Are talk radio hosts graded by their stations on how many calls they take

[Peregrine Took]

in a specific time period?

Just wondering, as I listen to so much talk radio and most of them seem to forever be giving out the phone number, then rushing through one caller after another - hurrying them along - gives me a nervous stomach.

I speculate that the hosts are rated as to how many "fish" they can reel in during a specific time.
Maybe not the established ones like Fatso Limbaugh but the newer ones.

I prefer hearing the host talk and their having interviews with authors, bloggers, journalists, etc. rather than their taking calls which usually just say the same old thing over and over. You rarely learn anything from a caller. In fact I've heard that less than 1% of listeners ever actually make a call.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. The more calls you take, the less content you need and the more superficial you can be.

It's the route of the ignorant.

Who wants discussion with nuance or subtlety or in-depth analysis? People just want to hear 20 jackasses call in with "You're damned right!" and have their opinion, however ignorant or uncritically held, constantly validated.

Makes it easier for the host (you only need to find a moron who can use a microphone, as opposed to someone with a brain), and makes it easier for the listeners. AND you get to say to the advertisers, "We have hundreds of phone calls a week!!!!!!!!"

:puke:

And so, I would not say that the hosts are graded on the number of callers. I would say that they are very much instructed by the station to have a lot of callers.