The madness of Radio Row

If a place where more than fifty American talk radio hosts are talking at once is the worst place on earth, the worst place on earth is the Republican convention's Radio Row, where outfits big (Fox News) and small (Little Rock's FM 102.9 KARN News Radio) do their live broadcasting from little tables.

The cacophonous Radio Row setup - it's actually three rows - allows bigshots like Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, former RNC chief Michael Steele and bombthrower Ann Coulter to do lots of appearances very quickly with influential conservative talkers. Here's Coulter doing one of them on Wednesday:

When she sat down, the man to her right told her she had immediately "raised the standard of this radio station." Which calls into question the standard of that radio station. As does the station's banner, which was sponsored by a company called Horton's Orthotics and Prosthetics.

Radio Row was created in the 1990s, "when talk radio became very powerful in the political equation," syndicated conservative host Rodger Hedgecock said Wednesday. It allows the hosts to get rare and valuable face time with prominent people they usually talk to only on the phone.

"So the next time I have them on the phone, it's a lot more familiar," Hedgecock said.

Here's Hedgecock, standing at right, and one of the rows: