Shock Talk Prank Calls Make Wave On Local Radio Talk Shows

Let’s go to the phones.

Bob, on Line One. What do you have for us? A cogent discussion of the issues?

Or, as is happening more and more often, a sophomoric prank? A stream of obscenities? A death threat?

These days, every Spokane talk radio host has to worry about an increasing wave of on-air prank calls.

Except one. KXLY-AM radio host Jim Bickel no longer has to worry about it, because he quit talk radio on April 21 because of just such a call.

The rest of the hosts and producers, however, say these calls are lighting up their phone consoles more and more often.

“I’ve been doing this for six years,” said KXLY-AM talk show producer Pat Schilling. “In the last six months, I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of those kinds of calls. There are certainly a lot more prank calls, and the belligerent ones have increased as well.”

This phenomenon also extends to KGA-AM, Spokane’s other major talk-radio station. General manager Steve Cody said problem calls have increased noticeably in just the last four or five months.

Problem callers can be divided roughly into three categories: the childish pranksters, the obscene screamers and the vicious bullies.

The pranksters are often kids, trying to be funny.

“The voices I hear are usually younger voices,” said Schilling, who is in charge of screening calls. “I screen some out. But they can tell me a reasonable question they want to ask, and once they get on the air, they change what they want to say.”

Sometimes the callers are stupid but harmless, like the ones who called KXLY-AM a few months back and just spouted unintelligible gibberish.

Sometimes the callers are more malicious, like the one who caused Bickel to hang it up for good. A caller identified only as Cindy said she wanted to know when she’d be allowed back into high school. When Bickel asked why she was out of school, she said, “Jim, you know exactly why. Because I’m pregnant with your baby.”

Bickel called it “absurd and untrue.” He quit because he said he sees no reason to subject himself to that kind of abuse and also because he has his own business, a cafe, to fall back on.

Some callers, such as Cindy, appear to be dedicated to making the host look bad. The reasons can range from random meanness to political antipathy or even to commercial competition. One string of relatively harmless prank calls to KXLY-AM was traced to an employee of another radio station. The station management had no knowledge of the calls, and the employee was reprimanded.

Other callers want to make someone else look bad, such as the one who phoned Todd Herman’s talk show on KSBN-AM. The caller identified himself as SpokesmanReview editor Chris Peck and then launched into an obscene tirade in which he told Herman, “I don’t talk to loudmouth, long-haired mongrels.” A subsequent call by Herman to The Spokesman-Review revealed that the caller was not Chris Peck.

Sometimes the pranksters have no discernible motive except for attention. Someone once called Herman’s show and pretended to commit suicide on the air, complete with the sound of the phone hitting the floor and someone in the background yelling, “Oh God, no!” Herman found out later that the police had reported no suicide attempts that day.

The second category, the obscene screamers, are merely trying to see what they can get away with.

A caller once asked Bickel, on the air, to perform an unnatural act on him. A caller to KXLY-AM’s Pete Fretwell spouted “extremely obscene” tirades until the station found out the identity of the caller on a tip and threatened him with legal action.

The final category, the vicious bullies, usually aren’t as dangerous as they sound.

“I’ve had people call and say they are going to kill me,” said Herman, whose style is provocative. “I say, ‘Come on down.’ We’ve never had anybody follow through. I don’t worry about the people who call. I worry about the ones who don’t.”

After Denver talk show host Alan Berg was murdered by a white supremacist in 1984, no talk radio host can afford to be too sanguine about such threats.

Nor can they be sanguine about the obscene calls. Not only do the obscenities disgust many listeners, but the station can get in trouble with the Federal Communications Commission.

“The fines for getting profanity on the air are getting stiff,” said Fretwell, Spokane’s most popular talk host. “They’re getting up into the six digits, and the licensee (the station) is responsible.”

“The fines start at $10,000 and go up from there,” said Kris McGowan of the Seattle office of the FCC.

Most of these fines are levied for deliberate obscenity by shock-jock stations, not accidental ones on talk radio. That, said McGowan, is because “most prudent broadcasters would have some kind of time delay.” A three- to seven-second delay is used in almost all national talk shows and most large-market talk shows.

But not in Spokane - at least, not until now.

“We’ve been shielded from having to do that,” said Fretwell. “In large markets you just delay. We’ve had the capacity all along, but we’ve never been forced to use it.”

Instead, the host has used a quick trigger finger to cut off calls at the first sign of a problem. In the present climate, that may no longer hack it.

Ever since the Bickel call and other problem calls, Fretwell has been using delay. At KXLY-AM, this process is complicated by the fact that its radio talk shows are simulcast on cable TV. The station is acquiring the equipment to delay the TV simulcast, also.

KSBN-AM is also planning to install a delay system, and Herman thinks this will prevent most of the problem calls.

“If a delay system works the way it’s supposed to, an on-top-of-it host should be able to catch these calls,” said Herman.

KGA-AM, on the other hand, has no delay and no plans to get one. In fact, up to now the station hasn’t even screened calls, in keeping with the philosophy of unimpeded expression. However, Cody said the station is now considering a new phone system that will allow for callers to be screened before going on the air.

KXLY-AM also has caller I.D., which allows the station to see where the call is coming from. However, a determined prankster can get around that by calling from a pay phone or by having the phone company put a caller I.D. “block” on their phone, which renders caller I.D. useless.

As a last resort, talk radio stations can have the phone company do a trace. Then the station or its attorneys have a little chat with the prankster. Usually, once a caller knows the station is onto them, the problem is solved.

In the meantime, though, any time a host says, “You’re on the air,” the potential exists for a most unpleasant surprise. The best strategy, as Fretwell said, is “to just apologize” to the listeners and then move on to the next, and presumably more sane, call.

The vast majority of talk radio callers are interested only in quietly expressing an opinion or discussing an issue.

“It just takes a few to make everyone look bad,” said Schilling.