Into our studio and we talked you through there, and michael has been an incredible help from the beginning because were newspaper people. We need radio advice. Radio is very, very difficult medium to learn and you need experience in doing it. And its a difficult thing to navigate. Michaels been helpful there, but came into the studio and our studio not multimillion fox news channel, sirius studios with the bells and whistles. Its a renovated conference room, four mikes set up. Very basic board. And mikesal looking around saying, you might want to put soundproofing here or there. But it has technically been very basic, you know, we have a comrex box we take on the road, we have a bureau in city hall. We broadcast from there. Very low investment. But were seeing traction on advertising cross cel as well as radio specific buys. I strongly advice anybody who is not familiar with Boston Herald radio to check it out. What theyre doing is a clearcut example of the future and the potential of audio media mixed in a multiplatform setting. I applaud you for that. Alan combs, you are a friend of mine for years. What . Dont be shocked and dont try to be funny. Alan is really a very funny guy. Whenever people say to me, i get so angry at him. Hes such a nasty bastard, i get very upset. Did you call me a bastard . No, y they said it. Now we have to cut it out because were on the childrens channel. Youre about to get a truly tough question. Who the heck are you really . Thats deep. I mean, fact is that youre doing really good Experimental Work in formats that are way beyond what those who know you would know. Thats a great question. I wish i thought about it before i came here so i know who i was. You can find out now. Who we are speaks so much to what kind of show do we do and who are we on the air. Certainly people who knew my work would say hes a libbial or antiameric antiamerican, hates the country. But who are we is a great question to ask yourself in terms about what part of yourself do you want to bring to a show youre doing. People know me as hannity and colmes, see me with bill oreilly then arguing with my sisterinlaw in a sixminute segment where you become a cartoon. As Mike Francesca was saying earlier, you have a few minutes to get little sound bites out. On radio you can have actually conversations. While our show, the show that i do for fox news radio is very caller interactive so that it becomes more than just left versus right. Its who am i . Who is my audience . We have regular callers. When they first moved me from 6 00 to 9 00 p. M. , i didnt have a big audience because they changed my time slot which is to a much better time slot quite frankly. I would get maybe two callers and hour. And those callers became people on the show and characters on the show. And we made the people who call the show into, you know one theory would be the same people call in every day. The same voices, it gets boring. These people we talked about their lives, what their personal issues were, what their Health Issues were. This is less about who i am you arent answering my question, but its nice. Its leading me to maybe you didnt anticipate it going in this direction, but who you are, i guess, is a lot about what you bring to the table. So its not just about who i am, its about who the callers are. To get more directly to your question, i do a show on talkers. Com about one of my other interests, which has nothing to do with left right politics. Its about human consciousness, about cosmology. Thats not makeup, by the way, thats how the planet got started. So we talk to people in selfimproovgselfi selfimprovement, meditation, not left right, not politics at all. This to me is really one of my passions because when im not doing radio, im not reading political points. Im reading Deepak Chopra or tony robbins. Thats what really interests me. I have a venue to bring that the radio and sometimes combine it with what im doing on fox news radio with Deepak Chopra will be a regular guest. The big question you asked is who are we and what part of that can we bring to our audience. Thats a question we should ask ourselves because what part of ourselves do we want to reveal. Or what part we want to reveal the a different audience since theres so many different tracks and channels. Youre not obligated to be who you are on the big one. You can have your own small channels and pod casts and things. Craig, i havent forgotten that youre here. I havent forgotten im here either. What is what is it like being the Program Director of wabc, having this immense heritage behind you . Part of the answer, how is it different being in new york as a pd than it was, say, in providence or a smaller market . Well, thanks for having me, first of all. I think its a great group here. Every year i think i learn a lot and everybody takes something away from this conference. So thanks for having me. Gosh, wabc verse ours bpro in providence, which is a great station as well. I dont think the challenges are that much different. I think that, yes, the audience is bigger. Yes, the spots sell for more. Yes, the talent have different theres a different level of talent in the sense of they have to perform on a larger stage. But the talent in providence are very talented. The talent in new york are very talented. That doesnt change. You know, i think Radio Station is a Radio Station in many ways. You still have the concerns of a marketing, you still want to assign the talent to the right agreement. You know, you still want the talent to be in a productive day part and do the best show they possibly can. Those fights, those battles, you know, arent different providence to new york. I mean, or des moines to new york. Or whatever. You still have a transmitter that goes down in the middle of the night in des moines, you still have that in new york. You still have sales concerns and you still have Sales Managers to work with and be productive with and try to find your spot and find the thins that are going to matter. Those conversations are the same in the hallways of providence as they are in new york. The difference for me is just that, you know, theres a different pulse in new york city. Theres a different expectation in new york, but both of those stations, pro and wabc are heritage brands. Like mr. Dickey said earlier, you want to be the custodian of them. I take the heritage of the station in providence and the station here in new york very, very seriously. Its what a lot of us listen to. We listen to 77 growing up and yankees games, cousin brucy, or whatever it might have been. We listened to these big a. M. Radio stations growing up. Wgn in the midwest. So those big sticks meant a lot to me. So this big stick means a lot to me, at 77. So i take it extremely seriously. I take our talent seriously. I take our approach to promotions and marketing seriously. Thats what it has to be. Thats what it has to be for all of us. And its an exciting time. Its something i hold very dear and something that im very thankful to be part of. You bring up something interesting, were going to wrap this up in a minute and a half, two minutes. Ive programmed in the biggest markets and ive also programmed in some small ones, and ive found that the biggest mistake a major market radio person can do is to think just because theyre in a big station or market that they know more or are better than those running small stations. Or small markets have small people and small money. Small markets have big people with big egos with lots of powers. And lots of cliques. Its hard to program in a small town. When you come in with your big city ways and think you have all the answers. Chris olivero, well let you wrap up the big picture. Interesting as ive followed you over the years, here it is 2015, youve been and the track a lot. Youre not the same fellow i knew 15, 20 years ago. Whats your assessment of the big picture. What do we need to be concerned with Going Forward . I think what we have to be concerned about moving forward is not making the excuses that weve sort of made a habit of in the past. The whole conversation about voltaire this morning is very interesting, sexy, new, shiny, but the point weve always made about things like that is there have been spokenword Radio Stations in ppm that have been number one long before voltaire. So sometimes we try to pick on one thing and make it all about that thing and we lose sight of the big picture thats not good for any industry. The thing im most passionate about, i think nielsen will get it right and average quarterhour ratings points, not share because share is kind of meaningless in the big picture. But average quarterhour rating point will actually increase in the next few years, which will be great for business. Thank you. Lets have lunch. With the sudden death of president harding, Vice PresidentCalvin Coolidge takes office. Grace coolidge was an enormously popular first lady and influenced the tastes of american women by becoming a style icon although she married a man known as silent cal. She never spoke to the press but used her office to bring attention to issues she cared about. Grace coolidge this sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans original series first ladies, influence and image examining the public and private lives of first ladies from Martha Washington to michelle obama. Sunday on American History tv on cspan3. Another freshman profile now. This one with republican congressman Ralph Abraham of the louisiana 5th district. Hes a practicing physician, has a veterinarian degree, is an avid pilot and has served in the national guard. Congressman Ralph Abraham, you are batting 1. 000 when it comes to elections. This is your first ever publicly held office. That is correct. This is the first one we ran for and fortunately we won it. Why did you want to run . I have grandchildren now. Theyre very small. And the direction i thought this country was going in was somewhat different than the way it was going. So thats why i jumped in the race. We need to leave a better country than we certainly came up with. And thats why we ran. Was it hard at all to get the family on board for you . Not at all. Ive got a very supportive family. Diane is my wife. And shes all in for fortunately about everything weve elected to do in life. Shes been somewhat the wind beneath the wing. My three older children or my three children, when i told them we were considering running, their first word was do it. How old are your kids . 32, 33, 34, in that area. We had them stair stepped. And it was a wonderful period of growing up with them. Now, youre representing the 5th district in louisiana. Thats right. The largest district in louisiana, is that correct . It is for land mass. 24 parishes. It goes from the top of the state almost all the way to baton rouge all the way over to appaloosa. So its a big deal. As far as land mass. Is a parish like a township or a county. Its a county. Theyre the same. Just because of our french heritage, we stuck with the name of parish. Whats that district like in terms of the people and the businesses and the occupations there . We are one if not the biggest road crop district in the nation. We grow corn, soybeans used to grow a lot of cotton than a anywhere in the nation. Conservative, down to earth, godfearing, so to speak, we have the biggest town, monroe, louisiana, and the second biggest is alexandria. Compared to other large towns across the country, comparably speaking it would be a very small town. So we are rural. Were good, hardworking people. You said you decided to run because you were concerned about where the country was headed. What are some of the top concerns of people in your district . Getting away from our constitutional principles, our founders were men of genius. And if you look at the constitution. I try to read it at least a quarter, every six months, look at the declaration of independence. One, its based on christian values. Two, based on very conservative values. But the most important thing its based on is small government. Weve gotten away from that. Government that we have now and this goes back decades, not just one or two administration, but this starts back in the 20s and the 30s of the 19th century or the 20th century where government has outgrown the people. Its no longer a country by and for the people. When you get an organization or a bureaucracy as big as we have now, then it has to feed itself. And when it does that, it stops feeding the people. Thats what concerns me is we are now a bureaucracy or a government that is no longer looking out for its people, its looking out for itself. You bring a background that by most peoples measure would be pretty considerable over the koufrs a lifetime. Youve been a veterinarian, youre a practicing physician. Youve been in the army reserves, Mississippi National guard, youre a pilot. As you came to congress, you must have had a fairly wide selection of committees to serve on with that sort of expertise. The thing we asked for when we got elected was veterans because theyre near and dear to our hearts, our heroes need to be protected and taken care of. Theyve taken care of us. The least we can do is repay them. Agriculture for the aforementioned reason we are such a big Agriculture District that i needed to represent my farmers, ranchers, foresters very well. Then i was fortunate enough to be asked to be on this science and technology committee. Thats a fun committee. We discuss things that are new, innovational, on the horizon, so to speak, but we also discuss very important issues like epa rules, the waters of the u. S. , climate change. So its a mixed bag of things on the Science Committee whereas the v. A. And agriculture are more specific. I enjoy them all and theyre all good committees. Three committee assignments, floor work, constituent work, how do you keep it all organized . Luckily we have a very young, aggressive staff that keeps me in line. When i come to work every morning, we have a quick meeting of what the days activities are going to be and what the weeks activities are going to be. And they get me lined out, so to speak. Im very fortunate to have good people surrounding me. Were having this conversation as Congress Gets ready heading into the august recess. What have you learned about washington as a governing area and congress that is different than what you expected when you got elected . As a physician and as a businessman, im used to things happening a little bit more quickly, a little bit more efficiently. So its a process that you have to adopt to. Im used to giving orders as a physician and theyre carried out that day or certainly even that minute or that hour. Thats certainly not like that up here. We have to be part of a system thats a little slow moving and work within the system to get things done. You have to learn the ropes, so to speak, but ive learned quickly, i hope and have gotten good things done. In terms of taking those orders, how is your relationship with gop leaders in the house. Oh, well. We have good leadership from boehner all the way down to scalise and mccarthy being the leader. In louisiana were lucky to have Steve Scalise as our majority whip. He brings not only some character and clarity to the situation, but he also brings some power. So as louisianans and as our louisiana delly gags, if we have an issue that we want pushed to the front burner, well, where do we go . We go to scalise. You talked about your background just a little, but what is in your background that best qualified you for being a member of congress . Thats probably the veterinarian and the physician role. It takes some study to get to those particular places in life. And being up here in congress, you have to do your homework. You just dont come up here every day and just show up. When i go home at night, im usually reading my material for the Previous Committee hearings the rest of the week. My staff has given me tasks to do that also bolsters hopefully my Knowledge Base for whatevers coming down the pike. So it takes a lot of afterhours work to stay ahead of the game. And youve got to stay ahead of the game here. Some of the members weve talked to have tossed out the figure, speaking of afterhours work, that a number of them are staying in their offices. Their living accommodations are in their offices. Are you a member of that club . Early on i was, and it was simply because of the finances. I refused to pay exorbitant rent fees. Im pretty tight with a dollar. And until diane found us something affordable and what i thought was at least fairly reasonable, i did camp on the couch for a couple weeks. Now im in a little apartment across town, so to speak, and the rent is still high but manageable. Do you get home to the louisiana theres been maybe two, three times at the most where we stay up in washington over the weekend. I prefer to go home every weekend. Because, again, i get to see the people that i represent. Certainly the week that we get off during each month to go back in the district is the favorite week of the month for me. People who arent washington insiders or here all the time, what should they know about how their government runs . The good news is still, even in todays age, still a lot of bipartisan support. We pass 80 , 85 of the bills that come down from leadership. On a bipartisan basis. We could not do it without help from our democratic colleagues. Now, there is certainly some ideology and some issues well never agree on, but again lets go back to the founders. Thats what they wanted. We wanted a debate. If we agreed on everything all the time, there would be no need for us to be up here. So we have to represent our people. That will cause some divisiveness sometimes. But more often than not, we get along better than most people think we do up here. Do you find it more or less bipartisan than when you got elected . A little more. I knew there would be some. I guess ive been surprised refreshingly there has been a little more than i anticipated. So thats a good thing. Were able to do business for the nation and good business. You talked about the three committees youre serving on, the amount of reading you had to do. Before we started our conversation on camera we were talking about an epa hearing. Do you find that you get enough time to get your questions answered in those hearings