Radio Audiences

How many people actually listen to Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk titan White House officials have spent the last week characterizing as "the head of the Republican Party"? According to what Limbaugh delights in calling "the drive-by media," the number varies wildly. Is it 30 million (Pat Buchanan on MSNBC), 20 million (Time magazine, ABC News), 19 million (Fox News), 14 million (CNN), or "14.2 million to about 25 million" (Washington Post)? Answer: Maybe.

At a time when newspapers, magazines and TV news continue to lose readers and viewers, at least one part of the traditional media has continued to grow robustly: National Public Radio. The audience for NPR's daily news programs, including "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," reached a record last year, driven by widespread interest in the presidential election and the general decline of radio news elsewhere. Washington-based NPR released new figures Tuesday showing that the cumulative audience for its daily news programs hit 20.9 million a week, a 9% increase over the previous year.

Roger Hedgecock may be wearing a media badge here at the Republican convention, but he is careful to let you know--right up front--that he's not part of that media. No, he is not one of the "phonies," as he puts it, not one of "the high priests of journalism who try to tell you what is news." Hedgecock, instead, represents what he calls the medium of the future--talk radio.

KLAC-AM (570) exists in the pre-hip, pre-rock universe. And if hip is "dead," as some cultural pundits claim, then the road may be paved for the resurgence of square. KLAC may not embody square as far as its fans are concerned, but it is undeniably in a media world of its own. KLAC plays the "old" music, a format given the bland label of "Adult Standards" by an industry obsessed with crafting labels for every demographic bump, curl and contour as it applies to the money-spending population.

The expected sale and format change of KSCA-FM (101.9) in Los Angeles isn't a done deal. But already fans of the so-called adult alternative outlet, recording artists who get played on it, record executives who rely on it and rival radio programmers in this competitive market--not to mention the station's staff--are preparing for life without it. "Some of us think this is the only station there is," Melinda Hughes of Van Nuys wrote in a pleading letter to KSCA owners Gene and Jackie Autry.

Mornings you can hear Bill Handel on KFI-AM, decrying the notion "that somehow illegal aliens should have the benefits of education and health care, and the right to work in this state. . . . 'Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme'--and you pay for it. That's right, America, you pay for these Mexicans and Hondurans and El Salvadorans and Guatemalans who come up over the border."

Despite recent efforts by 13 general managers of English-language radio stations to change the way audiences are measured and thereby make inroads into the dominance of Spanish-language stations, KLVE-FM (107.5), which plays romantic ballads in Spanish, captured the top spot in the latest Arbitron radio ratings survey. Figures released Monday for the final quarter of 1995 showed that KLVE drew an average 6.9% of the audience, up from its second-place showing of 4.

Listeners of KPWR-FM (105.9) are accustomed to hearing a steady diet of hip-hop, from the gangsta rap of Ice Cube and Dr. Dre to the more mainstream sounds of TLC. It's a mix that has propelled the station to the top of the local ratings. So the KPWR audience must have been surprised in recent months to hear C+C Music Factory's "Robi-Rob's Boriqua Anthem"--a Latin-flavored dance song with Spanish vocals--shoot to the top of the station's playlist.

The caller to the radio show is a young woman who isn't sure if what she's feeling during sex is an orgasm. Going down the checklist in her head, Suzi Landolphi, the show's host, ticks off the numerous changes that occur in a woman's body during climax. "You're feeling all of those?" she asks. "OK, great!" The next caller is a man who wants to talk about submissive role-playing with a dominant partner. "Now what does this mean exactly?"