Alert the media: Geraldo unearths new career in radio

Geraldo Rivera

New York gave the world Geraldo Rivera. But Chicago saved his career.

The announcement Monday that Rivera, 68, would be joining WABC-AM in New York as a daily talk show host raised the possibility of syndication on other Cumulus Media stations, including news/talk WLS-AM (890) here.

Although initial plans are for his 10am-to-noon show to air only in New York, Cumulus Media chief operating officer John Dickey told the New York Times: “There certainly is potential to do more.”

WLS management remains committed to its current daytime lineup. But if Rivera’s radio show eventually surfaces in Chicago, it would bring him back to the city that defined his strange and checkered career.

Twenty-five years ago Rivera was a down-and-out has-been whose high-flying career since his days as a hot-shot reporter at WABC-TV in New York had crashed and burned at ABC News. He was fired after accusing network news chief Roone Arledge of covering up a story about the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and John and Robert Kennedy because of Arledge’s friendship with the Kennedy family.

Casting about for work, Rivera was hired by Chicago-based Tribune Entertainment to host a live, two-hour special which promised to unearth treasures hidden in a concrete space under the Lexington Hotel on the South Side. Since the hotel had once been the headquarters of infamous mobster Al Capone, the special was billed as The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults.

The payoff of the overhyped and overheated special on April 21, 1986, turned out to be nothing but a few empty bottles. “It seems . . . that we struck out with the vault,” said a dejected and embarrassed Rivera. “I’m disappointed about that, as I’m sure you are.” Overnight he became a worldwide laughingstock, and his name a punchline.

The bosses of Tribune Entertainment didn’t see it that way, however. With an audience estimated at 30 million, it was the most-watched syndicated special of all time. Encouraged by the spectacular ratings, they commissioned Rivera to host a few more specials and eventually gave him a daily syndicated talk show of his own.

At the height of what came to be called “trash TV,” Rivera personified the odious trend. When a brawl broke out on a 1988 show involving white supremacists, skinheads, blacks activists and Jewish activists, Rivera’s nose was broken. It landed him on the cover of Newsweek with his nose in a bandage.

The syndicated Geraldo ran for 11 years, after which he took on a series of cable network news jobs. Since 2001, he’s been at Fox News Channel, where he continues as a weekend anchor and correspondent. His Geraldo at Large still airs Sunday nights.

Rivera said he has high hopes for his new radio gig, which starts January 3. “I think I have one more hit in me,” he told the New York Times.

As for Rivera’s prospects in syndication, Radio-Info.com’s Tom Taylor said: “He’s certainly got name recognition, and it’s up to him to fit his TV persona into a radio microphone, where the audience can’t see you, and it’s up to you to make your words and your personality mesh. . . . If the numbers work in New York, expect syndication to follow.”