Does Dr. Laura Need a Change?

Dr. Laura Schlessinger has had an amazing and unequaled career in media. Her long-running terrestrial radio program was nationally syndicated and was a top three program. She quit terrestrial radio and set up on satellite radio at SiriusXM. She has been there for many years now. She has many bestselling books, had a magazine, has done one-woman shows, a written column, and has popular videos, podcasts (excerpts from her program), and posts on social media.

She could retire today with her head held high. There will likely never be another woman in terrestrial radio as successful as she was.

However, she has repeatedly said on her program she doesn't want to retire. It isn't hard to see why. She works from home on a Monday-Friday three hour, mid-day program. She doesn't have to deal with multiple program directors across the country. She doesn't have to make appearances or do interviews. She has complete control over her program. It's entirely audio, so she doesn't have to dress any specific way or get made up, or worry about her appearance or what she's silently doing.

Yet there are four things that indicate to me that if she's not going to retire, she needs a change.

1. She is into her mid-70s

2. Crosstalk severely frustrates her.

3. Society has changed.

4. Talk programs specifically are changing.

This is going to be a long post. I didn't want to divide it into a series.

The State of the Program

Currently, the format of the program generally is: She starts the program for the day with a monologue, which may or may not quote from an article or commentary, that almost never is meant to set the topics for the rest of the program, as she usually doesn't do "topics," and the rare occasions she does are usually started later in the program in response to a call she dealt with or a letter she read. Instead, she takes live calls about life situations, moral dilemmas, interpersonal dynamics, and self-improvement. For example, "Do I have a moral obligation to do this?" or "We're a married couple and we're having this problem. What do you suggest?" or "I'm having this problem with my child/spouse/coworker/neighbor/family member, what should I do?" or "I'm having trouble with this personal flaw, what can I do to be better?" These calls do not reference other callers other than saying the prior call inspired them to call in; they are self-contained. Some of the live calls were arranged by staff per a prior call or email. Some of the calls are new, but recorded rather than live, because the callers made an appointment outside of the broadcast hours. Other recorded calls are repeats, because of technical problems or not enough calls are coming in. Those last two are not announced as such, but close listeners can usually identify them. Later, often the start of the third hour, she'll read the "Email of the Day." Dr. Laura may read additional emails throughout the program to fill time.

The bread and butter of her current format is live phone calls.

Here is where 1, 2, and 4 are problems. Dr. Laura uses hearing aids. And whether that's an issue with that or not, recently mistakes in failing to mute her microphone have revealed she sometimes talks to others when she should be listening intently to what the caller is telling her. This could explain why close listeners keep noticing she misses or gets wrong some important detail. Sometimes over the course of the call that gets corrected (and that can cause irritation to her) or it doesn't, which means her advice or opinion is based on a misunderstanding. Either she wasn't listening, wasn't hearing, or her brain crossed wires somewhere.

Crosstalk is normal in conversation, especially phone calls. Dr. Laura has been unable to accept that because it interrupts her train of thought and she sees it as impeding her primary goal of teaching her listeners something and the secondary goal of the caller hearing everything she tells the caller. Every other talk host will either ask the other person to repeat themselves or they will repeat what they said, if they think their statement wasn't heard. But it can set Dr. Laura off on an angry tangent. Dr. Laura has always been blunt and direct, but her frustration with cross talk and other, increasing manifestations of harshness or what can be perceived as rudeness is turning off some longtime listeners.

Finally, people, especially younger generations, don't make phone calls, especially spontaneous ones, nearly as much as people used to, because they are accustomed to many other forms of communication now. This is an issue for talk programs in general. Longtime listeners know that programs are taking fewer, if any live calls now, and that's because they are getting so few of them.

Regarding number 3, Dr. Laura has a life plan she teaches. Not all at once, but if you stitch together everything she teaches (and teaching the audience is the main reason she does the program), much of it goes against the current culture. Major elements that do include keeping children with a parent as opposed to any from of daycare, homeschooling or private schooling children, avoiding elective abortion, not having jobs or activities that take away form being present with family regularly such as family dinners, living as independent nuclear families (no in-laws or others) with the grown children leaving as soon after turning 18 as possible, staying together to raise the children and if that didn't work avoiding bringing any new lovers around your minor children, minors not having networked devices, never shacking up but either marrying after two years and intense premarital therapy or ending the relationship, and strict monogamy in marriage. If people don't stick to that plan, she sometimes says she can't help them even though she can, at least if she has more time.

Her bias against technology is catching up with her both in how the program is done and her teaching and advice.

She frequently appeals to idealizations of the 1950s, and borrows from religion, while insisting the program is secular, in a way that is getting less and less effective as more of the country has moved away from what I'd call cultural Christianity of the American tradition. Her appeals to a morality more and more people do not share will increasingly will fall on deaf ears, and she can either work with the caller where they are, or continue to say "I can't help you." It's true that "some things can't be fixed," but there is still usually a way to reduce harm, or even improve the situation even if it will never be "fixed." And if the advice is for the caller to do something they, and most of the audience simply don't have the money to do, it might be better to coach them through alternatives. Dr. Laura has earned a lot of money and large net worth but hardly any of her callers are going to be in the same financial situation.

Some of her best calls are the ones in which she takes time, is patient, and has a pleasant tone.

This all plays into my modest proposal for a change in her program.

What Should Change

That change is that the live calls should go.

All the new "calls" should be recorded.

Whether phone calls, FaceTime, Zoom, or any other way of her having an audio conversation/consultation with someone that can be recorded and edited, her staff should arrange for this to be done, and ensure that the connection is of good quality. This way, Dr. Laura can concentrate completely on the dialogue with the caller and what ends up on her program will have no crosstalk, no eating noises, no barking, no distracting noises from the caller's side, none of the caller saying anything like "Is this Dr. Laura?" or having their live-on-delay radio turned up, or mentioning the call screener or other authors/therapist/speakers to which Dr. Laura doesn't want to give free plugs. All misunderstandings can be edited out. There won't be any short calls with Dr. Laura saying they need to get another person in the caller's life on the air with that never happening. Dr. Laura will be able to take her time with those situations in which she'd otherwise say "I can't help you" or "Some things can't be fixed."

This would also allow Dr. Laura more ability to pontificate on each call, if she wants.

It would also allow the podcast form of the program to already be complete, so that podcast "hours" don't get posted in which most of the hour somehow gets left out (as happens once a month or so as things are now).

As the program already does, calls from the past that have already aired at least once can be mixed in. Even better, it can be done in a way to make a point or have a theme. During the holidays, there are often hours that are aired like that already.

She might want to fill more of the time with more monologues and reading of emails, social media replies, etc. Some programs allow people to leave voice mails that will be screened, edited, and used in the program.

Why She Should Make This Change

This won't just maintain her ability to teach the audience something, it will enhance it.

With that new way of putting together the program, she will be able to help a wider diversity of callers.

Very few people have perfectly followed the life plan Dr. Laura prescribes (indeed, if people did, there would be rapid depopulation), and are going to be reluctant to call live only to be screamed at and told "I can't help you." Many people, perhaps increasing percentages of people, are going to:

• have social media accounts on which they interact with family, friends, etc.
  
• engage in sex, including intercourse, "early" into their relationships
• live together without marriage or before marriage
• have relationships in which all have agreed to some form of nonmonogamy
  
• be in marriages with someone when at least one of them needs to work in a job that requires odd hours, working weekends, traveling, relocating
• be in marriages/families in which there are stepchildren/stepsiblings/half siblings
• be in marriages that don't involve a state marriage license or mitigate it with a customized prenup
• have their grown children, parents, siblings, or other relatives living with them
• have their minor children use networked devices, such as smart phones
  
• use DNA tests that uncover secrets
  

It's her program. It is hunky dory for her to say she doesn't like any of those things. And she has the prerogative to berate people who do them and hang up without helping. But her program will be better off if she takes the time to meet them where they are. She can still say everything she wants about how the best or ideal thing would be to avoid or get out of this situation, and how the situation can't be fixed entirely. If she can and wants to, she can point out how going against her underlying recommendations has contributed to the problems at hand. Do that and help them (and by extension, many listeners).

Deviating from the Dr. Laura plan might have caused the problem, but not necessarily. For example, when parents are divorced she usually will cite that as the source of their problem with their minor child. But sometimes those problems exist even if the parents are married. With more time with the callers, and perhaps with their child, we can get a better understanding, and maybe the callers and their child will be helped, too.

Under the current format, she doesn't have the time, patience, or energy to deal with callers who say "I don't know." Yes, in many cases, the caller is just being lazy or embarrassed. In other cases, though, the reason the caller is calling, at least in part, is to figure out how to find out. Few of the callers have the same skills and experience in observing and analyzing human behavior and asking relevant, revealing question as Dr. Laura has. By taking time with these callers, she can teach them and the audience a little about how to discern the necessary information.

Rather than telling people not to be on social media, accept it is part of human interaction and deal with it as it is.

The majority of Americans who marry lived with their spouse before they married. Many of them never would have married if they hadn't lived together first. Rather than citing negative statistics that lump all unmarried cohabitation together, she should admit that not all unmarried cohabitation is the same and that agreements can exist in such relationships without a state marriage license. She can point out the importance of intentions, discussing, agreeing, and planning so that if someone is, or is going to, cohabitate, they are on track for a positive, rather than negative, outcome, and that they know what to look for that would indicate they shouldn't marry. She can do all of that and still explain why she is convinced that overall, it is better to NOT cohabitate before marrying. (If you read my blog, you know I do NOT endorse shacking up, and I never have shacked up, so this isn't about me being defensive.)

Making a change away from airing any calls live will make it easier to do all of these things, which, in turn, will keep the program more relevant to more people, thereby helping more people, and still allow Dr. Laura to hold and espouse her ideals and values while experiencing less frustration.

This change can be done in way that doesn't require any more time/work on the part of Dr. Laura. She can limit the amount of time she does new calls (which would be recorded to be aired for the first time later) to the same amount of time she spends on the program now. Old calls can fill in for any lack of content from new calls.

I have no idea if SiriusXM would support this change. If not, she could switch to going podcast-only.