Working nerves in the afternoon

When Glenn Beck talks, people listen - and howl, cheer or cry foul. WFLA's afternoon radio host holds court with Beck-handed style over the day's issues.

By PAMELA DAVIS, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 17, 2000

TAMPA -- For hours, listeners have been driving to the WFLA-AM studio to drop off checks and small change, prompted by a new voice on the airwaves.

Glenn Beck has devoted much of his afternoon show to the story of a little girl who choked to death after trying to climb through a car window.

During his show, the 15-year-old babysitter, who was asleep when the child died, called Beck. Through her sobs, she blamed herself. Beck, in a soft, fatherly voice, tried to convince her she wasn't at fault.

[Times photo: Fraser Hale] Will the real Glenn Beck please stand up? The enigmatic afternoon radio host at WFLA-AM 970 finds himself equally comfortable with tender moments and tawdry put-downs. Here, he chats with producer Dan Andros during a break in his show.

On the job at WFLA-AM 970 less than two months, Beck had rallied his listeners to donate $16,800 for a grieving family. Indeed, the family did need help paying for funeral expenses, but that wasn't why Beck talked about the story. There was something about it that touched him.

"My gift is being able to emote and being able to have people feel what I feel," says Beck, 36.

But on another day, listeners heard the other Glenn Beck, the one who joked about a Riverview woman who was trampled to death by an elephant. The one who skipped over tragedy for an on-air laugh.

Some listeners didn't see the humor and called the show to tell him so. But others were laughing right along with him.

Good Glenn vs. Bad Beck. You never know which one will dominate the The Glenn Beck Show, which airs from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays. Beck is currently Tampa Bay's only local issue-oriented radio host with a daily show.

He talks about the day's events with passion, humor and sarcasm. He's winning some listeners, angering others, and leaving some scratching their heads.

But this isn't surprising when you consider the tangle of contradictions that is Glenn Beck.

He astonishes even those closest to him with his on-air frankness. Yet he never told his first wife that his mother killed herself when he was a teenager. She found out when Beck told his radio listeners.

Beck expounds on spirituality (he's Mormon), family values (says homosexuality is a threat to the family unit) and politics (leans libertarian).

Beck says he uses the truth like a shield.

"I truly believe if I play every single one of my cards face up on the table they can never be taken from me and played against me. I'm not hiding anything. I never feel I've exposed too much," Beck says. "I'm not smart enough to lie. I'd never be able to cover my tracks."

Although he has mentioned his children from his prior marriage, 8-year-old Hannah and 11-year-old Mary who live with their mother in Connecticut, he says he tries to be discreet. Same with his new wife, Tania.

"Listeners can be extremely brutal. I expect that, that's part of my job. It's not part of her job being married to me."

[Times photo: Thomas M. Goethe] Glenn Beck and his wife, Tania Beck, share a laugh over an episode of Friends at their home in Valrico. Sometimes, Tania Beck says, she’s not laughing when he talks about their personal life on the air.

But he still says plenty. Tania Beck, 27, is not too thrilled when her husband talks about their sex life on the air. She says she could do without the times he "gets on his rants about coming home to me and what he plans to do."

Tania met Beck two years ago when she visited the New Haven, Conn., station where he worked. She was there to pick up a Walkman she won in a radio contest. Back then, Beck was a divorced, ponytail-wearing, abortion-rights supporting, local radio celebrity.

Today, he's a short-haired, anti-abortion, unknown talk show host.

But his listeners are learning about him. And reacting. Most notably to his separation from his children, about the only topic on which you'll find Beck getting defensive.

"I didn't make this move lightly. (The callers) were over the line when they came after me for my decision as a man to leave my children," Beck says. "I beat myself up enough for that. I do every day."

The heat got so intense, he even said on the air one day, "I may have made a huge mistake" coming to Tampa.

But it didn't stop him from talking about his separation from his children on the radio.

"It's too big a part of me not to bring it up."

As a kid living in Washington, Beck used to make audio tapes of himself pretending to be a disc jockey. When he was 13, his hobby helped him win the "Be on the Air for an Hour" contest at a Seattle area station.

Soon after, he got his first real radio job, working six-hour shifts on the weekends. He'd pedal his bike to the station, or get a ride with his dad, who would wait in the parking lot until his son's shift was over.

When he was 14, Beck's mother killed herself. His family never discussed it, and neither did Beck until, as an adult, he talked about it on the air.

Today, he says her death made him grow up in a hurry. "I became an adult the day she died," Beck says.

After graduation from high school, Beck opted for marriage at 18 and a radio career. He skipped college until age 30, when he spent a semester at Yale studying philosophy and theology.

Although he was doing Top 40 morning shows in Baltimore, Houston, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and most recently New Haven, Conn., his favorite radio guys were intelligent talkers such as Garrison Keillor, Phil Hendrie and Don Imus.

"I absolutely hated it. It was not me at all," Beck says about Top 40 morning radio. "I was going against almost everything I truly believed in. I couldn't come out and speak what I thought was true."

Now, during one four-hour talk show, Beck is able to debate the merits of Scientology, discuss politics with Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, and get callers to reveal their most intimate secrets in exchange for free concert tickets.

He loves nothing better than to get his listeners going -- like the time he talked up Strip Steak, a steakhouse where, he explained, woman entertained diners sans clothing. Not surprisingly in a city known for its innovations in exotic dancing, listeners thought for a while this was a real establishment.

WFLA operations manager Sue Treccase said she could tell from Beck's Top 40 work that he was what she wanted for the afternoon talk show.

"The magic, the synergy with an audience, the ability to at any given time on any given day know what people are talking about are the keys to it," she said. "Good talk is not much different than an FM morning show. MJ & BJ (on top-rated WFLZ-FM 93.3) don't play that much music. People by and large aren't listening for the music. They listen to that show for the personality."

Bits like "Strip Steak" show just how much Trecasse shook up WFLA when she hired Beck and made other programming changes at the new year. Such parody would never have been heard from the more serious Bob Lassiter, Beck's predecessor. (Beck hasn't been on the job long enough for the Arbitron ratings service to determine the size of his audience.)

Beck was amazed at the angry reaction he got from Lassiter's fans upon replacing the talk show veteran.

"These people came out of the woodwork with pitchforks and torches. When I don't like a radio show, I turn it off," Beck says. "Move on with your life. It's a radio show. I don't know you. You don't know me. Let's move on."

Beck gets to the station by noon to prepare for his 3 p.m. show. He drives his 1998 Volkswagen Beetle from his gated community in Valrico and reads whatever his producer has pulled from the news wires, Internet and newspapers.

By about about 2:30 p.m. he has decided on the direction of the show and has organized his notes. Or he has tossed everything aside and is going to go with the flow.

"In those first 15 minutes I usually have no idea what I'm going to say."

There's always lots of local issues to talk about -- the Bucs, the comatose woman whose husband wants to remove her feeding tube, the shovel-beating trial, the boy with leukemia who almost lost his treehouse when the homeowners association objected to it.

One of Beck's weaknesses, Treccase says, is "the fact that he's the new kid in town. Sometimes it's difficult for him to put things in context. Doing this job, especially when he's new to the station, new to the state and new to the town can be a little overwhelming."

In the studio, Beck sets the thermostat down to 55 degrees so he won't sweat while he's on air. And work up a sweat he does. When he gets going, he flails his arms, gestures with his hands and yells.

Most of the time, he's alone in the studio. No guests. No producer. Just him and the equipment in a really cold room. But of course, he isn't really alone. He's got those listeners. And he loves talking to them.

"The show is much much better with callers," Beck says. "Listeners make me look really good. They are the Abbott (to my Costello)."

On his 60th show, Beck asked his callers to review him.

"This is one redneck that does like the show," said a man who calls himself J.R. "I'll tell you what. You've made me laugh. You've even made me mad. You've even made me cry. I listen to just about the whole show every day. I like what you're doing. If they kept that other guy on the station for 14 years you ought to be on there for 50 years."

Another caller, Tom, says: "I'm starting to like your show. I think you really sucked in the beginning. I thought you were, frankly, disgusting, but you've improved. You've mellowed. You've gotten more local in flavor."

On the critical side, Jenny calls in to tell Beck, "You're too loud, noisy and sometimes overly dramatic. You sound all right but you're touchy and moody."

Only a fraction of listeners call in, but Beck relies on them to keep the show going.

"He sweats his show a lot because he's thinks that talk radio listeners are pretty well informed," says Pat Gray, Beck's former morning show partner who now works at a Salt Lake City station. "They seem to read more about politics and understand more about issues as opposed to your normal kind of radio listener who you can pretty much tell anything to and they'll believe it."

Despite the air-conditioned chill, Beck always starts sweating by the last hour of the show.

This is when he's at his weirdest. This is when he's most apt to insult a caller or reveal intimate details about himself.

For the past three hours he has been praising listeners for donating to the family that lost their child. He welcomed the family members into his studio and interviewed them on air.

[Times photo: Thomas M. Goethe] Beck is Tampa Bay’s only radio talk-show host with an issues-oriented program. He replaced Bob Lassiter on WFLA.

He dealt with news breaks, traffic breaks and sports breaks.

Then he changed course with his list of famous married women he thinks shouldn't be working, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton. And dealt with the phone calls -- pro and con -- that followed.

There's yet another hassle: At any minute, WFLA will cut Beck off to broadcast the space shuttle landing.

Bad Beck takes over, and starts whining about losing airtime to the space shuttle.

The bit falls flat. No biggie. He slips his 6-foot-3 frame into his Beetle, heads back to Valrico and lets it go.

He'll be in front of the microphone again tomorrow, saying God only knows what. Maybe he'll be serious and sweet. Or tactless and tasteless. Whatever, he insists he'll be himself.

"If you like me and if you like hanging out with me then you'll love the show," he says. "It is life through my eyes. It's life with Glenn."

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