L-A Radio: For Valentine's Week..Love Is On The Air

L-A Times Composite

Art Laboe, who died last October, had his impact on the radio industry with dozens of dedication shows that cropped up after he first went on air in the 1940s. The trend peaked in the 1980s, when quite a few popular shows started broadcasting, but dedications can still be heard across the country every night.

Delilah, the mononymous “queen of sappy love songs,” broadcasts a five-hour-long request show each night from her home near Seattle that has made her the most listened-to woman on the radio. She is nationally syndicated on about 150 stations, reaching about 8.3 million listeners each week.

On L.A.’s KOST 103.5 FM, Karen Sharp reaches nearly half a million listeners weekly.

Calling into a radio station might seem like a relic from another era — a cinematic-yet-clichéd gesture, like holding up a boombox beneath a bedroom window or racing through an airport to stop the love of your life from getting on a flight (or a radio DJ relaying an apology from Ross to Rachel in “Friends”).

But the shows have a hold on listeners, writes Julia Carmel at The L-A Times. Even in the age of cellphones and Spotify, legions of fans still tune in nightly.

Plenty of disc jockeys have come up with analogous call-in show formats over the last 80 years, but Laboe was likely the first to take listener requests and dedications. He started in 1943, when he got the chance to fill an hour of airtime between 11 p.m. and midnight on San Francisco’s KSAN 107.7 FM, sharing the station’s phone number to attract listeners and song requests.

Art LaBoe (1925-2022)

“There was no technology back then to put the caller on the air,” said Joanna Morones, Laboe’s longtime producer and friend. “So he would take calls, talk to them, find out what they wanted to talk about, and then he would have to repeat it over the air.” By the time Laboe moved to Palm Springs to broadcast on KCMJ-AM 1140 in 1946, he was using a speaker telephone that sat under the mic so listeners could speak and be heard.

“When you call up and dedicate a song, you’re letting the world know you love somebody,” Laboe told journalist Ryan Bradley in a 2015 interview. “All of a sudden, the telephone in their hand, going all over their city and state and even the world, they realize, ‘I’m not just somebody who makes hamburgers or works at the car wash.’ It’s a powerful feeling.”

Over the years, other DJs had similar instincts. Delilah said that she began airing listener stories and requests in the 1980s, shortly after she started her first full-time radio job at Seattle’s KZAM 92.5 FM. “‘People are calling me and saying such amazing things,’” she told her program director. “‘Could I just record it and play some of this stuff on the air?’”

Dick Hugg — better known by listeners as “Huggy Boy” — began hosting a call-in show on Glendale’s KRLA-AM 1110 in 1983, with help from Laboe. By 1985, Laurie Sanders was broadcasting “Love Songs on the Coast” on L.A.’s KOST 103.5 FM — the popular show that’s now helmed by Sharp.

“The dedication was part of top 40 radio,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers Magazine, a trade industry publication. “It was just the way it was. And what it did was it created a connection between listeners and the radio station.”

“People are lonely,” Delilah said. “I think people are more lonely today than I ever heard in my career.” And even though many calls are about love and heartbreak, they all touch on something much bigger. A representative said Delilah gets upward of 50,000 callers each night, though she can only talk to about 75 of them.

“People want to feel like they’re a member of a community,” said Sharp, who gets about 100 callers each night and is able to speak with about a third of them. “They’re looking to be heard.”