Who's No. 1? It's Brudnoy

Page 2 of 2 -- Ask 100 talkmasters, and 99 will tell you you that cerebral, talky, courteous, ideas-heavy radio programming is sure death in the ratings book. Their market research doubtless proves that listeners have no interest in the kind of show Brudnoy does. Except that, manifestly, they do. And have, for 25 years.

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Some months ago, I e-mailed David an eye-opening article by Michael Ledeen on Africa's AIDS crisis, with a note suggesting that it might make a great radio topic. I cc'd the note to Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and promptly got a message back. "I LOVE David Brudnoy, the single most literate man on the radio." Countless scholars, authors, and assorted eminentoes would agree.

But authors, scholars, and eminentoes do not generate high ratings. Tens of thousands of loyal listeners, white- and blue-collar both, do - and do they really care about AIDS in Africa?

Jon Keller, political analyst at WLVI-TV (and one-time producer for "The David Brudnoy Show,") recalls the time he was covering a story at the Grove Hall fire station. "And there were all these tough-as-nails firefighters sitting by a radio, listening to Brudnoy," Keller says. "I asked one of them why he liked it. You know what he answered? `He tells me stuff I don't already know.' "

Would that guy listen to a conversation about an AIDS epidemic halfway around the world? You bet he would.

Delivering the commencement address at Salem State College last month, Brudnoy - he actually has a fistful of earned degrees to go with the honorary one - made a point of distinguishing fake "diversity" from the genuine article.

"One diversity stands above all else," he told the graduates. "Diversity of the brain. It's not how we look or what our last name is or what our grandparents' linguistic group is or what our sexual orientation is, but what and how we think that matters. . . . Ideas are the product of individuals, and it is individual diversity, which flows from the mind, that matters. But how often do we hear people talk . . . about diversity of ideas? Never."

Well, maybe not never. In most of the eastern United States, you can hear ideas in all their diversity take center stage five nights a week, three hours per night, on WBZ-AM 1030, where the night's best conversation - and David Brudnoy's second quarter-century - is underway.