It’s a Tuesday morning and the offices of L.A. Talk Radio in Sherman Oaks are buzzing with, well, talk. In one studio, Sam Hasson hosts his daily show “Sam in the Morning” with sidekick Jenifer Golden. The pair talks about filing taxes, rain forecast for that day and the state’s water crisis, among other issues. In the adjoining studio sits Sheri McNeil Savory who has a weekly show, “A Savory Spotlight,” featuring disparate discussions on genealogy, DNA analysis, wellness and travel. The thing is, they’re not on radio. The shows are two of nearly 70 aired online by the growing network Hasson founded eight years ago to satisfy his desire to be on the “radio” – and to make it a business by charging others for the same opportunity. “People who are not celebrities or stars get to live the radio life,” said Hasson, a 54-year-old Sherman Oaks resident. As with anything in this digital world, online radio has become an increasingly mainstream way of listening to audio content on devices other than a radio. The old-fashioned transistor or bulky boombox radios have been supplanted by laptops, tablets and mobile devices. A survey released last month by Edison Research, in Somerville, N.J. and Triton Digital, a Sherman Oaks technology services company serving the radio industry, found that about 119 million people age 12 and older listen to online radio on a weekly basis. It is defined as both live streaming and podcast downloads. Triton Chief Executive Neal Schore said the clear appeal of online radio is there are no geographical limitations and the format is available to any type of device. “You can be in a taxi or in an office or working out or anything similar and have a personalized experience,” Schore said. Los Angeles is the largest radio market in the country so it should come as no surprise that it has a lead in the online market as well. Walt Disney Co., in Burbank, just about got out of the terrestrial radio business last year by selling all but one of its radio stations and airing Radio Disney content through streams and downloads. Indeed, the San Fernando Valley is a bit of a hot spot for online radio. Former KLSX-FM (97.1) talk host Tom Leykis now broadcasts one of the most popular live streaming radio shows from Burbank. Radio and TV personality Adam Corolla does the same with his podcasts, or pre-recorded shows that are downloaded at a reported 5 million a month, produced by Corolla Digital, in Toluca Lake. The lineup at L.A. Talk Radio by comparison totals about 2.5 million downloads a month, with Hasson’s “Sam in the Morning” getting about 60,000 of those. Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talker magazine, a Longmeadow, Mass. trade publication for the talk radio market, said that Corolla and Leykis are models for the industry. “They are examples of broadcasters from other media that succeeded on the Internet,” Harrison said. “Not everyone who goes online gets the critical mass those two have.” ‘B’ List While Hasson may not have the name recognition of Corolla or Leykis, he is a pioneer of Internet radio. When Talkers named its Frontier 50 in 2013 to recognize outstanding talk media webcasters, Hasson ranked No. 8, not far behind Corolla at No. 2 and Leykis at No. 5. “They feel we have done quite a thing here,” Hasson said. Since starting in 2007, L.A. Talk Radio has operated on a model of providing ad-free content. Instead, Hasson charges an on-air fee of $99 per hour for his hosts who come from a wide range of backgrounds – artists, authors, comedians, psychologists and life coaches are among the professions represented. Susan Olsen, who gained fame as Cindy Brady on “The Brady Bunch,” co-hosts a political show on Monday nights. Golden, Hasson’s morning show co-host, also dabbles in television. Savory runs her own company, Stars Publishing LLC. “We don’t make A list stars but people do get better known,” Hasson said. “It helps with their careers and their other endeavors.” L.A. Talk Radio is far from alone in streaming online content. There is also BlogTalkRadio, a national podcasting platform for independent and network podcasters for streaming or download, based in New York and L.A. Talk Live, an online station in Los Angeles that mixes talk and music programming. Talk, in fact, takes a backseat to music in the online audio market, which is dominated by the likes of Pandora Media Inc., Spotify Ltd. and Slacker Radio, services that have tens of millions of paid and unpaid subscribers. “The national and international services are more focused on music than they are on the spoken word,” Schore said. L.A. Talk Radio has four full-time employees working from offices on the top floor of a building on Woodman Avenue just north of the 101 Freeway. In the lobby, one wall is filled with color headshots of current show hosts, while another has photos of guests who have come through the studio. Like the hosts, guests come from varied backgrounds. They have included actress Debbie Reynolds, activist attorney Gloria Allred, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, actor Ed Asner and Michael Reagan, the son of late President Ronald Reagan. “We talked with an undertaker the other day,” Hasson recalled, adding that he asked his guest what he does when a body comes in more than one piece. (“That was a good question,” Golden piped in.) Since public airwaves are not being used, there is no involvement by the Federal Communications Commission for licensing stations or what can be said on the air. The hosts are even more diverse geographically. About 30 percent of L.A. Talk Radio’s hosts are from outside California. With just a laptop and headset, hosts from around the world can plug in and do a show as though they were in the San Fernando Valley studio. Shows have originated from Australia, Costa Rica and Brazil, Hasson said. While these hosts are sometimes amateurs when it comes to broadcasting, the fact they are paying for their airtime separates them from hobbyists, said Harrison, of Talkers magazine. “It gives you a more serious caliber of broadcaster,” he added. Savory, a Los Angeles resident, has been doing her show for about seven months. Genealogy was a natural topic to her as she has traced family histories and studied DNA testing for about 25 years. A genealogy company sponsors her show, Savory said. She ended up at L.A. Talk Radio thanks to Lucy Hill, a friend who had been hosting her own show at the time. Hill suggested that Savory and her interests would make for good talk radio. “I always thought so too, and here I am,” Savory said. Entrepreneurial past Before the radio network, Hasson himself had a few other endeavors. He emigrated to the U.S. from Israel at age 16 and has lived in the San Fernando Valley nearly all the time since then. He has operated web design, online marketing and accounting businesses, and even dabbled in computer animation in the early 1990s. “I always had an inclination to work for myself,” Hasson said. The network got its start in late 2007 when Hasson met some entrepreneurs operating an Internet radio station with a spiritual format and was impressed by the concept. Having harbored a desire to be on the radio himself, a couple of months later he started BBS Talk Radio from an office in a downtown Los Angeles high-rise. The name changed to L.A. Talk Radio in June 2008. The network moved to Studio City in 2009 and then to Sherman Oaks three years later. Hasson said that he didn’t think talk radio in general has done a good job of embracing technological change, but it’s something he has tried to keep up with as the network has grown. The studio’s output has been on both iPhone and Android apps since 2010. And in October, Hasson added a third studio with video capabilities. The on-air hosts are shot against a green screen background onto which can be projected one of several backdrops. There are currently six shows broadcasting in the evening hours from that studio and the videos are also available for viewing on YouTube. “We did a wedding on the air with video,” Hasson said. “We had Gloria Allred here and she officiated.” The next big change for the network will take place in the summer when the ad-free model comes to an end. (Hasson declined to discuss his network’s revenue or profitability.) Hiring an advertising sales director is a possibility down the road but for the time being Hasson will handle those duties. While he doesn’t expect to charge advertisers the rates that terrestrial radio does – on average a 30-second spot in the L.A. market goes for more than $1,000 – he thinks he will attract buyers because in online radio the ads remain in archived shows. “We can offer a lot of value to advertisers,” Hasson said. For now, there are no plans to adopt the model followed by Leykis, who streams his shows and archives the podcasts, charging $11 to $19 a month depending on whether they are interrupted by ads. Corolla also charges a fee. Harrison noted that it’s hard to sell advertising “anywhere in media” these days but said Hasson has a good shot. “Sam has developed enough of an audience to add advertising to his business model and be successful.” Hasson credits having a professional studio environment and tailoring the business to the needs of his hosts as the key reason for the network’s success “They come in with a smile on their face and leave smiling even wider,” Hasson said. “That’s the great reward for me.”