With about 250 affiliates (down from a peak of nearly 500) and an audience of over 7 million listeners, Laura Schlessinger's syndicated radio show is public spectacle -- the lives of faceless strangers impacted by her advice for three hours daily. Callers are often interrupted before they can finish explaining their elaborate personal problems, and frequently receive beratings for what she perceives as moral, parental, or religious failings. Her advice is consistent and listeners know it is coming from moral high ground.
Schlessinger married a dentist when she was 25, and had at least two extramarital affairs before they were divorced[SIZE=-1]
[1][/SIZE]. Her first radio appearance was in 1974, as a caller on
Bill Ballance's show in Los Angeles. She became a regular caller, and later a guest on Ballance's show, as he became her mentor in radio, and her first known extramarital affair.
After a few years with Ballance, Schlessinger began the program that still runs today as
The Dr. Laura Show, although she is neither a medical doctor nor a psychologist. Her PhD is in physiology -- a degree which has nothing to do with human interpersonal relations. Critics of her show point out the ethics of using a degree in one field to imply credibility in another. If most of her audience isn't swayed by that credential, Schlessinger also occasionally refers to herself as a "shrink." She was granted a California Marriage, Family and Child Therapist license in 1980, and later taught at the University of Southern California, USC, and Pepperdine.
