Laura Ingraham has finally found her calling -- on the radio.
The conservative polemicist, who has bounced around the media firmament ever since her days in the mid-1980s as a right-wing firebrand at Dartmouth, remains a familiar face on the cable TV shoutfests. She emceed a campaign rally for President Bush this fall. And she's popular on the lecture circuit.
Laura Ingraham has given her conservative talk show some playful twists.
(Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)
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But if her shtick in those venues is predictably partisan, her daily talk-radio show, heard in Washington on WTNT (570 AM) from 9 to noon weekdays, is a creative leap forward, and evidence that what works in talk radio is not political ranting but showmanship.
Ingraham's first try at a talk show was pedestrian -- just one more conservative host railing against the Clintons and Hollywood. But since a relaunch of the show 15 months ago, Ingraham has evolved into a performer who adopts characters, does funny voices and has a passion for music, sports and other non-political fare.
Playing the role of a groovy, Birkenstock- wearing New Ager, Ingraham takes phone calls from listeners and comments on their "positive energy forces putting me into a creative phase." She stages an "Adopt a Liberal" charity drive, uses cleverly spliced excerpts from pop songs as audio punch lines, and banters with "Saturday Night Live" impressionist Darrell Hammond.
Result: Ingraham has moved into the top 10 in total audience among nationally heard talk show hosts, trailing only Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Howard Stern, Michael Savage and Laura Schlessinger, according to Talkers magazine's Talk Radio Research Project. In Washington, Ingraham has more than doubled WTNT's audience in her time slot.
There are hundreds of sound-alike right-wing talk hosts, and most haven't figured out the first thing about radio. But Ingraham has borrowed liberally from Limbaugh and Stern, both of whom use many techniques from Top-40's heyday to move their talk shows along at a brisk pace and keep listeners tuned in, expecting the unexpected.
There's nothing inherently conservative or liberal about talk radio. What draws audiences is a rollicking good show. Ingraham still slips back into whining-partisan-rant mode from time to time, but as she and producer Lee Habeeb pour on the parodies and quicken the pace, watch for her climb in the ratings to continue.
