MEDIA'S TALK REVOLUTION GETTING CHEAPER BY THE MINUTE.

Byline: Frederic M. Biddle Boston Globe

Title: "Hot Air: All Talk, All the Time"

Author: Howard Kurtz 

Data: 407 pages, Times Books; $25

Our rating: Four Stars

Whoever said that talk is cheap is responsible for one of history's more damnable cliches, as proven in "Hot Air: All Talk, All the Time," which exposes the failings of a phenomenon that spans not only the excesses of a Geraldo or Howard Stern, but TV's most prestigious Sunday morning political programs.

Unfortunately, they - and the Limbaughs and Imuses and sundry ignoramuses of talk - aren't as harmless as the title of Howard Kurtz's book implies. The talk revolution was an inevitable antidote to the bias of the chiefs of TV and radio who, from the start, cheated issues and the groups who wanted to hear about them.

But nearly all of the broadcast life forms that evolved have mutated, Kurtz argues. They're now as corrupt as the media order they replaced - and in some respects, more dangerous.

After all, what good can you say about such respectable-sounding political shows as "The McLaughlin Group" and "Crossfire," which, as viewers know, aren't much more than hammy screamfests that reduce complex, important issues to latter-day "Gong Shows"?

Even the tweedy integrity of "Face the Nation," "Meet the Press" and others of their ilk is challenged by the machinations of their political guests, who are only too eager to reap the next day's newspaper headlines by floating trial balloons and partisan-circumscribed truths.

The journalists who populate these and other shows, ostensibly as impartial questioners, use the shows' prestige as springboards to lucrative and dubious second careers as corporate lecturers. "It tends to promote a pro-establishment viewpoint," David Gergen, the Reagan-era White House communications czar, tells Kurtz, of the phenomenon of reporting while on the take. "You're talking to the establishment, you're with them a lot."

Alas, Gergen pops up repeatedly in Kurtz's book, having ricocheted between so many of the above contretemps himself. Consider that from the Reagan administration, Gergen bounced to U.S. News & World Report, where he briefly became editor and, later, a columnist. In another journalistic gig, "The MacNeil/Lehrer Hour," he regularly debated Mark Shields on behalf of the Republican Party. Gergen eventually switched party loyalties, becoming President Clinton's counselor, "but not before seeking assurances from friends that there was 'a road back to journalism,' " Kurtz writes.

Indeed, from local radio to the global soapbox of CNN, the talk-show circuit has become an inter-campaign pit stop for politicians (most notably Pat Buchanan, on CNN's "Crossfire"), in which they rebuild voting constituencies while settling old scores and making a generous living yakking four hours a day in front of a mike.

The owners of the networks and radio stations couldn't care less about any conflicts of interest, as long as the Arbitrons and Nielsens ring in. Nor do broadcasters lose sleep over what talk-show hosts actually say, as listeners know all too well. Kurtz dutifully recounts the extremist ravings of the radio hosts, from the provincial Howie Carr to that nationally syndicated phenomenon Rush Limbaugh.

These are nothing new, but Kurtz draws a few fresh conclusions. For example, he looks beyond the controversy over Limbaugh's half-truths and lies (which sway listeners by the millions) to a pathetic reality: that Rush has "narrowed his range as a social commentator," and in aligning himself with the GOP cause "has placed himself in a position where the partisan agenda seems to matter more than an unflinching social and political critique."

Other insights are less effective. In recalling the 1980s rise of Howard Stern, which was measured in FCC indecency fines, it won't do for Kurtz to say that "whatever one thinks of Howard Stern, it was truly disturbing to see the full weight of the federal government brought to bear against one person for off-color material that would barely raise an eyebrow on public television."

Kurtz's First Amendment finger-wagging is laudable, but the excuses he makes for Stern are untrue. The most protozoan daytime TV talk shows have yet to play the sound of gunfire over the records of Selena, which Stern's producers did in a prank on the day after the singer was shot to death last year.

Thankfully, such lapses are scarce in Kurtz's otherwise meticulous argument. "As for me, it's time for a break," he pleads in the book's concluding lines. "I'm all talked out." For once, my gut reaction was not to reach for the off switch.