On a glorious, sunny morning, high above Chehalis, John Panesko was sitting in the back of his massive living room, making some last-minute notes for his morning radio call-in show. A large man with a ready smile — and yes, a deep radio voice — the local lawyer holds court every weekday morning on KELA-AM 1470.
When we arrived in Centralia a couple of years ago, I was trying to find the radio station that carried the Rush Limbaugh program. I didn’t realize there were so few choices on the AM radio dial, so landing on it wasn’t difficult. It was early and I was listening to Panesko talking about an advertiser.
Then he returned to taking calls. A man wanted to know why there was seemingly endless work on the I-5 in Centralia, which was finally completed after years of agonizing delays, was taking so long. The caller speculated that the Democrat politicians in Olympia were dragging their feet because they don’t like conservative Lewis County.
The host laughed and said he’d heard that theory before and it just might be true.
This was my discovery of Panesko, a moment that has kept me in front of a radio every weekday morning from 8:30 to 9:00 a.m..
The program is called “Let’s Talk About It,” where listeners call in and share their thoughts and opinions on just about any subject. The only rules are no cursing or name calling.
Panesko recently hit a major milestone — his 4,500th show. That’s a lot of talking every weekday, rain or shine.
And that leads us to understand why he broadcasts from home. Before the transition to working from home, it took him almost as long to get to the station as he was on the air. One morning his truck broke down and he had to hitchhike to get there on time. With that in mind, Panesko made a major investment and set up part of his living room for the broadcast.
It works seamlessly. The phone lines are open at 8:30 a.m. and the calls start pouring in. The subjects are endless. Flooding problems that have never been successfully addressed. The rise of drug use in the local area. Homeless campers taking over an area of town. If people want to talk about it, then the show takes the topic on.
When the presidential election was still in the primary season, the number of calls coming in to discuss the national issues was at first discouraged by Panesko. After all, that’s not local, not in the truest sense of the word. But it was the late Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill who once said all politics is local. So the presidential race moved to the head of the line.
Panesko doesn’t mind because he goes where the callers want to go. It’s this attitude of letting the callers direct the action that is one of the reasons why he thinks his show has not only survived so long, but prospered.
“We do something no other talk show does,” Panesko explains. “Every caller gets on the air in the order in which they call. We have no call screener, no themes, no required subjects. You never know what the next caller is going to say.”
Panesko says it helps being an experienced trial lawyer because he’s trained to be ready for pretty much anything, just like in the courtroom. If a caller brings something in from left field, that’s all the better. He says the people like that.
“I also inject something into every show that people may not know,” he said, “so there’s some education every day. People like that. It’s the uncertainty of what’s going to happen next.”
A few weeks ago, Panesko explained how LED light bulbs for the house and office work. They burn brighter, but don’t use as much electricity. Without his primer, however, a consumer could buy the wrong bulb and become very frustrated. Lesson learned.
Of course, like most successful things in life, Panesko’s radio career didn’t take off like a rocket. Not at first anyway. After flirting with a radio career after college, Panesko served in Vietnam and then went to law school. Twenty-five years into his law career, he was listening to KELA and thought that the host of the talk show was too liberal.
“I didn’t think that fit well with this community,” he says. “I confidently approached the management at KELA, laid out my credentials, and asked for the job of radio host. They smiled, shook my hand and said, ‘no.’”
A few weeks later, the regular talk show host took a day off around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Panesko went back to the radio station with a plan. Rather than KELA paying for alternative programming for that half hour, he offered to host the show that day for free. He called a few of the advertisers who he knew weren’t happy with the regular host and asked them to listen that day and report to management at KELA afterward. The advertisers must have said some nice things because he was offered a show every Monday. Of course, the catch was that it was for free.
The regular host would spend all four of his days trying to refute whatever Panesko said on Monday. So everyone was sure to tune in on Mondays. Then he also got to work on Tuesday, as long as the price remained the same. Free.
The radio station reacted to its audience, which wanted more, and added Wednesdays to the growing list. The host at the time quit and Panesko got the whole job — with pay. Since then, John Panesko has been careful around the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday. He hasn’t taken it off, just in case.
Panesko says he truly loves the program and its callers. “I’m nothing without the callers,” he says.
And he brings a little light into everyone’s lives, enjoying every moment of it.
“Let’s Talk About It” broadcasts weekdays from 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. on KELA-AM 1470.
