RUMBLIN ROSEN.

RADIO HOST TAKES ON ALL COMERS

IN A BOARDROOM'S LARGE leather chair, with an imposing conference table and a commanding view, Mike Rosen seems at home. Comfortable. Relaxed, even.

These are not adjectives normally employed to describe KOA Radio's premier conservative talk show host. And when he's asked about the current state of his industry you understand why not:

"These same sanctimonious people in the media who are so quick to criticize everybody else in society ... have absolutely no tolerance for being criticized themselves," he rants. "You criticize them, and they immediately bring up the straw man of, 'you're challenging my first amendment rights,'" he says. It's what Rosen calls "The First Amendment Canard," and it is one instance among many where he sees the media exercise bias, hypocrisy, even downright deception.

"Many of the people in the media ... resent me for what I do," says the 56-year-old Rosen. "They don't like to be criticized, especially by name. ... [But] I read their news stories -- their editorials masquerading as news stories. I go through those stories point by point and show the spin."

Strong stuff. But Rosen doesn't make his living being diplomatic. Articulate and persuasive, he has the air of a man whose time is important to him. He's graying at the temples, but his eyes are sharp, pale blue. He moves with an unconscious assurance. When he speaks -- the vocabulary is studded with hot-button terms like "liberal," "establishment," "bias" and "agenda" -- his hands gesture away from his body, as if to draw the very words from his chest. And in the boxing ring that is AM talk radio -- where civility is for the weak of heart -- if you're going to make a buck, you better be ready to rumble.

Rosen rumbles.

A typical broadcast from his fishbowl-like KOA studio covers topics as diverse as CSAP testing, Mad Cow disease, and Anthony Hopkins' latest gory effort, "Hannibal." Th phone lines light up like a string of brake lights at rush hour, bloated with callers eager to argue a point. The talk is fast, the politics conservative. He is, by his own account, the most listened-to local radio talk show host in Denver. ("Dr. Laura is on opposite me," he boasts, "and I've got two or three times her audience.") Both Bill Owens and Wellington Webb sit in on the show once a month. Rosen also writes an editorial column for The Rocky Mountain News.

Originally from Brooklyn, Rosen spent many years in the corporate sector before talk radio. After briefly attending Hunter College in New York City and a two-year stint in the military, he realized, "I'd better go back to college." Fed up with New York, he enrolled at the University of Denver, where he received both his BA in business and an MBA. Upon graduation he worked at Samsonite Corp. for eight years, leaving in 1979 to represent the company at the White House Executive Exchange Program. His interest in politics made him a natural for the one-year post, and upon its completion, his political appetite whetted, he wanted a career change.

"I wanted to get involved in the war of ideas," he said. "And I decided to give talk radio a shot."

So, with no formal training in communications, he knocked on doors at several Denver radio stations before finally getting a manager at KWBZ to hire him. "I felt very strongly that someone like me, with my background ... needed to make a crossover from business into the media. ... Not as an income opportunity, but as a calling, to inject this non-liberal view in the media."

Twenty years later the battle rages on.

"I always move to the top of the list people who don't agree (with me), since I think that makes more interesting radio, and because I like to argue," he says.

He estimates that each caller represents about 300 listeners to whom the show must appeal, both intellectually and emotionally. The discussion, therefore, must be topical, without delving too deeply into the subject's minutiae, yet personal, without becoming a mere forum for anecdote. Rosen is quick to recognize these conflicting impulses, and he's tenacious in recognizing callers' fusion of the two.

For example, in a recent call about Nike's manufacturing and labor practices, "Dave" contends that Nike enjoys a 90 percent profit on the sale of its shoes.

"Well, you're a fool," Rosen counters. He demands: "And you base that on what? ... Dave, I'm not asking you what feelings you're basing it on, I'm asking you what facts you're basing it on. Have you done any research on this?"

"I have," Dave says unconvincingly

"Have you taken a look at Nike's financials?"

"Yeah," Dave says, confidence waning.

"You're lying. You're lying, Dave. I know you're lying."

"No I'm not," Dave says.

"Yes you are," says Rosen.

It's entertaining.

While Rosen enjoys a good argument, one-on-one debates are not his primary focus. They are but tools in affecting the political beliefs of his audience.

"I know in an argument with a caller I'm not going to turn that caller around," Rosen says. "The purpose of that call -- from the standpoint of my agenda -- is to use that caller as a backboard off of which other people out there listening, who are still formulating an opinion, might themselves be persuaded. That's the audience I'm trying to have an influence with."

The exchange with Dave ends with Rosen speechifying that Nike does not engage in unfair labor practices: "The people who work for Nike in those countries make more money on average than other people that work in those countries," he said. But influence is not the only reason he takes on callers.

Airing a wide spectrum of opinions broadens his show's appeal, he said, "I do my share of pontification," he says, "but I like to punctuate it with arguments, so that even people who disagree with me ... can hear a champion for their views."

Generally, though, the show's callers agree with, or think they agree with, their host, Which doesn't make Rosen any less pugnacious. "I don't like right wing radicals," he says. "I'm not going to give them a platform to spew their bile for five minutes unchallenged. ... (I give) them enough rope to hang themselves with, and they normally embarrass themselves. And I help them embarrass themselves."

The show is something like an aural cousin of the "Tough Man" contest. Rosen is the reigning local champ, and any scrappy john from the audience who thinks he's up to the challenge can step in the ring. But the fight is fixed: Rosen has two producers in his corner who provide him with information to strengthen his argument; and his blows are enhanced, received louder and clearer than the voices of his callers. He also controls the phone lines and can interrupt whenever he chooses.

Still, to his fans Rosen is the Socratic gadfly who pricks and spurs the arrogant beast of "liberal orthodoxy." The issues are pertinent, and the voice, if biased, is informed.

But to those who have felt Rosen's sting, he definitely is something else.

When J. Sebastian Sinisi, a reporter for The Denver Post, covered an event that featured Charles Murray, co-author of the controversial 1994 book, "The Bell Curve," Rosen blasted Sinisi's article as liberally biased. In Sinisi's words, Rosen "lambasted me on the air." In a typical maneuver, the radio host invited Sinisi to be on the show Sinisi planned to go on, but an editor advised against it. "You cannot win," Sinisi recalls being warned. "It's a no-win situation. When you start to score points in the debate he'll cut to a commercial, or cut you off."

Ultimately Sinisi, also a Brooklyn native, decided not to go on the air but when he saw Rosen later, he said he told him, "... I thought it (Rosen's criticism) was bullshit. I liked him personally But I told him that if he had done something like that back in the schoolyard, I would have kicked his ass."

Sinisi is not alone in his personal reaction to Rosen, who receives an average of two threats per month. But the talk-show host shrugs off any danger.

"I'm not going to be intimidated," he said. "I'm not going to be idiotic about it. ... We live in a town where a talk-show host, Allen Berg, was

assassinated. ... It's something that happens in my business. I'm controversial."

And if that means if he offends a few people, that's all right. After all, what's a rumble without a few bruises?