Bill Ballance

Willis "Bill" Ballance (October 27, 1918 – September 23, 2004) was an American radio talk show host.

Ballance was born in Peoria, Illinois, and studied journalism at the University of Illinois before serving in the United States Marines. He had radio station stints in Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and San Diego. Ballance was the evening personality late 1950s-early 60s on #1 rated KFWB. In Los Angeles, on KGBS, Ballance became well known as the host of the Feminine Forum radio show, which he managed beginning in 1971. He is known as the forerunner to "shock jocks" Tom Leykis and Howard Stern, having been accused of exploiting women's rights activists who called in to his show.

The Feminine Forum was dropped in 1973, and he began the Bill Ballance Show. He left Los Angeles in 1978 and went to radio station KFMB in San Diego, where he remained for fifteen years. While his early years in San Diego were successful from a ratings standpoint, his core audience was much smaller than what he had in Los Angeles. Ballance continued his practice of mixing open-topic callers with various in-studio guests (psychologists, counselors, physicians, etc.), as well as his own hand-written monologues. By the late 1980s, however, his popularity began to wane. As other talk show hosts copied and changed the "shock jock" format, and as the format itself began to evolve into racier topics and discussions, the "Bill Ballance Show" began to seem tame by comparison. He retired from radio in 1993, after more than 50 years in the industry.

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