These days, we're used to media that thrives on conflict and amplifies the most outrageous voices in the room. We can trace this style back to the shock jocks of the 1980s, like Howard Stern, or to in-your-face conservative talk show hosts, like Rush Limbaugh.
But the real founding father of angry, sensational media was a 1960s talk show host named Joe Pyne, according to several people who knew Pyne and have studied his work. At the peak of his career, his radio and television shows reached millions of Americans each week, according to a Smithsonian Magazine article about him. In 1966, The New York Times called him "the ranking nuisance of broadcasting."
Pyne began his career in the late 1940s as a disc jockey at various local radio stations around the country. At the time, radio DJs and interviewers were generally formal, mild-mannered and polite.
But Pyne started experimenting, making commentary about politics and current events between songs. While details of his early days are sketchy, "the story goes that one day, the station manager or the station owner at one of the stations that he worked said, 'Stop playing records. Just talk,'" says Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers Magazine, a trade publication covering talk media.
Pyne developed his first call-in radio show at a station in Delaware in 1951, according to Icons of Talk: The Media Mouths That Changed America by Donna Halper. He quickly developed a reputation as a confrontational and abrasive personality. "He just was a very opinionated guy on air," remembers his son, Ed Pyne. "It wasn't like, 'What's your thought on that sir?' It was just, 'Now why the hell do you think that?'"
Pyne's show was popular and within a few years, he moved it to Los Angeles — the second-largest media market in the country. Pyne soon had the highest ratings in the city, says Tim Harrell, a former colleague.
Harrell, who was a producer on the show in the mid-1960s, remembers that Pyne would open with a monologue about whatever was on his mind — anything from the day's news to a song he heard on the radio. His views were generally conservative. "This was the era of the hippies and free love and all that, which Pyne was absolutely opposed to," remembers Harrell.
Harrell says Pyne would talk until he got the audience riled up and then would open the phone lines for callers. Most people who called in shared Pyne's views. "He was sort of a darling of right-wing conservatives," Harrell says.
But many people would call in to disagree with Pyne and he relished arguing with them on air. He would make fun of them and berate them. According to Harrell, he would often end a conversation by saying, "Oh, go gargle with razorblades."
In 1966, the NBC Radio Network began syndicating Pyne's show nationally. Soon it broadcast on more than 200 stations across the country. He also became a television star, with a syndicated show that had more than 10 million viewers a week. He'd open each episode saying, "This is Joe Pyne, and the action starts in just a moment."
On these shows, Pyne debated guests instead of callers. He invited a wide variety of guests on the show, whom he would often introduce as "controversial." They included hippies, women's libbers, Scientologists, swingers, a snake charmer, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society.
As always, Pyne would attack his guests, cut them off and mock them on air. In an argument with a leader of the Communist Party USA, Pyne told him, "If you were a Broadway play, you'd be a flop!" Speaking with an atheist, he said, "I certainly wouldn't want one of you people marrying my daughter, I'll tell you that." In an interview with James Meredith, the civil rights activist who was the first Black student at the University of Mississippi, Pyne asked, "Don't you think you're being a little bit ungrateful when you consider what this country did and what we all went through, to send you into college?"
Conservative viewers felt a kinship with Pyne and the positions he took on the show, but his appeal also crossed political lines. "There were a lot of people that didn't like Pyne, but they watched him anyway because they thought it was — amusing? Entertaining? Sensational? Different? You know, not boring," says Harrison.
"Pyne really demonstrated that not only could outrage get people to tune in, but it could get them to care about issues, could get them to listen to political content," says Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University who studies conservative media. It was this innovation that inspired future talk show hosts, most notably Rush Limbaugh, who blended Pyne's sensational style with a more focused political agenda, according to Hemmer.
Pyne died of cancer in 1970, just a few years after his show went national. He was 45.
People who knew Pyne well say his personality and personal views didn't always align with his on-screen persona. "Off the air, he was a totally different person," Harrell says. "When the microphone went out, when it was just you and him, he was nice."
"He told me many a time, 'It's just a shtick," said Ed Pyne, his son. He remembers the elder Pyne telling him, "Don't ever worry if people are taking shots at you. If you want to worry, it's when people stop talking about you."
This story was produced by Alissa Escarce and the team at Radio Diaries. It was edited by Joe Richman, Ben Shapiro and Deborah George. You can find more stories on the Radio Diaries Podcast.
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