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Having audience members who don’t agree with you comes with the territory of being a news/talk radio host. But for WWL Radio host Scoot Paisant, things have gone beyond that.
An unabashed “radical moderate”, the New Orleans early afternoon host hasn’t been shy about his criticism of President-elect Donald Trump. And that led to pushback. Strong pushback. Beyond the reasonable limit of pushback.
Threats have been made against the host’s life. Credible threats. While avoiding some of the nastier details, let’s just say it that the New Orleans Police Department has been involved.
And yet, every afternoon from 2-5 PM, you’ll hear strong opinions from the WWL Radio host. That won’t be changing anytime soon.
“Probably 95% of the country in talk radio is conservative. All I’m doing is providing a medium for everybody else,” Paisant said. “I don’t do a right-wing show because the other audience is not being served. And there’s a lot of them out there … I’ve never told a lie on the air.
“When I have challenged listeners on my Facebook page — Scoot on the Air — or on WWL to tell me one lie I’ve told on the air, nobody has an example. I’ve never done anything but tell the truth. I never told anybody not to vote for Donald Trump. Right-wing radio show hosts tell people ‘Don’t vote for (Kamala) Harris. I never told anybody who to vote for. I just presented things I thought were important to present.”
It would be easy to take the threats and angry calls from listeners as a sign that you should stop speaking your mind. But Scoot Paisant admitted that, in some aspects, finding the courage to keep sharing his beliefs hasn’t been difficult.
“I believe what I say. So in that sense, it’s not hard,” Paisant admitted. He added that there is a portion of the audience that enjoys bashing him repeatedly, which wears on him. “I mean, I’m human … It’s hard. I’m glad the election is over … It’s depressing. It’s discouraging. I mean, I try to bring humor into it whenever I can. I do have an irreverent side and sarcastic side, but that’s my challenge. I’m discouraged by the idea that people are not really interested in the truth and they just want their own biases confirmed.
“And I’ll tell you, there’s a hell of a lot of conservative talk show hosts that do not have original thoughts, and all they do is echo what filters down, ultimately, from Fox News,” continued Paisant. “It used to be from Rush Limbaugh, maybe Hugh Hewitt, maybe a few other prominent conservative hosts have somewhat to do with that. But I’ll have callers, and they will consistently use the same verbiage to describe a situation. I know that it’s something that’s come down from conservative social media, or Fox News, and they all use the same thing. We have fewer people who are thinking for themselves, and that part to me is sad.”
Scoot Paisant was quick to give credit Senior Producer Ian Hoch and WWL Radio Operations Director Diane Newman for their support of him and his show in the face of a sometimes hostile audience. When asked what keeps him motivated to continue hosting his show on the Audacy New Orleans station, he said there’s a purpose behind what he’s doing.
“I didn’t want to get into this business to be hated,” he shared. “Knowing that there’s a group of people that really hate me, that’s just not what personality, but it’s turned into a reality. I don’t like that because I never, never set out to be hated. People can disagree with me, but it’s the degree of hate that is really discouraging.”
He added that he’s often told by people in the Crescent City that he needs to continue doing what he’s doing and how important it is to not simply kowtow to one party or ideology.
When asked what the future of the news media industry will look like during a second Trump administration, Scoot Paisant admitted he wasn’t exactly certain.
“The medium reflects the audience, and the audience ultimately tells the media what it likes. And so for Fox News and the conservative media, they’re feeding a specific audience,” he said. “CNN obviously doesn’t know how to feed their audience or they would have been doing something different,” he added with a slight chuckle. “I’m not really sure where it goes from here. Talk radio is a form of entertainment. I never relish the idea that I wake up in the morning and I can bash comp, because I, you know, I don’t, that’s not what I do. But when Trump puts himself in the in the news in certain ways, I have to talk about it, and some of it is really damn entertaining.”
Scoot Paisant concluded by noting that many people will label him as miserable after the election. But he says that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“(Critics) think I’m so distraught over the election … Somebody the other day said, ‘We know you’re distraught.’ Let me tell you how distraught I am. After the election, I’m in ninth row off the floor at the (New Orleans) Pelicans game. I just got a new car. My life is great. I love my frickin life. I don’t know why you people think that I’m not happy, because I really am.”
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
