BOB DURGIN: I was
born in Boston Massachusetts, moved to King of Prussia and graduated from Upper Merion
High School in 1960. I joined the Air Force for four years and was in radio and television
working with Armed Forces Radio. I was fortunate enough to be stationed in Germany. I went
from there to Turkey and then back to Texas and was in educational television there. And
that is where I was discharged. I decided to stay there because I had a full time job in
radio. That was back in 1966, and so officially, my radio career was launched. So I went
all over the country and eventually ended up in Oklahoma City for about 20 years. I worked
KTOK which was a very powerful, great experience.
MODE: So, that was a good experience if
it lasted 20 years.
DURGIN: Yeah, it was great. I was the
news director there. I’ve only been a talk show host since 1985.
MODE: It seems as if you were meant to do
this.
DURGIN: That’s because the news
directing gave me the foundation to do the talk show format. So, I guess, then I worked
for a guy who was the same general manager who had an opportunity to come here in 1989 and
manage WHP. And he brought some of us with him, and here I am.
MODE: I would imagine that it would be
very hard to get a nod of approval from a station manager to do the kind of controversial
stuff that makes up your show. True?
DURGIN: No, not at all. It’s like a
marriage. As soon as you get married, you begin testing the waters. You make mistakes and
compromises. You’re professional. You have a working relationship with management and
you have to be very, very careful. You can’t risk a station’s license with
inaccuracies or whatever else goes into reporting news. In a talk show you don’t have
any more license to say or do things than you do on a newscast that might bring about a
lawsuit. The ice is a little bit thinner because it’s spontaneous and emotional and
if a talk show host doesn’t have a good handle on what he or she can say, it can be
trouble. I know where the lines are drawn, fortunately.
MODE: So, on that note, I need to ask you
whether you’ve ever been in trouble.
DURGIN: No. I’ve been threatened.
I’ve been threatened by lawyers when I was a news director. They used to call and
say, “I want a copy of this or we’re gonna subpoena it.” I just told them
to kiss my butt. I told them to send me a subpoena and send it quickly before I erase it.
So, if you deal with lawyers long enough, you suddenly realize that they’re windbags.
They’re worse than talk show hosts. They just get paid more.
MODE: Has there ever been a particular
issue that has been so hot that it’s blown the roof off, so to speak?
DURGIN: In Harrisburg, yeah, there was
that thing called the Rotunda Roundup. It was a few years ago when the legislature gave
itself a huge pay raise. It started out as a whim. It was totally by accident and when I
mentioned it on the air, somebody called in and suggested that we go over to the state
capital and raise cain. We finally went over there and about 800 people showed up to
protest.
MODE: It’s hard to get eight family
members to come to dinner. How did you get 800 people to come to the rotunda?
DURGIN: It was just packed and I was
blown away. It made me feel really good.
MODE: Any idea what your listenership is?
DURGIN: Our signal is really a
barnburner. So we get pretty close to Philadelphia, engulf Lancaster and York and of
course this area. There is anywhere between 500,000 and 900,000 potential listeners every
day.
MODE: What’s the craziest call you
every received?
DURGIN: Yeah. We get loonies, wackies or
fringe people. Whatever you want to call them. I don’t make notes on that. I
couldn’t tell you what my best talk show was or what my most exciting moment was.
It’s all exciting. I’m sure if I made an effort, but I don’t keep a diary
on that kind of thing.
MODE: What would you say to middle of the
road people who wouldn’t normally turn on a talk show to make them listen to you?
DURGIN: If you have a good local talk
show host who delivers and talks about the local issues, that’s why you should tune
me in. If you’re an interested citizen and involved in your community in any
way…no matter what your concerns are….taxes, crime, whatever….a local talk
show host isn’t doing his job unless he’s talking about local or state issues
that people are concerned about. I may not touch your life every day with the things I
talk about, but I will a lot of the time. I’ll get enough hits at bat if you listen
long enough.
MODE: You sure do when I tune in.
DURGIN: Well, that’s why people
should listen to me. Not because it’s me, because there’s other talk show hosts
around here. If a local talk show host is doing his job, he’s talking about issues of
controversial public importance; he’s talking about things that people who live in
his neighborhood are talking about. What makes all of that wonderful was that this is the
last neighborhood. A talk show host is the best example of a town meeting. People can get
together, over the airwaves and they can talk to each other. They can massage each other
in the market place of ideas and in a very short period of time discover what the take is
on a particular local issue which has them concerned. It used to be that before the advent
of talk radio in 1980, people in the community were isolated. Everyone was in his or her
kitchen and perhaps they sometimes talked over their back fences. People couldn’t
come together in large numbers and discover that other people in huge numbers shared their
opinions on something. Or for that matter, didn’t share them. It philosophically
solidifies a community. Letters to the editor of the papers are ridiculous. They are just
people’s little individual opinion. It doesn’t represent the community at large.
A talk show represents the community because the community is calling the talk show to
tell people what they think. For the first time in history, talk shows allow a community
to inform itself and that’s important. It’s more important that a community
inform itself than for a community to be informed by the media.
MODE: It would be silly for me to ignore
the fact that your show is political, so I have to ask you what are your politics. Are you
libertarian?
DURGIN: I don’t want to pigeonhole
myself. I’m not a libertarian for the simple reason that libertarians don’t want
to pay any taxes and they don’t want any government. I’m not anywhere near that.
I believe in a government, we have to have order. I believe in paying taxes and I believe
in a certain amount of laws. I just don’t go as far as your average liberal does. I
do share some libertarian ideas and concerns like smaller government and less taxes. They
don’t want to pay taxes for anything except national defense.
MODE: More right than left?
DURGIN: Absolutely.
MODE: Any particular issue right now that
pushes your button?
DURGIN: Just the Clinton thing. Clinton
ought to resign. I said yesterday that I’m worried that America is in decline. That
our society is in decline politically, socially, morally, economically. I point to the
public’s reaction to Clinton. They don’t care.
MODE: Why do you think that is?
DURGIN: I don’t know. I’m done
trying to fathom it. I worry that there are different values that our society seems to
just shrug aside. Whether it’s honesty, succumbing to greed, the level of crime,
corruption in politics, the Clinton thing, and the public’s reaction. I care about
all of those things. I think I’m in the minority. I don’t think people do
anymore. Personal behavior results in public consequences. Nobody’s personal life is
separated from their public life. You don’t leave your values outside this room. In
fact, my values are what make this show. There are public consequences to your personal
behavior. You are President 24 hours a day, not 8 – 5. Sure, we don’t care when
he makes love to his wife or when he spanks his child or when he kicks his dog. There are
many aspects to a politician’s private life, especially when you’re President
that aren’t private. When it’s known that you have an adulterous affair and then
you look the country in the eye and you lie for seven months, it isn’t the sex
we’re interested in. What we’re interested in is the disgraceful behavior and
the poor judgment. This man is the President—he has his hand on the button and he
doesn’t have the discipline to control his sexual appetite? Come on. That’s poor
judgment. If he’s got that much poor judgment in his private life, how much poor
judgment does he have in his public life? If he lies to his wife and kid in his private
life, what kind of lies does he tell in his public life? The guy has got to go. I
don’t trust him anymore. When you don’t trust your spouse, the marriage is over.
Well, his presidency is over.
MODE: Think he’ll be impeached?
DURGIN: I don’t care. In fact, I do
care. If impeachment is the only way to oust him, I would vote against it because it would
tear the country apart. It would last too long, it would be driven solely by politics and
not by justice and he’s only got two years left. I would like to see him resign and
save us that just like Nixon did. But he won’t.
MODE: You have a lot of strong opinions.
What is it within you that makes you so passionate?
DURGIN: I have no idea. The only answer I
have when I am asked that question. Every talk show host would probably say the same
thing. A talk show is nothing but an extension of the talk show host’s personality.
So, what you hear me do happens that way because of my personality. People aren’t
reacting to me, they’re reacting to my personality. They’re not only reacting to
what I say, but how I say it. There are some talk show hosts who are very boring and who
try to be very objective and they’re stuffed shirts because they don’t open up
to the people. To be a successful talk show host, you have to be honest; you’ve got
to be able to give yourself up on the air. I am on the air exactly as I am with you right
now. That’s the extension, you see? This is me. That’s what you get on the air.
When you get that kind of honesty, you are reaching out and touching people. Sure,
there’s a certain amount of showmanship involved. I am not exactly in my private life
as I am on the air. You know, yelling and screaming every three minutes.
BOB DURGIN: I was
born in Boston Massachusetts, moved to King of Prussia and graduated from Upper Merion
High School in 1960. I joined the Air Force for four years and was in radio and television
working with Armed Forces Radio. I was fortunate enough to be stationed in Germany. I went
from there to Turkey and then back to Texas and was in educational television there. And
that is where I was discharged. I decided to stay there because I had a full time job in
radio. That was back in 1966, and so officially, my radio career was launched. So I went
all over the country and eventually ended up in Oklahoma City for about 20 years. I worked
KTOK which was a very powerful, great experience.