Fred Benton, host: 919-782-5276 POB 6653, Raleigh, NC 27628
Moreton Neal, co-host: 919-967-9111 209 University Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
David Basknight, "Basknight on Broadway" www.beechwoodtours.com 919-571-4608.
Barb Gau, health consultant, 919-967-2632 or www.HealthMattersNow.com
Paul Gilster, wine: gilster@mindspring.com
Dave Hunter, wine: at Classic Wines, 919-319-9508 ext. 113, cell 345-5591
Kay Miller, gardening & travel: 919-380-1495; kmiller@interpath.com
Art Taylor, events: at NC Museum of Art, 919-839-2139 ext 2139; arttinnc@aol.com
Brad Lamb, president N.C. Consumer Council www.rtpnet.org/nccc. tel 919-932-1499, bradrlamb@aol.com
WDNC-620AM: 919-687-6580; studio: 919-683-6200, 800-936-2620; fax 919-688-0180

Susan Houston, Food Editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, wrote about The Better Living Show for an article in the paper's October 10, 2001 "Life, etc." section.

He says, She says
The radio banter of Fred Benton and Moreton Neal has been entertaining Triangle foodies for years.
By SUSAN HOUSTON, Staff Writer

DURHAM - Tuning in to "Better Living " with Fred Benton and Moreton Neal on WDNC-AM is like spending an hour eavesdropping on a pair of vivacious, amiable neighbors. Especially during their Wednesday morning "Food Forum." "These are crunchy!" Benton says during a recent live broadcast, smacking his lips at the taste of the flying fish roe atop pepper-crusted rare tuna. As is the show's tradition when the guest is a local chef, the Washington Duke Inn's Rick Sordahl has brought several items from his menu to the studio for Benton and Neal to taste on the air.
"I can hear it crunching," Neal, who hasn't had a taste yet, tells Benton.
"That is fantastic!" he exclaims, continuing to munch.
"Why don't you ask Rick a question so I can have a bite?" she asks him pointedly.
This is one of the hosts' running gags -- that poor Moreton gets stuck doing the interview while Fred digs into the food -- and part of the show's ingenuous charm. Benton and Neal smack their lips into the mike, talk over each other, tell corny jokes (mostly Benton), ask guests off-the-wall questions (mostly Neal), displaying a kind of charming amateurism on the air, even though they've hosted the show for close to 11 years.
"I think that people like to listen to the show because we aren't consummate professionals," Benton says in an interview after the show. "It's not like we're reading scripts all the time. We get tongue-tied. We start laughing. We're at ease with each other."
"We both forget that anyone's listening to us, so we just play," Neal says.
But someone is listening to the show, which airs every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 to 10 a.m. Based on recent Arbitron ratings, WDNC account executive Julie Bradshaw estimates that the show reaches as many as 15,000 people a week in the Triangle.
"It's one of our most popular shows and the one we get the most calls about," Bradshaw adds. Devoted fans send the hosts birthday cards and e-mail notes and call to correct their pronunciation of words.
"Their show is different from anything that's on the air," says Dot O'Brien, a loyal listener in Durham. From the moment she wakes up, she tunes her radio to the daily flow of talk radio on 620 AM, from local morning host Ron Stutts to nationally broadcast commentator G. Gordon Liddy. But there's something special about Benton and Neal's show. "To me, see, it's just like somebody I know."
The radio audience first got to know Benton and Neal in 1990, when WDNC switched its format from music to talk. Benton, a writer for Spectator magazine, had recently been a regular guest on Donna Mason's talk show on WPTF-AM and found he liked doing radio. So Mason encouraged Benton to inquire about hosting his own food talk show on WDNC.
Benton asked Neal, then owner of La Residence restaurant in Chapel Hill, to be his guest when he made the demo tape for the show. The two had met in 1985 when Benton interviewed her over dinner for a Spectator story about the restaurant. They immediately established an easy rapport.
So when Benton got the show on WDNC in November 1990, he asked Neal to be his first guest. And he asked her on again and again and again.
"Then he said, 'Why don't you just stay?' " Neal recalls.
"No, no, she just stayed," Benton counters. "She just started showing up and I had to put her on the air."
The weekly Wednesday show was then a 30-minute program known as "Food Forum," and it focused on the emerging local food scene. But they quickly ran through the local talent, Benton says, and began to fill their time slot more creatively. He wrote plays like "How the Margarita Was Won" and "I, Gluttonous" and hosted a skit improvised by actors Ira David Wood III and Della Basnight as a married couple who wrote "The Can Do Cookbook." In the spoof, the couple had a bad food experience on their Mexican honeymoon and "for the rest of their marriage, they've only eaten things out of a can," Neal says.
Benton and Neal also interviewed real cookbook authors from across the country. Through their connections in the food world, they snagged national culinary celebrities, both established (Craig Claiborne, Graham Kerr, Paul Prudhomme, Julia Child, Marcella Hazan) and emerging (Sara Moulton, Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, Charlie Trotter). They still invite national celebrities to call in (listen for Julia Child's lilting voice on the air Oct. 24), but they now focus more on the exciting local food scene again.
In 1996, the station approached the hosts about expanding the show to three days a week. So Benton came up with the "Better Living" philosophy.
"The mission of 'Better Living' stems from the fact that many of us should be enjoying the good life, but we don't seem to have the time," Benton explains on the show's Web site, http://www.betterlivingnews.com. "Our schedules can't suddenly shift gears from a race to a mosey."
So Benton and Neal become the listeners' guide to what he calls "the roses everyone says we should stop and sniff." Monday's show generally focuses on the arts, travel and leisure, and Thursdays are usually devoted to health and consumer issues. Guests cover a wide range of topics, from bee pollen to the grieving process.
And Wednesday is "Food Forum" and still the hosts' favorite show to do.
"It's kind of our baby," Benton says. "It's our firstborn."
"For the other shows, you have do more homework," Neal says. "With food, we can just show up and have fun."
And that seems to be exactly how the hosts approach the show. They arrive at the studio on the third-base side of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park often just minutes before they go on the air, Benton from his home in Raleigh and Neal from hers in Chapel Hill. Radio casual is the dress code, black turtleneck and khakis for Benton, a print dress and black sweater for Neal. The CNN national news break comes to an end, and then it's time to put on the headphones and turn up the theme music for another leisurely edition of "Better Living News."
It's a fairly typical Wednesday show. Neal begins with the complaint that she didn't get enough beauty rest the night before because she let her cat sleep in her bed. Restaurant owners call in to promote fund-raisers for families of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Consumer correspondent Brad Lamb checks in with his report. The hosts interview the visiting chef and taste the food he has brought. Benton ducks out for a smoke during wine correspondent Dave Hunter's chat with Neal about the wine of the week.
Then it's time for the theme music and another news update -- time for Benton and Neal to return to their separate, off-the-air lives.
Benton is a regular contributor to Spectator magazine and a free-lance writer under several nom de plumes. At his home in Raleigh's Budleigh neighborhood, he's working on a collection of short stories set in a fictional Southern town. Southern food and culture play prominent roles in the book, he says, and it includes recipes.
Neal lives with her husband, Drake Maynard, and her children in Chapel Hill, where she has an interior design business, A Room with a Hue. She is also working on a cookbook for UNC Press that will gather the French comfort food and La Residence restaurant recipes created by her first husband, the late Bill Neal, author of "Bill Neal's Southern Cooking."
But the on-air party will be back Thursday, Monday and especially Wednesday, ideally with another chef bringing in a new spread of goodies to taste. Neal will ooh and ahh, Benton will smack his lips and Dot O'Brien will be listening at home on her cheese-shaped radio.
"It makes me want to go up there and eat with them," she says.