He's all talk: but that's creating a lot of action for radio's Mark Packer, who's syndicating his sports gabfest across the Carolinas.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.

It's 2:55 p.m. Mark Packer rises from a cluttered desk in a tiny office crammed with T-shirts, Cornbread Maxwell bobble-head dolls and sports-team coffee mugs, then hustles down a hallway to the studios of WFNZ-AM, a 5,000-watt radio station in Charlotte's South End. He nods to fellow talk-show hosts Chris McClain and Sandy Penner as they leave, settles into a chair around a five-sided table, slips on a pair of earphones and waits for his cue. "It is Primetime," he yells into the microphone. "I'm The Packman."

From the start, he's loud, assaulting his audience with a rapid-fire delivery that belies his beloved Southern heritage. But people listen. At least, a lot of men ages 25 to 54 do. Among that demographic, his show is usually first or second in its time slot in the Charlotte market and is expanding its reach across the Carolinas. He's heard on 10 stations from the wetlands of Little Washington to the foothills of Greenville, S.C., and he has two more deals in the works. Packer, 43, will spend the next four hours making lots of money for doing what many guys do for nothing--talking about sports. Well, men's sports.

Most days he comes armed with a folder of notes he has prepared on five or 10 topics. Not today. He introduces his co-hosts, sportswriters Stan Olson of The Charlotte Observer and John Delong of the Winston-Salem Journal. They banter briefly about UNC Charlotte's most-recent basketball loss, then about Wake Forest's win over N.C. State. He congratulates Davidson and Winthrop for winning their conference tournament championships.

Ten minutes into the show, he mentions what he knows will become today's hot topic--Carolina beating Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium the previous Saturday night. It's standard sports-talk radio: All three praise Carolina's freshmen for ruining Duke's Senior Night and compliment the officials. Packer believes Duke star J.J. Redick is tired; Delong doesn't. Packer waves his hand to get control back, then leans into the mike: "The last thing I need to do is preach to Mike Krzyzewski. He's the absolute best. But he's done a lousy job developing his bench."

With those words, he goes into the first commercial break. The rest of the show will be filled taking telephone calls, mostly from gloating Carolina fans, many of them regulars. There is Robert from Kings Mountain, who has adopted professional wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin's habit of ending every sentence by saying "What?" And Mike from Gastonia, a recruiting geek who usually wants to drone on and on about next year's team and how it will dominate. Even many Tar Heel fans have asked Packer to ban Mike from the air. Then there is the Get-Some Guy, who also calls after hours--sometimes as he's watching the games and, presumably, drinking heavily--and screams recorded messages at Carolina's opponents: "Get some."

But you don't get to be The Packman just by knowing a lot about sports, yapping up a storm and soliciting goofy callers. You get there by being in the right place at the right time and somehow catching the attention of a harried radio executive. You stay there by acting like one of the guys, griping about your boss, complaining about the sports television network ESPN (Packer calls it H-Y-P-E), spinning yarns about outwitting your wife and taking shots at some of the biggest targets in town, including Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson and his son Mark, the team...