Maybe a decade ago, Phil Hendrie and his cast of characters left late night radio when he was syndicated by Premiere from 7-10 PM Pacific time. The premise of his show was he would have on guests that would have really outrageous personalities and opinions. His Guest would talk into a real phone and with background noise to make it more convincing the guest was real.<\/p>\n
The idea then was to entice people to call in (usually “offended” Oprah watchers who are offended at everything or redneck southern men. Should a caller be foolish enough to defend the “guest”, Phil would layer on more and more reasons to make their position unreasonable.<\/p>\n
Phil left that job to pursue a Hollywood career. It didn’t last very long, and somewhere around this time his marriage broke up.<\/p>\n
Out of work, he returned to radio, which he didn’t want to do – and especially not doing voices. Talk Radio Network (TRN) hired him with the idea he would do a straight conservative talk show from 10 PM to 1 AM Pacific time. One problem with that is Phil is not remotely a Conservative, no matter what definition you use. He was going to play a conservative character and fool his audience.<\/p>\n
Like many Californians, he knows what he thinks he believes, but hasn’t thought very much about why he believes it – made all the harder since for all those years, he was playing all his characters. Like Rich Little, it became impossible to figure out who the real person inside is. The only consistent political view he has is wanting to legalize marijuana use.<\/p>\n
So the “straight talk” lasted maybe a month before his characters started creeping back in to take over his show – but the show was too late to catch the random first time listener and lure them into calling an 800 number. There was no bringing back the magic.<\/p>\n
So TRN has yet one more vacancy. Perhaps they’ll refeed Jerry Doyle at 1 AM…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maybe a decade ago, Phil Hendrie and his cast of characters left late night radio when he was syndicated by Premiere from 7-10 PM Pacific time. The premise of his show was he would have on guests that would have … Continue reading