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Reconceptualizing call‐in talk radio as listeningJonathan David Tankel aa Associate Professor in the Department of Communication , Indiana University‐Purdue , Ft.WaynePublished online: 05 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: Jonathan David Tankel (1998) Reconceptualizing call‐in talk radio as listening, Journal of Radio Studies,5:1, 36-48, DOI: 10.1080/19376529809384528

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Journal of Radio Studies/Volume 5, No. 1,1998

Reconceptualizing Call-in Talk Radio as Listening

Jonathan David Tankel

Scholars approach a particular phenomenon by their understanding of thatphenomenon. In the case of call-in talk radio, the research has focusedprimarily on callers and hosts as the active participants in the process.This paper reconsiders that research paradigm by offering a theory of talkradio based on the audience, the listeners. Using the work of Fiumara andPearce, this study recognizes the centrality of listening to the communi-cation process and reconceptualizes call-in talk radio as an extended andcontinuous conversation. Finally, referring to new research, the studyposits that the listener actively participates in constructing meaning fromcall-in talk radio.

A few years back, a columnist for High Fidelity magazine reported the avail-ability of the Radio Talk Show Timer-Recorder that combined an AM/FMradio, a cassette recorder, and a VCR-type timer.1 The recognition that talkradio listeners desired a special device to record when they were not at homeis significant. This innovation differs from the inclusion of a timer-recorder ina VCR in that this machine was designed, not for radio listeners in general,but for talk radio listeners specifically. Although there is nothing new inrecording music from the radio, the Radio Talk Show Timer-Recorder serveda need inherent in talk radio and represents an instinctive understanding onthe part of talk radio listeners that what is transmitted in real time is only partof that practice.

WHY RECONCEPTUALIZE TALK RADIO?

This study begins with recognition of that concept and in light of the increasedpublic scrutiny of talk radio2 following the 1994 Congressional elections andthe Oklahoma City bombing. Furthermore, this study confronts the apparentlack of interest on the part of academia and the broadcast industry in confront-ing the unreachable element of this object of study: the listeners. On one hand,

Jonathan David Tankel (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1984) is AssociateProfessor in the Department of Communication, Indiana University-Purdue, Ft.Wayne. His research interests include the intersection of communication, culture,and technology, with an emphasis on sound in its various forms. He has also beena talk radio host in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

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there are pragmatic reasons for this absence. For academics, listeners do noteasily create artifacts for study, nor do they make themselves available as dotalk radio callers, television in-studio audiences, or vocal pressure groups (seebelow for a survey of academic literature). For the radio industry, quantitativeaudience research provides little useful information on passive listeners (thosewho do not call and those who are not respondents for Arbitron), while theexpense of qualitative research makes station managers nervous.3

On the other hand, there is a more fundamental reason that analyses oftalk radio ignore or deny the role of the listener and the act of listening. TheGerman philosopher Gadamer (1984) posited, expanding on the work ofHeidegger, that language constructs a meaning prior to any interpretive act,a fore-meaning. He maintained that:

[Understanding achieves its full potentiality only when the fore-mean-ings that it uses are not arbitrary. Thus it is quite right for the interpreter notto approach the text directly, relying solely on the fore-meaning at onceavailable to him, but rather to examine explicitly the legitimacy, ie [sic] theorigin and validity, of the fore-meanings present within him. (p. 237)

From this perspective, prior examinations of talk radio, and of masscommunication in general, have been constrained by the fore-meaning thatresides in the linguistic traps of the sender-receiver model that has domi-nated mainstream mass communication research for decades. This modeldescribed a linear movement of messages from one point to another, as intelegraph and telephone transmissions. In the case of talk radio, the linearmodel is clearly inadequate because the term "talk radio" itself focusesattention on the talk of the hosts and callers and radio as transmission. Thelinear model, therefore, cannot account for those not party to the actual trans-mission of the host-caller talk, those who in fact participate as active listen-ers. This inability to accurately describe the practice of talk radio requires areconceptualization of talk radio by first rejecting the theoretical straight jacketimposed by the transmission model.

What is most important in studying contemporary talk radio is to under-stand how the individual audience member, the nonverbal participant so tospeak, creates meaning from the talk radio experience. These members ofthe radio audience are, by definition, engaged in the act of listening, an actthat is barely recognized in prior research on talk radio.4 This study, then,explores the practice of listening and examines talk radio audiences to deter-mine whether the practice of talk radio is better understood by acknowledgingand incorporating the role of listening. By establishing the centrality of listen-ing to the practice of talk radio, this study facilitates an understanding of talkradio unbound by the a priori paradigms and perspectives imposed by thetransmission model. The larger purpose of this essay, therefore, is to examine

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the limitations imposed on mass communication research by fore-meaningsbrought to research that continue to this day to obscure the object of study.

THE FORGOTTEN LISTENER

There is a relatively long, if somewhat sparse, record of research into thepractice of talk radio.5 Call-in talk radio as a programming format origi-nated after World War II in response to radio's transformation to a locallyprogrammed medium (see Laufer, 1995, and Munson, 1993, for overviewsof the development of talk radio as format). The first academic study oftalk radio callers and listeners is generally agreed to be Crittenden (1971),published in Public Opinion Quarterly. Since then, academic studies of talkradio callers and listeners have appeared every few years (see Armstrong& Rubin, 1989; Avery & Ellis, 1979; Avery, Ellis & Glover, 1978; Bierig &Dimmick, 1979; Rancer, 1995; Surlin, 1986; Traumer & Jeffres, 1983;Turow,1974) as well as the book-length study by political scientist Murry Levin(1987).6 These works demonstrate various levels of success in differentiat-ing between the callers' and listeners' experiences of talk radio. They iden-tify different demographic profiles and different motivations between thesetwo distinct but overlapping groups (e.g., Armstrong & Rubin, 1989; Bierig& Dimmick, 1979). None of these studies, however, attempt to conceptual-ize the practice of listening to talk radio as other than a passive experiencefor listeners. These studies, therefore, focus on what the talk radio trans-mission "brings" to the listener.

This continuing acceptance of a transmission-reception model of talkradio listening may be the result partly of the content of talk radio transmit-ted, not inherent in talk radio itself. Talk radio programming, as practicedduring the time when these studies were made, focused on advice (repre-sented nationally by hosts such as Bruce Williams and Sally Jessey Raphael)or celebrity (represented nationally by Larry King and Tom Snyder). Thefunction of talk radio listening as something other than reception (and itsconcomitant function as interpersonal communication for the listener) wasmasked by a content that tends to highlight this type of interaction. Theincreased politicization of talk radio at both the local and national levels,beginning in the late 1980s and flourishing in the 1990s, offered the possibil-ity of a competing conceptualization of talk radio listening (see AnnenbergPublic Policy Center, 1996; Barone & Schrof, 1990; Hoyt, 1992; Roberts,1991; and Stewart, 1993, for overviews of the growth of political talk radio).Hobstetter and colleagues (Hobstetter et al., 1994), in a study of the politicalbehaviors of talk radio callers and listeners, explicitly recognize the implica-tions of the change in talk radio content for our conceptualization of talkradio listeners. Their findings (discussed below) offer evidence that talk radiolistening is not simply an indicator of particular patterns of interpersonal com-

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munication behaviors. Rather, talk radio listening is part of a more dynamicpattern of social behaviors (interpersonal and group) that is integral to thepractice of talk radio itself.

LISTENING AND (RADIO

To discern what may be revealed by the change in the content of talk radio,a basic question must be asked: "What is listening?" Communicationresearchers for years have defined listening from a behavioral perspectivesimply as "when a human organism receives data aurally" (Weaver, 1972, p.5). Wolvin and Coakley (1993) categorized listening as a "complex" behav-ior that encompasses "a process of receiving, attending to, and assigningmeaning to verbal and/or nonverbal stimuli" (p. 21). In this context, the qual-ity of listening depends on the willingness of the individual to engage in theact of listening and the capacity to listen. In turn, the capacity to listen isdependent on the ability to first select and structure the received data andthen remember it. This linear conceptualization organizes thinking about lis-tening in a transmission-reception framework: The listener is a direct partici-pant in an act of dyadic conversation. This transmission-reception model oflistening does not take into account the unique circumstances of listening toradio, yet it is the basis for the conception of talk radio listening presented inthe academic studies cited above.7

So how should listening to the radio be conceptualized? Radio as a tech-nology is a medium of communication, and its communicative qualities mustbe considered first in any analysis of its role as in social behaviors. Radio as amedium of communication has attracted listeners since it was introduced tothe general public in the early 1920s. Although the function of radio in themedia economy has changed over the years (see Tankel & Williams, in press),the process of engaging in radio remains constant. Simply put, radio transmitsin sound in real time, enmeshing individuals with sounds from the ether.McLuhan (1964) remarked that "Radio affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between the [radiovoice] and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio" (p. 261). Further,McLuhan described radio as "the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antiquedrums" (p. 261). Schaefer (1977) noted that this schizophonia 8 is a conditionof the electronic age where sound is no longer tied to a specific point in space(radio and telephone) or time (sound recording).

The radio listener is therefore a listener separated in space (and occa-sionally in time) from the source of the voice(s). This form of auditory recep-tion has been theorized by Schwartz (1973) as the resonance principle incommunication.9 Audio media such as radio coexist in the life of the listenerin a way unlike visual-based media in that disembodied sounds resonatewith the visceral self.

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People are most capable of receiving and understanding sounds theyhave heard before. A person responds readily to sounds that evoke pastexperiences stored in his [sic] mind and available for recall.... These listeninghabits interact with stored experiences to create a perceptual resonance thatattunes us to receive certain messages in certain ways. (pp. 27-28)

Thjs conceptualization of listening recognizes that audio communicationexists across time and that the "real time" moment of transmission andreception is but one moment in the practice of listening to the radio. Further-more, people listen to the radio with varying degrees of attention and partici-pation. In addition, each radio format seems to invoke different listeningstrategies (see Eastman, 1993, for an overview of radio format program-ming strategies). Music stations (which still make up the bulk of radio for-mats) do not demand sustained and concentrated listening, except for theadvertisements. All-news radio becomes sonically predictable by providingvarious aural cues (bumpers, sound effects, etc.) to draw attention to dis-crete parts of the programming hour (such as weather, sports, and trafficreports). Talk radio, however, can be experienced only in the act of concen-trated listening with the intent to comprehend a conversation. That conver-sation takes many forms, both at the moment of hearing and across time(see Pearce, 1989, discussed below). Conceptualizing talk radio as a con-tinuous and extended conversation offers a path to understanding of thepractice of listening to talk radio.

RECONCEPTUALIZING TALK RADIO

This reconceptualization of talk radio is based on two reinforcing perspec-tives that, taken separately and together, explicitly reject the transmissionmodel in favor of a socially constructed view of communication. First, Fiumara(1990) maintained that the traditional philosophical approaches to languageand its role in the construction of reality lacks a coherent understanding ofthe nature of listening. From this perspective, listening begins with the listen-ing we do to our own thoughts (in the form of language) and requires that thevery essence of language incorporates the expectation of listening. Withoutthat expectation, there can be no fully fleshed language capable of commu-nicating the nuances of human existence.

Paradoxically, it is the major theoretical trends [in Western philosophy]that appear to be in search of that aspect of our logos which has been lostin western thought, namely the capacity for attentive listening. In fact, themore rigorous the knowledge claims are, the more "greedily" they demandto be listened to. And the need becomes so impelling that even double-edged means are adopted by the adherents in order to ensure that central

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claims be heard and accepted. As we are not sufficiently conversant withthe attitude of openness, acceptance is once again confused with indoctri-nation and standards of success and popularity are taken to be the condi-tions best suited to guarantee knowledge claims, (pp. 11-12)

Fiumara (1990) asserted that philosophers tend to use language as aclosed system of knowledge rather than as a tool to create an inclusivesystem of knowledge(s). He maintained that the seeming "naturalness" ofrationality (as the bedrock of western thought) has served to ignore ormarginalize other modes of thought.

When western knowledge tries to frame the entire world and its historyby making use of the power that basically emanates from the voice of ourrationality then, perhaps an excessively logocentric culture emerges inwhich there is no longer any room for listening. In fact, there is one voiceonly as the accredited source of knowledge, (p. 19)

If Fiumara's construction of the "other side of language" can explain theattraction of talk radio (and, by extension, any other media form that placesthe power to construct reality in the individual), then the starting point of anydiscussion of talk radio has to be the listening and in the expectation of thatlistening. As discussed below, a major attraction of talk radio for the listeneris the multiplicity of voices, not the consistent presentation of previouslyheld views. Applying this perspective to the everyday practice of talk radiodirects attention to listening, not the words of the host and callers as trans-mitted, as the organizing principle of talk radio.

This reconfiguration of the practice of talk radio stands in opposition to thegenerally accepted notion of talk radio as parasocial interaction. Defining thepractice of talk radio as listening legitimizes the act of listening itself as anessential act of communication.10 As Munson (1993) pointed out, defining talkshows as parasocial interaction "tends to conceptualize the talkshow [sic] infavored interpersonal rather than media terms. While deprecating the media, italso indicates the perceived boundary confusion: Is it interpersonal or medi-ated?" (p. 118). By refocusing attention on the centrality of listening in makingmeaning from language, and by extension the world, the artificial separationsbetween different types of communication are also removed by placing primaryresponsibility for defining communication in the behaviors of the individual.

Pearce (1986) offered the second perspective that completes the theo-retical reconfiguration of talk radio. He maintained that "communication ismore a way of thinking than an artifact to be produced or transmitted" (p. 10).This proposition directly challenges the concept of communication as some-thing people do and replaces it with the concept of communication as theprocess in which we live.

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..."we" consist of a cluster of social conversations, and ... thesepatterns of communication constitute the world as we know it. In this view,communication is a primary social process, the material substance ofthose things whose reality we often take for granted, such as our "selves,"motives, relationships, what we would otherwise describe as Jacts," andso forth. The forms of communication in which we participate eitherliberate or enslave us; they facilitate or subvert human values, (p. 11,emphasis added)

Pearce (1989) defined communication as social formation that worksthrough coordination, coherence, and mystery. Coordination refers to theways in which "persons attempt to call into being conjoint enactments" (p.20) of their world view, while coherence refers to the stories we tell to makesense of the material world. Mystery is "the recognition that the humancondition is more than any of the particular stories that make it coherent orany of the particular patterns of coordination that construct the events andobjects of the social order." (p. 22).

Both Fiumara's (1990) call for a language that incorporates hearing as coequalto speaking and Pearce's (1989) conceptualization of communication as a "clus-ter of social conversations" have great utility in reconceptualizing talk radio.More specifically, Fiumara provides the concept that all language is spoken inthe expectation of hearing and it is therefore influenced by that expectation.Pearce provides a reconstruction of communication as a "series of social con-versations" that has both literal and theoretical utility. Although talk radio is bydefinition a series of literal conversations between hosts and callers, the totalityof talk radio constitutes for each listener a conversation in which he or sheengages in acts of coordination and coherence. Finally, the constant pull of talkradio can be construed as a quintessential example of mystery, as each partici-pant "looks around the edges of the objects/events of any particular social realityto see that they bear the marks of human agency" (Pearce, 1989, p. 23).

These concepts place each talk radio listener at the center of a multifac-eted conversation that includes hosts, callers, other listeners, the listenerhim- or herself and acquainted nonlisteners. The practice of talk radio is anact of coordination for all involved, and the stories that listeners tell based onlistening to talk radio are part of their search for coherence. This processmay look something like Figure 1 if represented graphically.

This conversation is therefore extended, in that it is not limited to thedyadic pair of host-caller. The listener is involved actively (as proposed byPearce) and indirectly (as proposed by Fiumara). This conversation is alsocontinuous, as it exists across time, constantly shifting its content and mean-ing as the conversation takes place (1) in the never-ending world of broad-casting and, by extension, (2) in each participant's continuous constructionof social reality.

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TankeirTALK RADIO AS LISTENING 43

figure 1

Events

The \ | LISTENER]'Perceptual \

Sea

|CALLERS |Events

EventsOTHER

LISTENERS

ACQUAINTEDNON LISTENERS

Events

TALKING TO LISTENERS

This theoretical reconstruction of talk radio means little if it cannot be sup-ported by the everyday experience of talk radio listeners (and hosts andcallers, who are not the subjects of this paper). Evidence to support theconfiguration of talk radio as a continuous and extended conversation canbe found in Hobstetter et al. (1994) and from interviews with individual talkradio listeners conducted in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Hobstetter et al. (1994) conducted telephone interviews with adults inSan Diego, California, in 1991. The researchers limited their focus to listen-ers of political talk radio. Their overall findings contradicted the findings ofprevious studies (see above) that talk radio listeners were more alienatedand passive than the population in general.

Exposure to political talk radio was associated with political involve-ment and activity. Frequent listeners to political talk radio are more inter-ested in politics, pay more attention to politics in mass media, vote more,and participate more than others in a variety of political activities. They aremore efficacious and less alienated than others, (p. 477)

In this study, the practice of listening to talk radio seems to be incorpo-rated into the political practice of the listeners. This controlled survey rein-

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forces the contention of a number of political commentators that political talkradio has galvanized a small number of conservative voters whose electoralparticipation is out of proportion to their actual percentage of the populationas a whole (Gilbert, 1995; Weiner, 1995).

This researcher was able to conduct open-ended interviews with a cross-section of talk radio listeners in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during Fall, 1995. Lis-teners responded to an invitation broadcast on WGL-AM-FM to "talk abouttalk radio" with a college professor. The spot was broadcast for two weeks atvarious times during the broadcast day. Seven interviews were conductedby phone and two via the Internet. A number of other listeners responded,but I was unable to contact them after their initial expression of interest.Although this sample is quite small, the interviews were in-depth, usuallylasting at least one-half hour. In addition, the data were also collected duringan appearance on The Morning Program on WGL on September 19, 1995,and during the researcher's nine-month stint as a talk radio host from Sep-tember 1992, through June 1993.

The interviewees tended to support the more expansive conceptualizationof talk radio. In fact, the search for a new conceptualization came as a result ofthe interviews. As Hobstetter et al. (1994) discovered, the talk radio listenersinterviewed demonstrated a great awareness of both the artificiality of talkradio as "overheard conversation" and their own use of talk radio. Most turnedto talk radio first as a source of alternative constructions of the sociopoliticalreality manufactured by the mainstream press (see Herman & Chomsky, 1988).For this reason, they felt their talk radio listening was not a substitute for actualinterpersonal communication (as in parasocial interaction), but rather as supple-ment and catalyst to real-world involvement. The most vivid example camefrom a factory worker who described the shift change as a site of discussionabout the talk radio programs that they had listened to during the workday.Most did not discriminate against hosts based on their political views becausethey learned frbm the callers more than from the hosts. Surprisingly, althoughthe majority considered themselves conservative, they had mixed or negativefeelings toward Rush Limbaugh (considered by many to be the quintessentialcontemporary conservative spokesperson) because of his unswerving opin-ions and lack of adversarial respondents.

Overall, the interviews revealed two basic patterns of interaction. First,the talk radio listener situated him- or herself first within an actual socialnetwork: Therefore talk radio listening provided a legitimization of theirpolitical views. Those political views were developed as the result of theentire process as modeled above, not as a slavish adherence to the host'sviews. One interviewee talked about how talk radio provides a "framework,a foundation to begin" to express himself. For many listeners, it seems talkradio is the means to an end, not the end itself. Second, a few of the re-spondents complained that they had grown "beyond" the discourse pro-

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vided by listening to talk radio and were exploring the Internet, which theyidentified as an alternative source of information and opinion. The emer-gence of the post-talk radio listener may be the most intriguing develop-ment in respect to the overall fragmentation of the media audience and theimpact of the fragmentation on the consensual worldview produced by thetraditional mass media.

TALK RADIO AS LISTENING

[Talk radio] is reminiscent of a time when people had shared sets ofvalues, when people gathered regularly to exchange information, espe-cially on local politics and social issues, and reaffirmed their sense ofbelonging—even when belonging meant bitterly disagreeing overwhat was best for the community. (Barone & Schrof, 1990, p. 51,emphasis added)

This study has presented an alternative to the generally accepted viewthat listening to talk radio is a passive activity engaged in by an alienatedand marginalized audience. As described above by Barone & Schrof (1990),the practice of talk radio, like the town hall to which it has been compared,is a world of conflicting and complementary ideas and emotions and itsforemost characteristic is that it is a process of communication. For thisreason, talk radio must be reconceptualized with the listener as the sourceof meaning rather than as the recipient. This more flexible conceptualizationwas made possible by rejecting the transmission model, the dominant para-digm in mass communication research. Particular attention was paid to theconsiderations that (1) listening shapes language and (2) the listener shapesher or his communication environment. These insights mutually reinforcethe centrality of communication in the construction of an individual's socialreality. Some preliminary data were presented to support thisreconfiguration.

If more data can be generated to support this configuration (as islikely given the theoretical inadequacy of the transmission-reception modelfor the expanding and changing talk radio universe), then the conclusionthat talk radio is primarily a listening practice has merit. If the theoreticalconfiguration outlined above is valid, then listening to talk radio strikesboth at the core of traditional communication research and at the founda-tion of modern political control. In other words, all talk radio listeningcannot be characterized as parasocial interaction, as most research ontalk radio has posited. The evidence, both systematic and anecdotal, sug-gests that talk radio can be best understood as a behavior in which in thelistener is an active participant rather than as a process that constructs apassive recipient.

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Notes1 Reel Talk's phone number is 1-800-766-8255.2 For the purpose of this paper, the term talk radio refers to call-in talk radio only,

not to include programs of talk that do not accept phone calls from listeners.3 A recent conversation with Bill Collins, then station manager for WGL-AM-FM in

Fort Wayne, Indiana, reinforced this view of the perceived inadequacy of mostaudience research in identifying talk radio listeners. In particular, he noted thedifficulty in convincing advertisers that hosts who broadcast views in contradic-tion to those held by the advertiser attracts a variety of listeners, some ofwhom disagree. The interviews presented later in this study were madepossible by the assistance of the management of WGL in airing spots askinglisteners to contact the researcher.

4 A notable exception to this generalization is Ralph Nichols (Nichols & Stevens,1957), an early pioneer in the study of listening, who examined the radiolistening habits of students at the University of Minnesota as reported in Areyou listening? His study indicated that students with the poorest listening habitschose the "easiest" radio programs to listen to, while the better listeners chosemore demanding material. Although this study predates the advent of call-intalk radio, the conclusion supports the notion advanced in this paper that activelistening to the radio is fundamentally different from radio as aural wallpaper.

5 There is a body of research on talk radio discourse, especially the work of IanHutchby (1991, 1992a, 1992b) and Moss & Higgins (1986). This approachfocuses on the actual transmitted content as the object of study. For thisreason, this work, although interesting, is not pertinent to this study.

6 Laufer (1995), in a journalistic account of the development of talk radio, devotesfive pages (pp. 116-121) to a superficial assessment of the talk radio listener.

7 Not all discourse analysis maintains this linear participatory framework. SeeMcGregor (1986) for an example of attempts to assess listening outside theparticipation network.

8 Schaefer created the word from the Greek prefix "schizo," meaning split, and theGreek word phone, meaning voice. The term was coined to represent howelectroacoustic technologies have separated the original sound from itstransmission and reproduction. Originally presented in Schaefer's The NewSoundscape: A Handbook for the Modern Music Teacher (1969), the term wasintended to convey the "same sense of aberration and drama" as its obviousprecursor schizophrenia (1977, p. 91).

9 Some might argue that portable audio is similar to radio in this tribal sense.Radio differs in that it is programmed in a solipsistic fashion by the listener.

10 Horton and Wohl (1986) employed the term parasocial interaction in an influen-tial article originally published in 1956. In analyzing 1950s television talkshows, the term was used to distinguish "real" interpersonal relationships fromthe "simulacrum of conversational give-and-take" (p. 186) exhibited in the massmedia. This concept has been employed centrally in most of the academicstudies of talk radio audiences (Hobstetter et al., 1994; Munson, 1993).

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Conference of theSpeech Communication Association, San Antonio, TX, 21 November 1995.

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