Talk isn't cheap in the morning; radio's drive-time DJs wage battle for your ears.

Talk isn't cheap in the morning

It's 5:45 in the morning at the KOST-FM broadcasting room and disc jockey Mark Wallengren is clipping stories from morning newspapers.

"There's a guy running for office in Texas and his real name is Bart Simpson..."

Then there's the story of a prisoner taking hostages in San Diego two days before he was scheduled for release.

"How stupid]," interjects Wallengren's perky co-host, Kim Amidon.

Beyond simple morning banter, the two are gearing up to talk to 125,000 listeners for the next four hours.

As with most FM stations, KOST is music-intensive> Wallengren, And Amidon must play nine songs each hour. In addition, they must make room for new and traffic reports every 20 minutes. Subtract the music, traffic report and news and you're left with Wallengren and Amidon, the glue that holds it al together and the best friend of many morning commuters.

Like most of the top disc jockeys, they are quick and witty. But they realize that a lot is at stake. "This is a serious money-making machine," said Wallengren. "We make more than some local television stations and we don't have the overhead they do."

KOST-FM and other stations are locked in a constant war for the ears of listeners throughout the county. The morning drive slot is where the stations send in the most elite forces.

"A strong morning team anchors the audience for the rest of the day," said Carl Goldman, a radio programming consultant currently with KBET-AM of Santa Clarita. "And in Los Angeles the morning talent is stronger than the next five markets put together. New York can't hold a candle to L.A."

Dominating the morning drive in the last Arbitron Rating Service book survey (for May, June and July) was the album rock format of KLOS-FM, followed by top 40 format KIIS-FM, contemporary hits KPWR-FM, soft rock KOST-FM and contemporary music, Spanish-language KLVE-FM.

The radio market in L.A. is the most diverse in the country and the mere mention of KOST-FM, a baby boomer stronghold, draws a laugh from another of Los Angeles' top disc jockeys. "KOST] Only people in caskets listen to KOST]" said Jay Thomas, morning host of contemporary hits station KPWR-FM.

Thomas, serving a largely female, 18- to 34-year-old audience, is the embodiment of the station's moniker "Power 106, " leading his audience in a nonstop routine of gags, giveaways, and partying with a "high-tech version of disco."

Thomas, also an Emmy-nominated actor for his role as Candice Bergen's beau in CBS's "Murphy Brown" and an aspiring screenwriter, said that beyond pure erengy, a lot of hard work keeps top DJs on top. "I read constantly," he said. "Seventeen, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, Us, People, Entertainment, Egg, Radio and Records, Billboard, Consumer Reports, Astrology Today. I have to figure out what's going on with teens."

In addition, radio personalities must attend a variety of promotional events and fund-raisers, which can result in work-weeks in excess of 40 hours.

Thomas, entering his fourth year at the station, is about to test the popular theory that a DJ with younger listeners can only last about five years with the teenyboppers before going the way of yesterday's hair styles.

Another of the hippest stations for young listeners is KLOS-FM, and the names are synomymous with the station morning drive-time tandem Mark and Brian (Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps). The pair, mixing the extreme and the obscene, are a law unto themselves. Brian mocks a sinister voice and beseeches listeners to phone in "the strange, the bizarre, the unbelievable." A caller reports tha a ghost of a 12-year-old boy has been sighted on VCR recordings of "Three Men and a Baby."

Viewers of the video call in, confirming, denying and elaborating on the ghost sighting. Mark and Brian promise to get an interview from one of the movie's stars, Ted Danson, about whether the sighting was real or the caller should get her eyes checked.

The fact that Mark and Brian skew their show heavily toward talk rather than music sets in apart from other FM stations. "Mark and Brian play very little music," said radio consultant Goldman. "Part of their schtick is that they break the rules. They give the perception that anything can happen while they are on the air."

They also do not grant interviews to reporters interested in talking to other DJs.

For their efforts, top DJs are richly rewarded. Stars like KIIS-FM's Rick Dees can pull down $1 million a year, Goldman said.

Many disc jockeys gave Dees credit for raising the salaries and profiles of DJs after the personalities sank into relative obscurity in the 1970s.

Disc jockeys usually get their starts at smaller stations outside major markets like Los Angeles and later on evernight shifts at the major stations.

Thomas worked at 11 stations before roosting at KPWR-FM.

Those can be long years, recalled Wallengren.

He began his broadcast carer in a quonset hut in the middle of a swamp (swamps make for better grounding) in a desolate area of Idaho delivering news and farm reports. One afternoon, alone in his booth, the telephone rang for a seeming eternity. "I remember thinking 'This idot can't figure out I'm on the air,'" Wallengren said.

Angered by the incessant ringing, he slammed down the volume switch on his control panel and began "swearing every bad word I could think up."

Unknown to him, the microphone control knob had bounced bakk up> his obscenities went over the airwaves.

Crying over what he though was the end of his broadcast career, he waited for the calls of incensed listeners.

There were none. "No one was listening."

One change in broadcasting is the rise in the number of womean behind the mike. When Amidon began her broadcasting career in Los Angeles 10 years ago, "the station might have one job for a woman."

"It's changed 180 degrees since then," she said, noting that KOST-FM has four female DJs on the air.

Promotion by radio stations is crucial to building a following. "It's definitely a promotional war," said Thomas, who attributes a "ratings glitch" three months ago to the station's failure to adequately promote him in print, television and billboards. "You fall out of sight and mind."

"We try to get Jay (Thomas) out on the streets and exposed to as many potential listeners as possible," said Philip Newmark, vice president and general manager of KPWR-FM.

Effectively spokesperson for the station, Thomas has hosted on-air weddings, served as grand marshall of the gay parade, -- "gay for a day," interjects Thomas -- and promoted Disneyland and Universal Studios live from the amusement parks.

All the DJs questioned said that aside from the early hours the enjoyed their jobs. For many there is the additional pleasure of being surrounded by the music they love.

"I was very much a part of the Woodstock generation," said David Perry, KLSX-FM classic rock DJ. "I got involved with radio because of the music."

Perry said that his station's listeners are highly attuned to classic rock music and the bands that produce that music. "We get letters if we leave out mention of a member of a band on the air," he said in a baritone.

Sometimes that insterest extends to bank members theselves, Perry said. Perry recalled when he wondered out loud on the air "what Stevie Nicks was doing." Nicks called, told him she was working on a song, and asked him to play Bob Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" for a chord progression she wanted to hear.