SAN DIEGO (AP) – Bill Ballance, a radio personality whose bold 1970s talk show tackled relationships and sex and helped pave the way for today’s shock jocks, has died at age 85.

Ballance died at home Thursday, according to his son, Jim. He had been in failing health since undergoing quadruple bypass surgery and suffering a stroke in June 2002.

Ballance’s “Feminine Forum” became one of the most popular radio shows in Los Angeles within a year of its 1971 debut on KGBS-AM.

Racy and confessional, the show drew many listeners, both male and female, with topics such as “Where did his love go and how did you know it was gone?” and “Are you a red-hot mama?”

“Feminine Forum” provoked anger among women’s rights activists, who accused him of exploiting callers. But Ballance dismissed them, and the program was syndicated around the country.

The show inspired legions of imitators.

“The ‘Feminine Forum’ was really the forerunner to radio’s Tom Leykis and Howard Stern,” said Don Barrett, executive editor of LARadio.com. “He had a little sexual content in there. Nobody did that on L.A. radio prior to Bill, but he did it in a very tasteful way.”

In the late 1990s, Ballance caused another stir when he sold nude photographs of radio therapist Laura Schlessinger to a company that posted the photos on the Internet.

Barrett said he took the pictures without coercing her during a 1970s affair when Schlessinger was married. He said she lied about the relationship.

Schlessinger, who had been a regular on Ballance’s show, was outraged. But in 1998, a judge ruled the images could continue to be posted on a Web site.

After KGBS dropped “Feminine Forum” in 1973, Ballance hosted the milder “Bill Ballance Show.” He worked for KABC and KFMB in San Diego before retiring from radio in 1993.

Born in Peoria, Ill., Ballance studied journalism at the University of Illinois and served in the Marines. He had stints on radio stations in Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu.