Talk Show Host Hangs It Up After One Call Too Many

KXLY-AM talk show host Jim Bickel has been picketed; he’s been cursed at by callers; he has received vitriolic mail. He said it’s all “part of the game” in talk radio.

But when an unknown caller said on Thursday, “I’m pregnant with your baby,” that was the last straw.

Bickel announced on the air Monday that he is quitting talk radio as of Friday and would devote all his time to his business, Bickel’s Cafe in the Flour Mill. He said the caller’s charge is “absurd and untrue” and he sees no reason to subject himself to that kind of abuse.

“It happened on Thursday, and it has been bugging the hell out of me all weekend,” said Bickel. “It really is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

He was interviewing District 81 Superintendent Gary Livingston on Thursday when the call came in. A young woman caller who identified herself as Cindy asked Bickel to find out from Livingston when she would be allowed back in school. Bickel asked her why she wasn’t being allowed in school, and she said, according to Bickel, “Jim, you know exactly why. Because I’m pregnant with your baby.”

Bickel, who didn’t know whether it was a prank or somebody just being mean-spirited, asked her why she was doing this. She said, “You know why I’m doing this.”

Then he cut her off.

It bothered him, but he was bothered even more by the callers who followed.

“There were people who automatically assumed it was true,” said Bickel. “That’s what hurt the most.”

One caller on Monday called him a “pedophile.”

“You get used to people attacking you on your political beliefs,” said Bickel, who is considered liberal or, at least, more moderate than most talk show hosts. “But even my wife heard some people question whether it was true, and that hurts. … It brought me to some feelings about ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself in this position?”’

He works only two hours a day for KXLY, so radio is not his livelihood. But it has long been his “passion.”

“Fortunately, I have the best of both worlds,” said Bickel. I have another business that is financially successful. I don’t have to do it.”

After he made his announcement on Monday, callers on the air begged him to stay. So did station management.

“We love Jim,” said executive news director Michael Espinoza. “We’re hoping he stays.”

Espinoza said the station is doing everything it can to keep Bickel. The station traced the call and has its attorneys on it. They have also ordered a new time-delay system. KXLY-AM was not using time-delay when the call came in.

“The station is being supportive as hell,” said Bickel. “It’s flattering that they and the listeners want me to stay. But that’s not the point. It’s how much personal attack do I want to take? It’s gotten to the point where it’s out of control.”

He said it would cost him “time, money and pride to prove that I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Bickel has been in news-and-talk radio for 14 years. He worked at stations in Portland and Seattle before coming to Spokane. He was a talk host and program director for KXLY-AM from 1991 to 1993, during which time he directed and anchored the station’s award-winning coverage of the 1991 firestorm.

He left to return to his home state of Delaware in 1993, but came back a year later to open the cafe. He went back on the air at KXLY in August on a part-time basis.

He has agreed to continue his 2-4 p.m. show through the end of the week because he doesn’t want to put the station in a bind. But after that, he’ll be in his cafe.

“I don’t think I’m burned out,” he said. “I’m just tired of the rhetoric that’s going around (in talk radio). There’s not a lot of constructive stuff out there.”