'Shock' Treatment: Invading the Talk Shows : Media: A shipping clerk's pranks with live-TV hosts has spawned copycat callers dropping the name of radio's ribald Howard Stern.

By CLAUDIA PUIG

June 30, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Just how far will a rabid fan go to get the attention of the radio personality he most admires?

The answer has become annoyingly apparent to the folks who deliver live television interview shows, ranging from “Today” when presidential aspirants Ross Perot and Bill Clinton were taking calls from listeners to CNN’s “Larry King Live” to the syndicated “Donahue.”

All have been hit by calls from people who purport to be interested in asking a sensible question and who then use air time to invoke the name of ribald talk-show host Howard Stern.

“It’s become the hot, new thing,” said Andy Bloom, program director at KLSX-FM (97.1), which broadcasts Stern’s New York-based show locally from 3 a.m. to about 11 a.m.

The man who started it, Bloom said, is Tom Cipriano, a 26-year-old shipping clerk from Philadelphia whose “nom de phone” is “Capt. Janks.”

By his own tabulations, Cipriano has made about 1,000 phone calls to the television shows of King, Donahue and Sonya Friedman over the last two years, and to the radio shows of Stern’s on-air competitors in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

His efforts have spawned copycat crank callers. Cipriano says it was not he who made the calls to Perot or Clinton on the “Today” show recently. But he wishes he had.

“We’re all working for the same cause,” Cipriano said. “We’re all trying to get Howard’s name out there.”

But why?

Stern is the top-rated morning radio personality in New York and his ratings are high and steadily rising in other markets--Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and Los Angeles. He has a nationally syndicated television show and boasts on the air of movie deals in the offing. Isn’t he popular enough without help from Capt. Janks and others?

“I’m doing it because I admire Howard so much and I’d like to contribute any possible way I can,” Cipriano said. “I listen to Howard four or five hours a day. I’m trying to do my part in giving something back to him.”

Stern would not comment about Cipriano or others who have pulled stunts. KLSX’s Bloom said that these pranksters are in no way connected with Stern or the stations that air his show.

“(Cipriano) does not work for us, he is not employed by Stern and is not encouraged to do any of the things he does,” Bloom said. “He’s doing this on his own.”

Cipriano takes his antics seriously, referring to them as if they were daring exploits. His modus operandi is to give the person screening calls on the various shows a relatively innocuous--but logical--question for the on-air guest.

“It’s brutal getting past the screeners sometimes,” Cipriano said. “There’s an art to it.”

Once he gets on the air, Cipriano begins to ask the innocuous question, then stops midway to demand: “What do you think of Howard Stern?”

“We’re out to creatively bring up Howard Stern’s name,” he said. “Howard Stern is always said last because as soon as they hear it, they hang up.”

He has posed the question to Jimmy Stewart, Mickey Rooney, Anthony Quinn, Diana Ross, Ted Danson, Donny Osmond and many more. So many, in fact, that recordings of his calls fill up three 90-minute tapes, which he dubbed “Scams-O-Plenty.”

The usual response to his on-air harassment is hesitation on the celebrity’s part, followed quickly by a disclaimer from the talk-show host.

“There’s a bunch of sickies out there tonight having fun with us,” Larry King said to Osmond on one occasion. “How would you analyze someone who pays to call this show and does that?”

Osmond responded: “I don’t know. They want attention . . . like hecklers. To them it’s a perverted way of having a good time.”

Off the air, King has an answer to his own question.

“I’ve come to feel sorry for these people,” he said in a phone interview. “Initially I was annoyed, but now it’s just sad. They must have awfully lonely lives that they would spend all their time trying to get through and then mentioning Howard Stern and getting hung up on. Why would anyone want to do that?”

Cipriano speaks of the celebrities who have hung up on him with the same sense of pride that an autograph hound shows for prized signatures. He says he is proud of the avocation that costs him from $300 to $400 a month in phone bills and has accorded him some degree of fame among Stern fans.

“It’s attention-getting. Everybody wants to know who Capt. Janks is,” he says. “I’m happy doing this stuff. It gets laughs. People think it’s entertaining. It doesn’t have to be top-of-the-line funny. But it is funny, you know.”

King remains unconvinced: “Someone should tell him it’s not funny.”

Cipriano believes that his and his imitators’ efforts have added to Stern’s popularity. In any case, they’ve succeeded in getting his hero to talk to him.

“He’s never actually made a comment to me (about the pranks), but he does take my calls on the show and I’ve heard him laugh on the air,” he said.

Is Cipriano doing this with the ultimate hope that someday Stern will recognize his comedic talents and hire him to join his cast of radio characters?

“It’s a pipe dream as far as I’m concerned,” Cipriano said. “But it’s nice to dream. I would be honored if they would ask me to and I would probably, most definitely, take up their offer, but I don’t expect it to happen.”