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"Hi, Love Docs. I have a shocking discovery that changed my life," confesses a caller to a recent broadcast of The Love Doctors show on WZZR (94.3-FM). The man, who identifies himself as Scott from Riviera Beach, says he was working a double shift as a short-order cook when a longtime customer asked if she could leave her 16-year-old niece at the restaurant for a couple of hours while she did errands.

"[The niece] was hot," Scott recalls. "We went into the back room and started talking and then doin' a little touchy-feely and kissing. … I couldn't keep my hands off her. That's when the bell out front rang."

To make a long story short, Scott, who gives his age as 20, recognized the man who'd come in. Scott had seen him on news reports as a fugitive wanted for killing a Brevard County Sheriff's deputy and called 911. Scott says the police caught the man, and the local newspaper credited Scott the next morning with the capture.

"I get my name in the paper, and the next day, the lady comes back. That's when I made a second shocking discovery," he says excitedly. "I come to find out that this lady was my aunt. And this young girl with her was my half sister!"

"You didn't know this lady was your aunt?" asks Rich Dickerson, who co-hosts The Love Doctors with his longtime on-air partner, Glenn Curtis.

"No," the caller answers. "I had never met my mother and was raised by my father. So the newspapers come back and make a big deal out of it. So I am posing for another picture the next day, standing there next to my half sister and thinking, 'Oh, my God -- I'm a scumbag!' "

"Now that is a shocking discovery!" Curtis says. "What a great story!"

"Sure is," Dickerson adds with a laugh. "Now, let's go on to another caller. Ted from Boca Raton, you're on Real Radio."

Who knows if Scott's story is true, Dickerson says later. "You have to remember," he explains, "we always tell our callers that 60 percent of what you hear on this show is 40 percent true."

No doubt, WZZR is not a traditional talk-radio station. Instead of hiring radio personalities who specialize in politics or sports and drone on about the same damn things every day, WZZR recruited a bunch of 20-somethings, many with no prior radio experience, and threw them on the air to see what would happen. These personalities included a 21-year-old reformed skate punk with an admitted authority problem; a former stripper and single mom who was recently featured in a Playboy pictorial; and a hyperactive trivia-and-sports nut with an edgy, up-North attitude.

Yet rather than focus on the quirkiness of its hosts, WZZR has built its programming around its listeners' interests, however enraging, noble, silly or tragic they may be. From 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, the station invites callers to discuss whatever they like. The station's staff believes anything is better than music radio in South Florida. In fact, WZZR's logo is "Music radio sucks."

"How many times can you listen to The Gater [98.7-FM] playing 'Stairway to Heaven'? It's two old disc jockeys playing the same old songs over and over again," observes Jason Carr, The Love Doctors' spiky-haired wunderkind producer who, at 21 years old, has been put in charge of changing WZZR's image.

Recent calls to the station have addressed topics ranging from the serious (the recent shooting death of a black 16-year-old boy by a white Delray Beach police officer) to the sublime (whether a man should be ashamed for being addicted to Desperate Housewives). Lost your dog? Call WZZR and they'll put out an APB. Just found out your significant other is cheating on you? Call WZZR and they'll talk you off the ledge -- or better yet, they'll call that skank cheater on the air and chew him or her out.

One frequent caller to WZZR is "Bob the Drunk From Boca," who says he downs 36 beers a day. "It's 4:30 [p.m.] right now, and I've already drank 20 today," he says with astonishing lucidity during one recent call. He says he's an alcoholic but functions fine by working for an employer who allows him to drink on the job and by not driving. When Bob the Drunk comes on the air, WZZR's phone lines light up. Some callers are ready to hurl insults and crude jokes at him; others want to offer him support and advice to sober up.

"It is our contention that the listeners are far more interesting than anything we could come up with, and we believe they are the stars of the show," Carr says. "That's what makes us different."

That philosophy also makes the station hugely popular among demographics that are highly sought by advertisers. Of the 32 stations in the West Palm Beach area, WZZR ranked first with males age 25 to 54 in the fall of 2004, the most recent ratings available from Arbitron Inc., which measures radio audiences for advertisers. The station tied for second among males 18 to 34. But the statistic that reveals just how dominant WZZR's Real Radio has become is the estimated time each listener is staying tuned in, which the industry refers to as "time spent listening." The average time spent listening for most local stations is about seven minutes. Arbitron reports WZZR draws listeners for an average of 16.5 minutes. "We've been a cash bonanza for Clear Channel, no doubt about that," Dickerson says, referring to the station's parent company.

But it's been a long time coming. After spending years as afternoon talk-show hosts on local music stations, The Love Doctors moved to WZZR in 1999, when the station was slowly converting to an all-talk format. The initial results were mixed. WZZR tried to bring in popular syndicated talk shows such as The Tom Leykis Show, Monsters of the Midday and The Ron and Ron Show. Those programs -- combining rehearsed bits and song parodies with calls from listeners -- failed miserably. But The Love Doctors, which simply took phone call after phone call, continued to pull in Top 5 ratings. The ratings climbed upward when station executives dumped the out-of-towners and replaced them with homegrown talent, much of it raw and handpicked by Dickerson.

The cornerstone of Real Radio's expansion beyond The Love Doctors was the 1999 hiring of Josh Cohen, who hosted a live call-in sports show on a now-defunct Stuart TV station and worked on AM radio. At the time, Cohen was a talented 28-year-old who was struggling to find a permanent job in broadcasting.

"I would watch his sports show and knew he had a personality and knew he knew what he was talking about," Dickerson recalls. "Then, I heard him on the AM, and the poor guy would have no callers. And all his listeners were 80 years old. Even though the show sucked, he was spectacular."

Dickerson asked Cohen to work with Lexxus, a sexy 20-something who was a lively regular caller and who worked part-time as WZZR's Official Prize Babe during live events. Dickerson then tapped Dano, his longtime producer and host of his own show on Saturdays, to work the evening shift, rounding out the Real Radio team. Dickerson, 53, and Curtis, 45, are the old-timers of the station. The other hosts are in their 20s or early 30s.

The current weekday format, which has been dominating the market for the past year, starts with The Love Doctors from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Josh, Lexxus and the Hometeam from 3 to 7 p.m.; and Real Radio Nights, with Dano and Johnny C, who broadcast live until 11 p.m. While the personalities on each show are different, all eschew bits, skits and parody songs and very seldom conduct interviews. They strictly take unscreened calls all day long and talk away the hours.

"You've heard of reality TV? Well, this is reality radio," Cohen, now 34, says from the station's main broadcasting studio in Port St. Lucie. (WZZR's signal reaches from Vero Beach to Broward County and regularly receives callers from as far south as Fort Lauderdale. The station also uses a broadcast studio in Riviera Beach and streams online at www.wzzr.com.) "We get the doctor who calls from the golf cart followed by a 20-year-old starving artist followed by a 34-year-old waitress."

Like most of the station's hosts, Cohen runs outside during commercial breaks to throw Nerf balls with other staff members or play with toys from the 1970s and 1980s, one of his favorite on-air subjects.

"One call is, 'What is wrong with the Catholic Church?' " Cohen says, while his colleagues stand around and smoke. "The next call is, 'How do I win at blackjack in Vegas?' And the next call is, 'What is the name of that toy that is like tic-tac-toe from the '80s called?' "

"Rich put it all together," says Denny James, the Hometeam's producer and on-air personality known for his infectious laugh. "We'll take Josh Cohen, the smart guy," he says, mimicking Dickerson, "and Denny will come in, and he will laugh and giggle and be the working man. Lexxus will do her part, and that will be the show."

"We're not here trying to convince anybody of anything," Dickerson says of the Real Radio philosophy. "We're just killing time and hopefully helping people's day go by faster."

Before Janet Jackson flashed her breast at the 2004 Super Bowl, Real Radio was not afraid to be raunchy. It was not uncommon for callers to admit that they couldn't listen to the station while at work or in the car with their children.

The Love Doctors used to spend considerable time asking female callers what their underwear looked like. Cohen had a surprisingly accurate knack for guessing the correct bra sizes of his show's female callers. Dano liked to discuss Playboy's latest pictorial and his grooming habits for his nether region. And before she was married (and later divorced), Lexxus loved to talk about her bisexual hookups and would claim to have orgasms on the air. Curtis' confession that he got turned on by watching naked female concentration camp prisoners in Schindler's List was so disgusting it became a topic of conversation for years among regular callers.

Earlier this year, the Federal Communication Commission levied a $55,000 fine against WZZR for broadcasting the sounds of a couple purportedly having oral sex during a segment on the Hometeam's show. Clear Channel refused to comment on the fine.

Today, WZZR's callers often mention the station's toned-down nature. The shows are so politically correct that they're airing commercials referring to a well-known South Florida band, Big Dick and the Extenders, as Big Richard and the Extenders because the real name has been deemed too risqué.

"We used to have a three-second delay," says Carr, who has to edit callers' indecent comments using a dump button. "Now, we have a nine-second delay. It's kind of like walking on eggshells because there is no defined line. So we have to say, 'Big Richard and the Extenders.' But we can say, 'Vice President Dick Cheney,' " he says, laughing at the absurdity.

Cohen won't talk specifics about WZZR's FCC violation following the Super Bowl incident. "It certainly has changed broadcasting," he says, looking weary of being asked about it. "There was an Eminem song with the line, 'Bitch, are you retarded,' which prior to Janet Jackson, aired in its entirety. After Janet Jackson, [radio stations] cut out the bitch. Shortly thereafter, they cut out retarded, too."

"I think one of the reasons Rich hired me is because I am not afraid to say anything," Lexxus notes. "I just kind of get on the mike and just start going, whether it comes out funny, intelligent or dumb. I always want to make someone smile, whether laughing at me or with me. … So you just have to reinvent, and that's what I did."

Cohen and the other hosts point out that since they've toned down their content, the ratings have spiked. "There is no question the content of the show has changed," says Curtis, who loves talking explicitly about sex. "But we have been able to make something of it. From the results we've seen as far as ratings, it hasn't hindered us. You just have to be a little more creative and clever about saying certain things."

Part of the station's enduring appeal is the hosts' discussion of the soap-opera-like situations in their personal lives. Longtime listeners have seen Lexxus evolve from a ditzy sexpot to a mother and wife to a recent divorcée. They've heard all about Curtis' irritable bowels and how Dano, the big Italian, is able to turn on the charm with the ladies but is never able to maintain a relationship for long.

Tell WZZR fans you're going to meet the staff, and they bombard you with questions such as: Is Lexxus really as dumb in person as she sounds? Is Josh Cohen really the asshole he seems to be on-air? And are Dano and Dr. Rich really feuding?

The station's crew laughs about their behind-the-scenes dynamic. "It was very hard to seem like I was crying when I was laughing so hard," Dano says of the weeks-long on-air "argument" that erupted when Dickerson told listeners that Dano was a radio hack who didn't deserve to be on the air.

"We're really like one big Real Radio family," Carr says. "There is no hatred between any of us. But the thing we find with some of our listeners is they don't get it. And a lot of people actually believe that there is this hatred with Rich and Dano. But there is nothing but love and self-promotion.

"We used to have a bumper sticker that said, 'Do You Get It?' It's just a show," he adds.

But during last year's hurricane season, WZZR proved it offers more than just ear candy. The station broadcast live hurricane coverage 24 hours a day for three weeks, proving to be a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of people in South Florida. It became a clearinghouse for government officials who used it as a community bulletin board to distribute aid and collect supplies. Meanwhile, other stations quickly reverted back to their music formats or ran simulcast coverage from a local TV station.

"It was tugging at your heart," Carr says of the round-the-clock coverage, "because you were hearing call after call after call of people needing help: the elderly needing medicine they can't get, children needing nebulizers to stay alive. My God, it makes your life seem really minute."

"The hurricanes, plain and simple, allowed a lot of people to find the station," Cohen agrees. "We needed someone to tell us what and where and how, and here were these people getting people together."

After The Love Doctors sign off each day, Carr walks into a production studio to finish cuing up a rerun of the show that airs weekdays from 1 to 6 a.m. Part of his job includes adding a disclaimer that the show is a repeat and no one is available to take calls. Because he is such a radio freak, Carr sometimes stops by the station while those reruns are airing.

"It's usually just me, no one else in the entire building," he says, "and we're playing a Love Docs rerun. And you know what? The phone lines are lighting up. The people are still calling."

No experience necessary

How do you get a job at Real Radio? Just be yourself. Being an unpaid slave helps, too.

One of the most unusual aspects of WZZR (94.3-FM) is how the station's on-air talents landed their jobs. Apparently a degree in broadcasting is not high on the station's list of qualifications. Following is a rundown of how some crewmembers got hired:

Jason Carr, 21, producer and featured personality on The Love Doctors and director of imaging for WZZR. How he got hired: He wanted to become a radio producer after spending a day watching The Love Doctors broadcast for a high-school project. "I was standing behind Dano, watching him do everything to produce the show, and my jaw dropped. So I bugged and bugged management, asking, 'How do I get into this?' " Carr enrolled in community college and held an unpaid internship at WZZR for two years before being hired full-time at 19. "I was going to school working two [paid] jobs and working here. I was slammed."

Lexxus, 31, on-air personality on Josh, Lexxus and the Hometeam. How she got hired: "I just started calling The Love Docs show when I moved down here when I was 21. Then, I started going to [promotional] events to find out what they were all about." The station hired her as a promotions employee and dubbed her The Official Prize Babe. In 1999, WZZR hired her full-time as an on-air co-host, even though she had no formal training. "I've loved radio from the beginning. When the microphone goes on, you get a rush; you get all excited." If she weren't doing this: "I'd like to be a personal trainer."

Dano, 32, on-air personality for Real Radio Nights. How he got hired: "It was high school, college, bartending, then unpaid slave. I filed CDs and shuffled paperwork like everyone else. Then, I made a demo tape, and they gave me the morning traffic reports. The Love Doctors' producer had serious health issues. I filled in one shift, and it clicked." The Love Doctors hired him to produce their show when he was 26. He got his own show in 2002. Career ambitions: To host a nationally syndicated radio show.

Johnny C, 30, co-host of Real Radio Nights. How he got hired: He was working for Clear Channel in the promotions department, and the on-air crew liked him and decided to put him on the air. He clicked with the audience and paired up with Dano about two years ago.

Luke, 30, producer and on-air personality for Real Radio Nights. How he got hired: He was working as a mosquito-control worker when he won a free trip to Jamaica in a radio contest. The Love Doctors were doing a remote broadcast on the island and Luke introduced himself. He worked behind the scenes for other Clear Channel radio stations, and then was promoted to producer in 2004. Best quote: "[This] sure beats killing mosquitoes."

Porkchop, 21, phone jockey for Real Radio Nights. The station's current unpaid slave, Porkchop began in January. How he got hired: "I was a constant listener, and I heard one day that Jason was looking for interns, so I called up." Best suck-up quote: "These guys are much more intelligent than any music DJ you hear on the radio."

-- Jim Di Paola