most important talk show hosts

[Steve West]

Stern?  C'mon.  While you bring up a couple of good points about his 
audience, I wouldn't exactly call him the one of the most important talk 
show hosts.  First off, if you remember, Stern was a JOCK who evolved into a 
talker

And, since we're on the subject, why has nobody mentioned Art Bell? 
Certainly 10 years of talking about space aliens and owning the overnight 
talk slot outright qualifies as one of the most important, at least in the 
90s.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Read" <readaaron@friedbagels.com>
To: <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 11:33 AM
Subject: most important talk show hosts


> C'mon guys, nobody's mentioned Howard Stern the King of All Media??  Who 
> got his start in Boston, no less.   Howard's had a gigantic impact on the 
> talk radio genre, not only amassing a disgustingly huge audience...but 
> dragging a sizable percentage of that audience to satellite radio. 
> Whether it was enough is up in the air, but it's certainly dropped a giant 
> bomb on the whole AM & FM industry.
>
> Plus he spawned a legion of little copycats and clones.  Not exactly a 
> "good" thing in my book, but certainly it had an impact.
>
> I'd also toss out there Dr. Drew Pinsky (and Adam Corolla deserves some 
> credit, too) who IIRC led a mini-revolution of sorts to talk about sex on 
> the air in a serious way without resorting to Stern-like antics.
>
> Tavis Smiley is having a major impact on NPR and public broadcasting as we 
> speak, but I think it's a little too soon to make any judgements on just 
> how influential he'll end up being.  Chris Lydon could also be described 
> that way, although obviously he impacted public radio in a very different 
> way than Tavis.
>
> What, no David Brudnoy?  :-)
> -- 
>
> --------------------------
> Aaron Read
> readaaron@friedbagels.com
> www.friedbagels.com
> Boston, MA 02176
>
>
>
>