DM’s lone liberal radio host is ‘a stranger in a strange land’

It’s 2 p.m. on a Thursday, and Chris Bradshaw has spent the last hour debating torture with caller after caller.

Chris Bradshaw's show airs from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 98.3 WOW-FM

“I’m so outrageous,” he said. “I actually believe torture is a bad thing. Ooooh.”

Just another day for Des Moines talk radio’s token liberal.

Weekdays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on 98.3 WOW-FM, Bradshaw shares his take on the world with his listeners, and most couldn’t disagree more. His lead-in is Glenn Beck. Sean Hannity is up after he signs off, with Michael Savage after that.

“Des Moines is not exactly a dynamic radio market,” said Bradshaw, 32. “When it comes to liberals on talk radio, I’m pretty much it. I’m a stranger in a strange land.”

It’s not always politics. Sometimes it’s religion. Sometimes it’s pop culture. Once, it was whether intelligent women enjoy sex more than “bimbos.”

Whatever interests him that day is fodder for the show, and it attracts an audience ready to debate.

“The people like a good gladiator bout from time to time,” he said. “But my goal, the Holy Grail that I shoot for every day, is ‘I never agree with you, but…’ If I can get that, my day is made. And I get that more and more often.”

He hates it when people say they’re “independents,” calling it the “wussy way out.” He’s a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union and isn’t afraid of telling people he’s an atheist.

“Who else is going to go on the air with the juevos to say ‘Yeah, I’m an atheist. What about it?’ ” he said. “When you look at the polls of who would you like to see your daughter marry, I think atheists come in behind gay Muslim terrorists. But I assure you, I eat far fewer babies than Dick Cheney does on any given day.”

He insists he’s not putting on a show. For three hours, he’s simply being himself, for better or worse.

“Everyone has different reasons for being in this business,” he said. “You have some guys who really, really like being rich. Some are true believers. Some are just bat-crap insane and believe people are trying to poison their drinking water. I’m just myself.”

‘I don’t know how to do anything else.’

Bradshaw grew up in West Des Moines and became smitten with radio while attending Valley High School.

“I was 15 years old and my buddy at Valley said: ‘Hey, you’d be great on the campus radio station.’ So what did I say? ‘No.’ But he finally got me in there and I was hooked. I was spinning Soundgarden records on KWDM.”

He graduated from the University of Missouri, worked for the local radio station, and eventually ended up doing a morning show in South Bend, Ind.

“I was working at this classic rock station,” he said. “Eddie Money, Foghat, a friend and me.”

It was the 2000 presidential election that first got him interested in politics, but it wasn’t until the U.S. invaded Iraq that he finally let his inner pundit run free.

“The news reports just didn’t pass the sniff test,” he said. “It was all about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam being part of Sept. 11. So I go on the air and ask if this is such a good idea. You weren’t supposed to do that, though. At that point, we were all still supposed to be having parades and be hyper-patriotic.”

He eventually “got asked to leave Indiana,” and he ended up back in Des Moines and at WOW-FM, co-hosting “Mac’s World” with conservative J. Michael McCoy in 2005. The two hosted the afternoon show together until 2008, when McCoy was let go from the station.

“We had a long slog together to make the show into what it was,” he said. “When I started doing the show alone, well, let’s just say it wasn’t an easy transition. I was walking into an immediately hostile crowd.”

While the two haven’t spoken since the split, Bradshaw said he sent a note telling McCoy to “kick ass and have good, but not too good, luck” when he launched his new online talk show earlier this year.

The underdog

For Bradshaw, it’s all about the conversation. Agree with him or not, as long as you’re willing to debate, he’s willing to give you airtime.

“It’s not a soapbox for me to preach down to the unwashed masses,” he said. “As long as callers come in with good intentions. Disagree and intelligently state it and you’ll get to the front of the line.”

He’s always looking for common ground, and a way to get people out of the “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality, he said. Everyone agrees on the outcome in politics, “we just have different ways of getting there.”

But he’s the first to say his show is the underdog in a market dominated by conservative talkers like the ones on Iowa’s largest radio station, WHO-AM. And it doesn’t help that his competition during the 1 to 4 p.m. shift is conservative icon Rush Limbaugh.

But he’s not afraid of a little competition.

“Hey, I’m up against the most successful radio personality in history,” he said. “What do I have to lose?”

In addition to hosting his show, Bradshaw also serves as program director for WOW-FM and its sport’s talk sister station, 1700 The Champ. The last Arbitron ratings show his station in 10th place overall, but second behind WHO for talk-only stations.

“I’m programming two stations, doing technical support, working through the weekend. It’s a 24/7 job,” he said. “I can usually get Christmas off.”

So will he be booking some fellow liberals any time soon?

“I don’t know if any of us will live long enough, even with stem cell treatment, to see liberals all across the dial,” he said. “I certainly think there’s a market for it, but radio is slow to change. The model has been working for so long, stations are hesitant to change. Nobody is going to lose their job putting a conservative on the air.”

So for the time being at least, Bradshaw carries the liberal flag on Des Moines’ airwaves all alone, and gets back to debating the virtues of torture with his callers.

“Hey, I had a conversation about torture that didn’t make me want to waterboard myself,” he said. “It was a good day.”