Nov 23rd 1999--"Mano E Mano, Drink to Drink" Steve Bosell took his family to a restaurant and ended up going head to head in a drinking contest with his 18 year old son to teach him a lesson about alcohol. Steve is humiliated that his his son drank him under the table. Mar 21st 2000 Hour 2:---"Guns In the Household" 68-year old gun owner Lloyd Bonifide claims it keeps his mind sharp and adrenaline up when he leaves a loaded weapon somewhere in the house with his 5-year old grandson. *Featuring the classic clip "Lloyd fights his way off hold." Dec 9th 2005: Vernon Dozier is working at a mall as "That Son of A Bitch" Santa. He is upset because kids keeping farting in his lap. June 22nd 2006: Ted Bell of Ted's of Beverly Hills says that people who dine at his restaurant are first class, that's why he doesn't allow his customers to take a doggy bag home when they leave.

Starting the show tonight we had Ted Bell proposing a new "7 day work week." "We gotta know what we got in this country," said Ted. He believes the American people are soft. They think the weekend off is their inalienable right....like health-care. In the second hour Phil talked about the volcano in Iceland and the climate-change possibilities. He took a call from Herb Sewell briefly with Herb saying he'd never kidnap an autistic child. "I don't kidnap droolers." Phil threw him off. In the final hour, Vernon Dozier sounds increasingly anxious as he tells Phil the volcano in Iceland is a threat to life on the planet. His students told their parents to be prepared but they came back to class telling Vernon their parents didn't care. Vernon then took the class out to Azuza Canyon to see some caves used once by Chinese railroad workers. He told the kids that the volcano could force them into cave-dwelling where they'd become like Morlochs in the book "The Time Machine", eating the Eloi.

There was more, of course, but, to me, the radio portion of the convention had one moment of clarity, Phil Hendrie's "keynote" at the Radio Luncheon. It wasn't a speech, it was a performance, and as Phil jumped in and out of his character voices, showing the audience how he becomes Margaret Grey and Ted Bell and countless other personalities armed only with a mic and a telephone receiver, I was reminded how the success of all the technology and futurist stuff and spectrum allocations and broadband policy ultimately come down to the people who create the stuff that gets delivered through those methods. You can put it in 3-D, you can send it over WiMax or LTE, you can podcast it, you can turn it into a smartphone app, you can put it on "regular" radio, but real talent can make you listen and pay attention no matter how it's delivered. The rest is just noise. 

TALK RADIO NETWORK syndicated satirist PHIL HENDRIE gave the audience a virtuoso sampling of his many characters in his keynote address, which took the form of his radio show rather than a formal speech. HENDRIE, seated at a makeshift console with a telephone, voiced producer/lackey BUD DICKMAN, writer and "singer" MARGARET GREY and her husband FRANK ("with the gender confusion"), fiery Pastor WILLIAM RENICK, restauranteur TED BELL ("TED'S of BEVERLY HILLS"), and suburbanite BOBBIE DOOLEY and her husband STEVE, interacting with each other as they directed their disdain towards the host himself.