RUMBLIN ROSEN.

• Author: GAY, MALCOLM
• Position: Radio talk show host Mike Rosen

RADIO HOST TAKES ON ALL COMERS

IN A BOARDROOM'S LARGE leather chair, with an imposing conference table and a commanding view, Mike Rosen seems at home. Comfortable. Relaxed, even.

These are not adjectives normally employed to describe KOA Radio's premier conservative talk show host. And when he's asked about the current state of his industry you understand why not:

"These same sanctimonious people in the media who are so quick to criticize everybody else in society ... have absolutely no tolerance for being criticized themselves," he rants. "You criticize them, and they immediately bring up the straw man of, 'you're challenging my first amendment rights,'" he says. It's what Rosen calls "The First Amendment Canard," and it is one instance among many where he sees the media exercise bias, hypocrisy, even downright deception.

"Many of the people in the media ... resent me for what I do," says the 56-year-old Rosen. "They don't like to be criticized, especially by name. ... [But] I read their news stories -- their editorials masquerading as news stories. I go through those stories point by point and show the spin."

Strong stuff. But Rosen doesn't make his living being diplomatic. Articulate and persuasive, he has the air of a man whose time is important to him. He's graying at the temples, but his eyes are sharp, pale blue. He moves with an unconscious assurance. When he speaks -- the vocabulary is studded with hot-button terms like "liberal," "establishment," "bias" and "agenda" -- his hands gesture away from his body, as if to draw the very words from his chest. And in the boxing ring that is AM talk radio -- where civility is for the weak of heart -- if you're going to make a buck, you better be ready to rumble.

Rosen rumbles.

A typical broadcast from his fishbowl-like KOA studio covers topics as diverse as CSAP testing, Mad Cow disease, and Anthony Hopkins' latest gory effort, "Hannibal." Th phone lines light up like a string of brake lights at rush hour, bloated with callers eager to argue a point. The talk is fast, the politics conservative. He is, by his own account, the most listened-to local radio talk show host in Denver. ("Dr. Laura is on opposite me," he boasts, "and I've got two or three times her audience.") Both Bill Owens and Wellington Webb sit in on the show once a month. Rosen also writes an editorial column for The Rocky Mountain News.

Originally from Brooklyn, Rosen spent many years in the corporate sector before talk...