The King of Radio

"Still Going" by Marc Fisher, in American Journalism Review (Oct. 1998), Univ. of Maryland, 1117 Journalism Bldg., College Park, Md. 20742–7111.

"HELLO AMERICANS! THIS IS PAUL HARVEY! SSTTAANNDD BYYY FOR NEEEEEWS!!!!"

At age 80, famed radio commentator Paul Harvey, opening each newscast with this trademark line, is still going strong from his studio on Paul Harvey Drive in Chicago, reports Fisher, a Washington Post editor. Culling arch, outrageous, and heartwarming items from the wire services and newspapers, he serves them up each day in his distinctive staccato style (complete with... pregnant pauses) to more than 1,300 radio stations, from rural backwaters to large cities.

"Dismissed decades ago as a clichéd relic of Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority, derided by the media elite as a flag-waving, red-bashing dispensary of easy bromides and patriotic pap," writes Fisher, "‘Paul Harvey News & Comment’ remains by leaps and bounds the most popular program on American radio." Harvey’s newscasts, which air mornings and middays, regularly attract five of the 10 largest radio audiences each week, Fisher reports. Harvey’s top-rated 8:30 a.m. newscast attracts an average of five million listeners, while 2.5 million tune in to his daily afternoon "Rest of the Story" recitations, "those dramatic, if formulaic, historical vignettes in which that failed painter turns out to be...Adolf Hitler." Harvey still celebrates Main Street and believes that the business of America is business. But his political views have changed somewhat. Once an archconservative backer of Senator Joseph McCarthy, he later became a critic of President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam War policies and an advocate of abortion rights. He now finds himself "smack in the middle of the road," says Fisher.

"The last of the wartime generation of radio commentators...is also a bridge to the new era of radio talkers," Fisher points out. Rush Limbaugh and others "have stretched the concept of radio commentary from minutes to hours, but remained true to Harvey’s basic formula of personalizing the news, turning the events of the day into a longform diary of American life." The continued popularity of Harvey and his formula, Fisher suggests, is a reflection of "an American craving for belonging, an insistent desire for community in a nation that has grown... scattered and rootless."