The study analyzes the communicative strategies adopted by the participants (moderator, caller and guest) in conducting the opening phases of the Nočné dialógy radio phone-ins broadcast by the Slovak public radio. The programme is approached as a specific type of institutional interaction characterized by a unique patterning of communicative asymmetries. The importance of the initial turn, invariably a moderator’s privilege granted to him by his institutional as well as interactional status, is stressed as having some important structural implications as to the subsequent course of the interaction; a structural archetype of the opening turn consists of four stages - structure orientation, self-identification, caller identification and summons. Openings span over several sequences of turns with the main task of establishing a caller in the on-air interaction and preparing him/her for the delivery of his/her topic. The bulk of interaction is composed of the four main types of interactional activity in which the participants are engaged - opening a technical and social contact, identification, recognition and categorization. This instance of a radio programme is seen as a means of bringing the media closer to the public, which, upon its introduction early in the 1990s, was an unprecedented example of the process of democratization of the mass media. By their opportunity to bring forward relevant political-social agenda the public have been given a direct access to the creation of political discourse.