After Rush Limbaugh passed away two years ago, many radio stations faced the challenge of filling his time slot. Some opted for his official successors, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. In contrast, others chose Dan Bongino or local talent. WBT in Charlotte hired a familiar and trusted voice in North Carolina in Pete Kaliner.
Pete Kaliner spent a decade as a radio reporter at WBT, but he was never able to express his opinions due to conflicts with his role as a news reporter. However, he always enjoyed long-form talk, and when WBT allowed him to host a news show on the weekends, he looked forward to returning to that role one day.
Kaliner hosted an afternoon drive show at News Radio 570 WWNC in Asheville, North Carolina until he was laid off due to cuts. He turned his setback into something positive by launching his own podcast, which allowed him to get valuable repetition every day. He planned to edit four segments from his show and offer them as local content to stations around the state.
In February 2020, Rush Limbaugh announced his advanced-stage lung cancer diagnosis to millions of listeners. Media executives worked on a plan to carry their brands after his passing. Pete Kaliner was doing a weekend show on WBT and doing some fill-in work during this time. When WBT and Radio One posted a job opening for an afternoon host following Limbaugh’s passing, Pete Kaliner applied and eventually was hired.
Pete Kaliner discussed with Barrett News Media how his news background influenced his decision to move into the role of a talk show host. He also talked about his greatest strength as a host, the pressure that comes with taking over a timeslot once occupied by the greatest radio host of all time, and his views on free speech in America.
Ryan Hedrick: This is your second time at WBT Charlotte. Can you explain what brought you back?
Pete Kaliner: Rush Limbaugh died, and the noon-3 pm slot, which was a national slot, they ran Rush Limbaugh for 30 years [in this slot]. The program director, Mike Schaefer, and his boss, Marsha Landess (Regional Vice President – Radio One), Mike had this idea like, ‘We want to go local; we want the whole lineup to be local,’ and Radio One agreed. And so, they opened the search to look for a local host, and I had worked at WBT prior.
(Pete Kaliner started as a reporter at WBT in 1999 and later became a talk show host. He was let go with an ownership change in 2011 and worked in TV news for six months. He then hosted an afternoon drive show at News Radio 570 WWNC in Asheville, North Carolina, until he was laid off in 2020. Following that, he started hosting a daily podcast).
So, I applied for the job [created by Limbaugh’s passing], but I had gotten back in with WBT. I started hosting a Saturday news show, which was basically just my podcast. I would cut up pieces of my podcast, which was also airing in Asheville at the time.
The original plan for the podcast was to take it and offer it to small stations around the state every day. They could use a one-hour program however they wanted, just in four segments. I would create these four segments, host at WBT on the weekends, and do some fill-in work for them. They eventually hired me to fill the newly created local slot from noon to 3 p.m.
RH: Did you always want to transition from being a news reporter to a talk show host?
PK: I always wanted to do longer format talk. I was always intrigued by the idea of doing a news talk program. Growing up, I listened to Rush Limbaugh and was intrigued by that. Growing up, I listened to NPR in New York. I was always interested in current events, I worked on the high school paper and the college newspaper and helped start the radio station in college.
Nobody cared what a 22-year-old guy with no life experience had to say. I just pursued the radio journalism route, and I did that for a decade. I got to the point where I started doing some fill-in work over the years, but I always knew that I couldn’t express opinions because I wanted to maintain fairness, impartiality, and objectivity as a reporter. So, I was never really letting loose and having opinions.
What I always liked about hosting was having the ability to talk for a longer stretch of time about a particular topic versus the news side, where you’re crunching everything down to 35-45 seconds for a news story. That is a craft in and of itself, but I felt like I had gotten very good at doing that. My beat was city council, county commission, school board meetings, state government, apartment fires, and car crashes. When you’ve covered 8-10 city budget cycles, county budget cycles, school budget cycles, state budget cycles, it’s kind of like ok, ‘I feel like I have done this.’
I wanted to go more in-depth with this stuff, and I wanted to make that a regular thing. They (WBT) did give me a one-hour weekend show when I was a reporter so that I could do some of that stuff, and it filled our public affairs requirements, too.
RH: Did you feel any pressure taking over Rush Limbaugh’s slot, and what was your strategy?
PK: It wasn’t something that I thought about when applying. It was something that I realized the magnitude after I had already agreed to return to WBT. After that, it hit me that this was a huge responsibility. It was very intimidating.
There is no way I am anywhere near qualified to do that shift; that’s always been his (Limbaugh). I am only in this business because of Rush. Without him, AM radio probably doesn’t exist as it does, and the news/talk format doesn’t exist as it does. Every day, I am reminded of it. Every day I go to the studio, I am reminded of what an immense responsibility this job is.
It was helpful the way Limbaugh’s legacy lasted after he passed, where they did the best-of shows for a while. They would have guest hosts come in for a while. In fact, one of the guest hosts was our 3-6 guy, Brett Winterble, who used to work for Rush Limbaugh. WBT stayed with The Rush Limbaugh Show all the way through until it was announced that they were replacing him with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
I have said this for years. You are never going to replace local radio with a satellite. You can’t do it. There’s always going to be a need for local radio. If you are doing local content on radio, you have a secure niche.
I look at the explosion of interest in podcasting and what podcasting is. I remember when I started the podcast, I was reading all these industry trade websites, and they were giving advice on how to do podcasts, and I said to myself, ‘This is radio’. This is a remarkable time to be in the spoken word format, to be in this medium. I am a firm believer that content is king. If you do good work, people will find it, and you will be successful.
RH: There is currently a lot of news and events happening, making it an exciting time for the news/talk format. What topics are North Carolinians interested in discussing on your show?
Pete Kaliner: It is a target-rich environment. There is always something to talk about. I remember years ago when summer would come around, and you would be struggling for new ideas, you would be struggling for talk topics, and it’s not like that anymore.
I think that’s due to social media and digital media. We have access to so much information right now. Also, North Carolina is a growing state; it has been for the last 30 years.
I’m originally from New York, I came down here in 1992, and I never went back. So, I’ve seen the growth, Charlotte specifically, and it’s been remarkable. We’ve picked up Congressional seats, and we’ve picked up influence in the process as a state. The state also flipped from a Democrat-controlled state at all levels of state government for 150 years since the Civil War, and now it’s controlled by Republicans. The flip happened about ten years ago.
RH: Can you explain how WBT’s local and live coverage in every major daypart strengthens the brand?
Pete Kaliner: Last week, we talked about the GOP debate. I pulled the audio, and we talked about the event. We also talked about the Trump indictment and the mugshot. I was also able to talk about North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who came out and vetoed a whole bunch of election integrity reform bills that the legislature had passed.
If we were only a national product, then all you’re ever going to get are national stories. Years ago, people were worried about satellite stations taking out all the radio stations, but there isn’t anywhere else to go to get that local content, ask questions, and crowdsource information. There is a community that’s built around WBT. The station just celebrated its 100th anniversary. We got recognized in the Congressional Record. The North Carolina General Assembly made a proclamation. It’s an iconic brand.
It’s difficult to articulate what that means. There’s just something about three-letter call stations—the legacy, the hundred years, the people that have passed through these halls. The history of the platform, specifically the station, means something to people who catch that radio bug.
The management has a commitment to the brand as well, and they’ve proven that when a lot of people thought they would not. I think that’s the reason for our success. You give the content creators space to create content.
RH: A lot of us are experiencing suppression of free speech by Big Tech. How do you believe this affects your work, and what are your thoughts on Big Tech’s operations?
PK: This is very disturbing to me. I have not seen this [suppression of free speech] either. I’ve heard about the Fairness Doctrine, but I was in elementary school. It is concerning, and I don’t know how it gets addressed because you have different groups of people inside each of the dominant political cultures, and they don’t even agree. (The Fairness Doctrine, introduced by the FCC in 1949, required broadcast license holders to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that reflected differing viewpoints).
You have people who disagree on the right with each other people and who disagree on the left with each other, and I don’t know where you build that consensus. To me, it seems like we could just follow the Constitution and use that as a blueprint. Use case law as the blueprint. These issues have been settled in courts, so why not just take that and transpose those rules into your terms of service onto your platform?
I don’t know why people have such a hard time figuring out how to block other people. You can block people and make your user experience much better rather than filing reports against people to get them banned.
There are challenges on the tech side of it, but I don’t trust the people who work at these tech companies, and this gets into a larger discussion. (Pete talks about the role universities are playing in the suppression of free speech and how there’s a pipeline of young activists who believe that having a dialogue is unhealthy. He also says Marxism plays a role in the debate over free speech).
RH: What is your greatest strength as a talk show host?
Pete Kaliner: My work ethic and my desire to research. I do two hours of prep for every one hour on the air at a minimum.
