Howard Power

For weeks, the come-on ads for Disk Jockey Howard Miller's new radio show reverberated over Chicago's WCFL: "Howard Power! Howard Power! Howard Power!" Massed choruses sang God Bless America as Miller earnestly avowed: "I'm proud to be a flag waver! And I'll be waving it plenty every morning. You will find me ready, hard-hitting with truth and justice." In a full-page, flag-bedecked newspaper ad, Miller pledged his allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, the President, servicemen, policemen and firemen. Miller's No. 1 fan, Mayor Richard Daley, delivered a testimonial on the air, and congratulatory telegrams and flowers poured into the station. More important, listeners began tuning in: since Miller made his debut in October, WCFL's morning ratings have jumped from ninth place to second in the fiercely competitive 24-station Chicago market. Miller now has 15% of the morning audience, and is closing fast on WGN's low-keyed, folksy Wally Phillips (17%).

For Miller, the climb was especially reassuring: the show ends his exile from the air for his rightist views. For 15 years, on other stations, he had been the most popular radio disk jockey in the Midwest. Then one morning ten months ago, four days after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Miller began talking about the post-assassination rioting on Chicago's West Side. On his top-rated WIND show, he declared that there should be a day of tribute for "our brave policemen and firemen." Then, noting an inflammatory--and, it developed, totally false--report that 3,000 rioters were planning to storm the Chicago Avenue Armory, he said, "Do you want to bet?"

Hot Barrage. Besieged by irate telephone calls, the station decided Miller's right-wing opinions might escalate tensions, and it immediately pulled Miller off the air until the "whole thing died down." That only brought an even hotter barrage of pro-Miller calls, and the station was forced to close down its switchboard and post police outside the studios. Housewives picketed the station. The Greater Chicago Police Association reacted by naming Miller their Man of the Year.

Miller retreated to his 160-acre farm in suburban Barrington with his third wife, Nola. He claimed that the "traumatic shock" had caused him to lose 26 lbs. in two weeks, and sued WIND for $5,000,000 for "trying to kill me as a performer." The suit was settled out of court in August. To the surprise of many of his listeners, Miller then joined liberal-leaning WCFL, a station owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor. Explained Station Manager Lou Witz: "We feel a conflict of opinions gives more interest to the station."

Radical Fringe. Miller certainly provides plenty of conflict. In a typical hour of programming, he devotes 30 minutes to standard middle-of-the-road pop music: a Frank Sinatra ballad, a Lawrence Welk instrumental and, again and again, Andy Williams singing Battle Hymn of the Republic. Sixteen minutes is given over to smoothly delivered commercials, five minutes to news, and nine minutes to "commentaries on our times." Samples: -- On law and order: "I don't agree there's a civil war in this country between blacks and whites. I think there's a great civil war between the lawbreakers and the law-abiders."

P: On Satirist Mort Sahl: "Along with the Smothers Brothers and Rowan and Martin, he is part of that radical fringe who try to tear down American decency and Democracy."

P: On Students for a Democratic Society: "S.D.S. is the youth arm of the Communist Party. They've never taken a stand for something positive. They are a destructive type of apparatus."

P: On the Walker Report, which accused Daley's police of "unrestrained and indiscriminate violence" during the Chicago riots: "I reject it completely. The entire police department stands indicted, held up to ridicule because of one man's opinion. The police are innocent until proven guilty. For all I know, it's just a bunch of riffraff who've accused the police."

P: On Socialists: "If socialism is so great, why do they keep living in this country?" He added that if the Socialists did not like it in the U.S., he would gladly pay to send a boatload of them to Cuba or Russia.

P: On school bussing: ''Let the black woman that covets my school come live next door to my school."

Off the air, Miller explains that "I've seen a gradual erosion of patriotism over the years; the more that people went to one direction, the more I went in the other because I felt there was a need." Lately, Miller has also developed a need to satisfy what he calls his "hunger for immortality." These days, the jampacked crowds and standing ovations for his frequent lectures before police and P.T.A. groups only intensify that hunger. Accordingly, Miller, 54, plans to run for the presidency of the Cook County Board in 1970, an office that is not only powerful in patronage but a proven springboard to the Governor's mansion. Since his growing audience already numbers more than a million in the Chicago area, he can hardly be blamed for believing in political "Howard Power."

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