard fence. `The Loop’ just talks about goofy, irrelevant things. But we have our own approach to the issues.”

Arbitrends ratings released Wednesday show WLS mired in 22nd place with a 1.7 percent share of all listeners. Tradup said he was “absolutely confident” the station would draw higher than a 2.0 share by next year.

Advertising revenue may take a bit longer to catch up, however, considering that WLS lost more than $2 million last year alone. Tradup said the station is poised to become profitable by 1991.

“My job is to lead the troops out of the barren wasteland we found when we walked in the door and to help the station grow and evolve for the 1990s,” he said. “In just a few weeks, the morale here already has turned around. There’s a real excitement that something is happening here.

“Now the torch has been passed to me and to (program director) Drew Hayes to take WLS to its next level of excellence. We’re not finished by any means. We’re just getting started.”