David Brudnoy, who was Boston’s best radio talk-show host even before the otherwise estimable Christopher Lydon left the airwaves, will celebrate 25 years of more or less continual broadcasting this Thursday, March 29. The guests will include Governor Paul Cellucci and UMass president William Bulger. But that’s not particularly unusual for Brudnoy, whose show is broadcast weekdays from 7 to 10 p.m. on WBZ Radio (AM 1030).

“We’re not trying to do things where there’s going to be a lot of hoopla,” says Brudnoy, adding he wants to avoid having “a yucky, gooey sort of thing.”

For talk-radio junkies, this is a certified big deal. Brudnoy is among the last of what might be called talk radio’s Heroic Age, when figures such as Jerry Williams, Gene Burns, David Finnegan, and Peter Meade held forth with passion and intelligence on politics and public affairs. The new generation of talk-show hosts depends more on outrageous outbursts and scatological humor in a desperate attempt to appeal to younger listeners. If Brudnoy ever retires, look out below.

A cerebral libertarian, Brudnoy got his start at the old WHDH Radio in 1976. He is something of a workaholic, teaching media criticism at Boston University and writing movie reviews for the Boston Herald’s Community Newspaper subsidiary in addition to sitting in front of the microphone five days a week — a gig that is pre-empted only when there is what Brudnoy invariably calls “another exciting hockey game.”

His pace has slowed down only slightly since 1994, when he was hospitalized — and nearly died — as the result of AIDS-related complications. Since then he has been active in fighting the disease, principally through the David Brudnoy Fund for AIDS Research, at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“I sometimes feel like the café des Deux Magots in Paris, where, allegedly, if you sit still long enough everybody in the world worth knowing passes by,” Brudnoy said in an email exchange. “In 25 years an amazingly large number of fascinating people have stopped by my studio to talk. Easy job: no heavy lifting, no walking, just sitting and talking. Can you beat that?”

Issue Date: March 29 - April 5, 2001