As talk radio listeners, we’ve all groaned through listening to bad calls in the past. These range from a caller who is purposely rude to a caller who is misinformed to the truly clueless. If you do decide to take the plunge and put your name and voice in front of, potentially, millions of your fellow listeners, here are a few hints to help things go smoothly.

1. Turn off your radio. Hardly a talk show goes by without the host having to tell the caller this. If you must hear yourself on radio, set up a recorder in another room. If you have your radio on, it generates feedback making it impossible for the host to speak with you.
2. Minimize other background noise. While a TV, squalling child or barking dog isn’t as bad as having your radio on, it’s still pretty bad. It’s rude to make someone at the other end of the phone line compete to be heard. Which leads to…
3. Practice good phone etiquette. As you would with any other phone call, give the host a short, polite greeting including your first name and where you are from.
4. Call from a quality landline. Don’t use a cellphone, cordless phone or speaker phone.
5. While you do want to give a friendly greeting, remember that time is at a premium. At least one host, Alan Colmes, doesn’t like to be asked “How are you?” or told “Thanks for taking my call” by every caller, as it gets redundant, so a simple “Hi, Alan” will usually suffice. Rush Limbaugh fans use the famous “dittoes” greeting, though even that timesaver has now turned into a game with everything from “dittoes” to “megadittoes” to “megaconservative dittoes” being offered.
6. Get to the point. Again, time is at a premium. If it’s an advice show, give the short version of your story and leave time to fill in details that the host asks for.
7. Keep it simple. If it’s a political show, try distilling your point to a logical syllogism – two premises and a conclusion. “Securing liberty is the highest purpose of government. Abe Lincoln secured liberty for more people. Therefore Abe Lincoln’s government successfully fulfilled its highest purposel.” Again, leave time for give and take with the host rather than rambling about Abe Lincoln’s relationship with Mary Todd when your point is that he freed the slaves.
8. Write down what you want to say. Don’t read it verbatim, but write it down, look it over a few times and see how it sounds. Have notes handy in case you get off track.
9. Know your sources. If you are going to assert a fact, have a reliable source to back you up. If you’re going to accuse the host of saying something previously – have a tape ready and offer to play it. If you don’t have verifiable sources and the host disagrees, he’ll call you on it every time.
10. Know the show. Alan Colmes doesn’t like “How are you?”, Rush Limbaugh prefers dittoes and Sean Hannity (and Bill Cunningham, originally) exchanges the phrase “You’re a great American” with callers.
11. Listen from the beginning of the show you are calling on. Nothing’s quite as annoying as the caller who calls in during the second hour asking a question that was answered fifteen minutes before his call. If you think you missed something, check the show’s website, don’t call and ask for material to be repeated.
12. Be original. Don’t be the ten thousandth person to call John Gibson with the standard anti-McCain talking points. Don’t be the 5,000th Ron Paul supporter to call Mark Levin under 20 different assumed names in a futile quest to get his approval of your candidate. Add something new to the conversation.

Talk Radio hit Broadway again February 25 with the revival of the Pulitzer Prize nominated play by Eric Bogosian, starring Liev Schreiber (Cotton Weary from the Scream Trilogy), as a controversial late night talk radio host.

“Ads for the upcoming Broadway revival of Eric Bogosian’s play have been rejected by a number of radio stations. The reason is that the spots contain a phrase from the play: ‘pet’s orgasm’.”

Eric Bogosian’s Pulitzer Prize Nominated play TALK RADIO, about a controversial late night talk radio host, will begin performances on Broadway at the Longacre Theater (220 West 48th Street) on Sunday, February 15th. The production will be directed by Robert Falls, whose credits include Death of a Salesman (Tony Award), Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Shining City.

Liev Schreiber will play Barry Champlain, the vituperative and mesmerizing radio host. He was last seen on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he received the Best Featured Actor award for his portrayal of Ricky Roma. His other recent stage credits include Macbeth, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, and Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat.

Liev will be joined by such talents as Peter Hermann “Law & Order,” “United 93,” Erik Jensen “Law & Order,” The Exonerated, and Stephanie March “Law & Order: SVU” & Death Of A Salesman.

The board of the largest US radio broadcaster, Clear Channel Communications, is considering a possible leveraged buyout by the Mays family, which holds a controlling interest. Mark Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel has overseen a spinoff of “the company’s live entertainment unit, Live Nation Inc., and sold shares of its outdoor advertising unit, Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc., in an IPO.”

Clear Channel subsidiary Premiere Radio Networks syndicates 70 radio programs including several of the most popular talk radio programs and personalities. Among others:

• Rush Limbaugh
• Glenn Beck
• Dr. Laura Schlesinger
• Coast to Coast AM with George Noory and Art Bell
• Maria Bartiromo
• Matt Drudge
• Donald Trump

Bloomberg.com: U.S.

XM and Sirius satellite radio subscribers have a great new way to listen to broadcasts at home, the office or anywhere else that a relatively fast internet connection is available. Both companies offer “streaming” online. Now there are Yahoo “Widgets” available to make streaming simpler for both services.

When I found out that you could stream Sirius music channels over the Internet I was really pleased, until I tried it. The player is flash-based and pretty clunky to use. It also appears to time out after extended periods of playing, although I can’t say whether this is a bug or a feature.

Enter the Sirius Tuner. The Sirius Satellite Tuner is a widget that runs under Yahoo’s Widget Engine. The interface is small player window with controls for volume as well as three banks of ten presets to allow you to preprogram your favorite Sirius channels for easy access.

Blogcritics.org: SciTech Watch: Sirius Widget

The XM Widget includes a 3-day free trial for nonsubscribers:

Allows XM Satellite Radio subscribers to access XM Radio Online through a convenient Widget rather than the normal interface that takes up your whole screen and times out after only a few hours of listening. Browse the channels, play the audio streams directly with Windows Media Player embedded through COM, and set up to 30 presets.

If you’re not an XM Radio subscriber, you can take advantage of their 3 day trial. If you are an XM Radio subscriber but you’ve never used XM Radio Online, you will need to register to get a username and password.

XM Tuner

Sirius,XM,satellite radio,Widgets

Disney is selling the ABC radio network and 22 radio stations owned by ABC to Citadel Broadcasting in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.7 billion. How this will pan out for talk radio isn’t certain, but San Francisco’s number one rated talk host Dr. Michael Savage claimed on his program Monday that he is “blacklisted” by Disney executives, but his program is carried by some Citadel stations. Sean Hannity has high hopes for the deal – a new printer for his office computer.

The deal does not include Disney’s ESPN and Radio Disney network.

The transaction gives Citadel 177 FM stations and 66 AM stations in the country’s top markets, making it the nation’s third-largest radio group. The complex deal is structured to be tax-free to Disney shareholders.

Disney sells ABC Radio network

Talk radio godfather Rush Limbaugh thinks satellite radio will build slowly and take years to reach the nation. And that’s if some new technology, like podcasting, doesn’t undercut them before they get there.

A. I think satellite radio is a new technology and it’s going to build slowly. It’s tough for me. I’m asked all the time if I’m going to satellite radio, and I’ve got 604 radio stations. I would cannibalize (myself) if I went to satellite radio. My audience is 22-24 million, and their subscription is like 3 million people. That’s pretty small. The question is, they have a pretty big debt load and you’ve got two satellite companies. At some point, it’s possible there will be a new technology that is going to come along and surpass them before they can retire their debt load, like podcasting. I wish them the best, because it’s more opportunities for people, but it’s going to be a slow build. It’s like satellite TV. They have a lot of subscribers and it’s taken a lot of years to get there, but they still don’t reach the nation.

thedesertsun.com | Rush Limbaugh gives us the lowdown

Rush Limbaugh,satellite radio,podcasting

Shock jock Howard Stern is facing potential censorship in his new radio home at Sirius satellite radio. Sirius executives are working on guidelines to censor Stern’s show and the show is being broadcast on a time delay to make ensorship easier.

The morning drive-time radio host said he left terrestrial radio because he was fed up with censorship by individual stations and FCC fines for indecency. Now, in what must be a painful irony for Stern, Sirius executives are developing an internal document that will set boundaries for his show.

Sirius Moves to Censor Howard Stern

Stern,Howard Stern,Sirius,censorship