<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Document//EN"  "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd"><html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" /><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="DrBillBio.css" /><title>Bill Wattenburg’s Background: Talk Radio on the West Coast</title></head> <body> <h1>Talk Radio on the West Coast</h1> <p>The ratings for Bill Wattenburg’s night-time talk show “The Open Line ToThe West Coast” on KGO Radio (ABC),San Francisco, have been three to four times above the average of the next best-ratedshows (AM and FM) in the market for at least the last eleven years running (since 1982).His show gains 11 to 20 shares in his time slot compared to 3 to 4 shares for his closest competitors.He has been a regular on KGO talk radio since 1972. His nighttime radio showsreach the entire west coast from Alaska to Mexico, as he announces when he comeson the air. Based on his Bay Area audience ratings, we estimate that at least1,200,000 in the eleven western states and Alaska hear some part of each of histhree-hour, 10pm to 1am KGO shows on weekends. We estimate that at least13,000,000 on the west coast have listened to him at some time in the last threeyears on radio and recognize his name or his voice. Out-of-market numbers saythat his total listening audience in southern California is substantially largerthan in the Bay Area in the 10pm to 12pm time slot.</p> <p>Our staff evaluated tapes of sixteen of his KGO Radio shows and three of hisTV shows picked at random for the period January 1988 to December 1992. Heallowed us to observe him in-studio during four of his live KGO radio talk showsin October 1992. A recent feature story on his KGO radio performances appearedin the Capitol Cities/ABC employee magazine. We believe this to be a fairanalysis of his radio performances.</p> <p><i>[The story from the employee magazine, <i>ABC Ink</i>, is not included here becauseABC does not grant permission for this content to be reproduced electronicly, but it is quiteinteresting.—PKS]</i></p> <hr /> <p>We picked up some sour notes however, from one KGO Radio producer who hasbeen with the station for many years. This producer said that Wattenburg almostnever takes guests on his show and that he ignores advice from producers whooffer him important material and topics for his shows. We asked this producer togive us an example. The producer mentioned that Wattenburg ignored some newsstories during the Gulf War that reported the danger of nuclear material beingscattered all over the desert, or that the Iraqis could have retrieved a nuclearwarhead and used it against us. We asked the producer if he/she knew thatWattenburg was probably very familiar with the safeguards on our nuclear weaponsbecause he worked on the design of nuclear weapons at one time and was anadvisor to the Air Force. The producer said that he/she did not know thatWattenburg had ever done that.</p> <p>As to the second complaint—no guests on his shows—we politely asked ifanyone could explain why Wattenburg’s ratings were more than twice as high asthe top-rated daytime KGO shows that specialized in interviewing guests bookedon the shows by producers. The answer we got was that it was easier for him tohold high ratings in the nighttime slot at 10pm to 1am than during the daytime.We pointed out that all the other major radio shows on the west coast in thesame time slot had much lower ratings that Wattenburg. And, we asked whyWattenburg still had higher ratings when he did the KGO daytime shows in theseventies.</p> <p>The last response we were offered by this senior producer was: “Well,he’s been around for twenty years, you know. All the rednecks listen tohim.”</p> <p>Another KGO producer who works Wattenburg’s shows commented that some of theolder KGO producers don’t like Wattenburg just because he won’t take guests thatthey try to book on his shows. “They get a lot of flak from their publicrelations friends in New York who want to book authors on Wattenburg’s shows.Wattenburg won’t take even his own best friends on his shows. Why should he taketheirs? … The younger producers here fight to work Wattenburg’s shows. It’s alot of fun, and it’s sort of satisfying. And it’s a snap. … He tells us to takeevery caller who calls on his show. We get a lot of really bright young kids whocall his show late at night. He gets a little mad if you even refuse to let adrunk on his show. He says a lot of drunks make more sense than the sober ones,and people love to hear them on the air because if you work them right they willtell the whole world the truth that they will be sorry about tomorrow. … It’ssort of nice to start a show when the switchboard is already full of callsbefore he goes on the air … our biggest problem is when people start to callbefore the end of the previous show and only want to know if Wattenburg is goingto be there later. The host on that show gets mad at you if he is pleading forcallers and he sees calls coming in, but none of them are for him…”</p> <p><b>We verified that Wattenburg started and promoted two major environmentalcampaigns on his radio shows. These were: stopping the giveaway of the TongassNational Forest in Alaska to foreign-owned (Japanese) interests, and saving theold-growth redwoods in the Headwaters Forest owned by Pacific Lumber Company.</b></p> <p>He began alerting his west coast audience to these dangers in 1989, well beforenational environmental organizations were on the bandwagon. He first warned thatthe takeover of Pacific Lumber by a Houston investor in a junk bond deal wouldlead to the cutting of the last of the privately-owned virgin redwoods. Stateand federal officials didn’t believe him until Pacific Lumber’s new owners filedfor a logging permit the next year. Major public campaigns and legislation havesince stopped the cutting for the near future.</p> <p>For two years, Wattenburg’s audience bombarded congress with protests overthe fifty-year contracts given to foreign-owned lumber companies to cut thevirgin forests in the Tongass Forest for as little as a few dollars a tree. Mostmembers of congress admitted that they didn’t even know that this country’slargest national forest existed, let alone where it was. Wattenburg’s favoriteploy was to remind politicians that they were hypocrites for complaining aboutthe cutting of rain forests in other countries while they allowed theclear-cutting of this country’s only temperate rain forest.</p> <p>The U.S. Forest Service finally modified the contracts extensively in 1992and set aside large areas in the Tongass that can not be cut. Wattenburg stilldelights in reminding the environmental lobbies that they only later gotinterested in this problem to get contributions to save a forest that wasactually rescued by his audience on KGO Radio.</p> </body></html>