Listener asks Bob to add another massacre to BEL's List of Homosexual Mass Murderers. Check. Another listener asks Bob to add another denomination to BEL's List of Churches Going Gay. Check. Another listener asks Bob to contact for an interview the victim of a horrific "we kiddnapped your daughter" scam. Check. Another listener asks Bob to report the Chicagoland forecast for tomorrow of minus 62 degrees below zero as evidence against global warming. Check. (All these checks, and very little money going into the BEL bank account. Hmm. No problem. Why don't we do a BEL Telethon in February? Check! :)
Question for Sam, "If there's global warming...": In the late 1990s Bob once asked his viewers to not call into his own program but instead to call the local host of a Tulsa TV program and ask, "Sam, if there's global warming, why's it been so cold?" BEL aired in that metro area on the full-power KWHB TV 47 and was carried on channel 9 on Cox Cable. We think that Sam ________ (last name?) aired on the adjacent channel 8, ABC's KTUL. A rivalry developed between the two hosts. On that particular program, instead of displaying the chyron "Call Bob at 1-800-8Enyart" (a number that's been in use for nearly 30 years and still reaches Bob's studio), Bob's director Jim ________, for the entire hour of the program put on the screen "Call Sam at 918-xxx-xxxx" (using Sam's actual phone number). Since the Tulsa program only had a local audience and we aired nationwide in 80 cities from Honolulu to Orlando, of course Bob's audience overwhelmed Sam's phone lines. After the first two callers asked him the same question, and the third told him that his call-in number was being displayed nationally, Sam stopped taking calls for the remainder of that program. Poor Sam.