Bob Grant (radio)
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Bob Grant (born Robert Gigante in 1929) is an American radio personality, who has mostly broadcast from New York City stations and who has been widely credited with being one of the pioneers of the "controversial talk radio" show format.
Career
Bob Grant graduated from the University of Illinois and first began working in radio in the 1940s. He worked as a newsman at WBBM in Chicago, as a radio personality and television talk show host at KNX in Los Angeles, and even as an actor. He ended up at KABC in Los Angeles, working as a sports director, where after some substitute appearances he inherited the talk show of early controversialist Joe Pyne in 1964 and began to build a following.Grant came to New York in 1970, where he hosted a talk show on WMCA. There he was the "house conservative," distinctively out of fashion with both the times and the various countercultural airstaff types on the station, including Alex Bennett. His offbeat but endearingly combative style won him seven years on WMCA, gaining an increasingly wide and loyal audience. The memorable mix of political conjecture, humor, live interviews, and tongue-in-cheek short fuse with callers would give Grant the "King of Talk Radio" pop title, and establish a model widely emulated in years to come.
After leaving WMCA, Grant went up the dial to New York's WOR for a while, then worked at WWDB in Philadelphia.
Once back in New York and established starting in 1984 at talk powerhouse WABC, The Bob Grant Show consistently dominated the ratings in the most competitive national radio beat - the afternoon drive time slot in New York City. Reminding listeners during the daily introduction that the "program was unscripted and unrehearsed", the gravelly-voiced Grant offered his loyal audience a compelling mix of historical fact, insight, and controversy. Notably, Grant could apparently tie historical events with any given date, using magician-level recall, or perhaps hidden spontaneous resources.
Grant was also known for on-air attacks on public officials including New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Critics charged that Grant was an inflammatory racist, pointing out statements Grant made calling (in disputed contexts) African Americans "savages" and referring to former New York Mayor David Dinkins as "the men's room attendant at the 21 Club." (This appellation was made while Grant was turning the pages of the New York Post on the air and saw on the gossip-oriented Page Six Dinkins wearing a white dinner jacket at a New York summer soiree - Grant was famous for stating his first impressions spontaneously over the airwaves.) Many commentators have mistakenly said that Grant called Dinkins a "bathroom attendant" when, in actuality, Grant's phraseology was biting satire. Grant was occasionally admonished or suspended for short periods by station management, typically with a bluster of controversial, but possibly welcome, publicity.
Grant's political philosophy generally followed American conservatism, but with some lurches into Populism, Libertarianism, conspiracy theory, and unorthodoxy (such as being pro-choice and anti-Flag Desecration Amendment). A resident of Manalapan, New Jersey, in the mid-1990s he said he was considering running for statewide office, but then decided not to.
Grant's long stay at WABC ended when he was fired for a remark about the April 3, 1996 news of an airplane crash involving Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. He said to the caller, Carl Limbacher, "My hunch is [Brown] is the one survivor. I just have that hunch. Maybe it's because at heart I'm a pessimist." When Brown was found dead, many regarded Grant's comments as insensitive and his contract was terminated.[link]
After being fired, Grant then moved down the dial to WOR where he continued to host the same type of show in the same time slot; he would occasionally criticize his WABC replacement Sean Hannity. In the late 1990s his show went into national syndication, trying to follow the lead of Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and other successful talkers, but few stations picked it up and it reverted to a local show. Later Grant's age began to show as he found it harder to gear up his rants and sometimes seemed disinterested in engaging his callers. After having been number one in the ratings in his time slot while at WABC, he was now being beaten by Hannity.
Grant ended his run on WOR on January 13, 2006. Grant's ratings were not to blame for his departure, according to the New York Post, which said that the decision was reached because other shows at the station cater to niche audiences and garner more advertising dollars [link]. Grant returned to WABC in a guest spot the following business day, January 16, 2006 joining the Sean Hannity show, after a 10 year absence from that station. However WABC said it had no plans to take him on in a host role. [link]
In a confessed state of retirement, though having left the door open for "an offer he cannot refuse," Bob Grant returned to WOR in February 2006 doing one minute "Straight Ahead" commentaries, airing twice daily after news broadcasts.
Characteristics of Grant's radio shows
Grant was known for using a number of catchphrases on his show, such as "Fake phony fraud!", "Straight ahead", "Get off my phone!", and his closing line, "Your influence counts ... use it!" His opening line was used as the title of his 1996 book, Let's Be Heard. On the WOR show, Grant often closed his show with the phrase, "Someone's got to say these things, it HAS to be me!"Grant was also known for the derogatory names he gave certain public officials he did not like when referring to them on his show, such as Jim "Flim-Flam" Florio, Liz "Hatchet-Face, the Face-That-Could-Stop-a-Runaway-Train" Holzmann, Jimmy "I'll-Never-Lie-To-You" Carter, Dave "The Attendant-at-the-21-Club" Dinkins, Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy, Al "Sharpie" Sharpton, and "Jessie Jerkson". When bored with that, Grant, an Italian American, used several Italian almost-obscene phrases for the same purpose, such as calling Mario Cuomo "the Sfachim" or "il Supremo".
Listeners tuned into Grant's show not only to hear Grant, but to listen to the unique callers that Grant would attract: John of Staten Island, George the Atheist, Cheryl of Spotswood, Jimmy of Brooklyn, Alex of White Plains, Dorothy of Montclair, David in Irvington (and later in Newark), Eugene of Albany, Steve of Manhattan, Bernie of the Bronx, Michael of Manhattan, Hilly of Jamaica, and Tom in the Bronx. Most renowned of all was "Vintage" Frank of Queens, whom some have labelled the "greatest caller ever in talk radio" while others were repulsed by his rhetoric; his quick, splenetic and arguably scripted screeds were typified by remarks such as, "Did you see the picture of those two quasi-humanoid mutants they arrested down there, Bob Grant? That's 450 pounds of food stamps for ya!" [link]
Grant made reference occasionally on his show to an ethereal Beatrice-like presence à la Dante's Paradiso section in The Divine Comedy, "The Lady Josephine", to whom he constantly paid fawning obeisance. Never did he refer to her as his "wife" or "girl-friend". Listeners were mystified as to his relationship with her. Were (are) they married? Co-habiting? Grant never was specific.
When once asked by the caller George the Atheist whether he believed in God or not, Grant replied, "What if I tell you, George, that sometimes I do and sometimes I don't?" The issue was never pursued. On his July 21, 2005 broadcast, Grant, a baptized and raised Roman Catholic, unequivocally stated to the same caller his opinion on the Second Coming of Jesus: "He's not coming back. Look, I don't believe he's coming back. I think that's a myth and I say it. I don't trumpet it but if a person asks - and you know one thing for sure, I've been deadly honest, dead-on honest all the time I've been on the air talking to people and they ask me questions or they make a comment that elicits a response, they are going to get an honest response. It may always not be 'correct' but it's honest". For long-time listeners, this candid theological exchange was among the more memorable of Grant's entire career — a career known mostly for candor, frankness, and heated passion, over issues political and social, not theological.
Influence and legacy
Numerous times over the years, New York radio talk personality Howard Stern has cited Grant as an early influence, although Stern has frequently criticized and ridiculed Grant for changing his act to appease the demands of Grant's management. Grant has related being approached at a public appearance by Ben Stern, Howard's father, his teenage son in tow. Father introduced son to Grant and told him of Howard's desire to go into radio. "I looked at this big, gawky kid and I said to him, 'Just be yourself,'" Grant recalled. Soon after Grant's firing from WABC, and before his first WOR show, Grant appeared as a call-in guest on Stern's radio show.Glenn Beck now uses the catchphrase "Get off my phone!" as an homage to Grant; similarly, Sean Hannity sometimes uses "Straight ahead." Grant's nasty-naming of public officials would later be continued by to an even greater extent by New York conservative talker Mark Levin. Grant's general angry-to-resigned-to-humorous tone switches and idiosyncratic political beliefs has obviously influenced New York-raised Michael Savage.
In 2002, industry magazine Talkers ranked Grant as the 16th greatest radio talk show host of all time. [link]
References
- Paul D. Colford, Howard Stern: King of All Media, 1996.
External links
- [Bob Grant's website]
- [Bob Grant page on About.com]
- [WOR bio]
- [FAIR page on Bob Grant]
- [FAIR archive of Grant quotes]
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