1992 weekday lineup:
5-9: Ted Wygant and Jim Dunbar
9-12: Ronn Owens
12-1: News
1-2: Dean Edell
2-4: Jim Eason
4-7: Ed Baxter and Rosie Allen
7-10: Lee Rodgers
10-1: Michael Krasny
1-5: Ray Taliaferro
This had been the schedule since October 1984 (maybe), when Owen Spann left the 9-11 slot for New York City. Ronn, who'd been doing 7-10, went to mornings and Dr. Dean moved from 11-12 to 1-2, taking an hour from Eason.
December 1992: KGO management quietly decides it wants more sensationalism (and combativeness, if you ask me) in its hosts. Michael Krasny (read his Chronicle profile) resists and vacates his 10-1 spot after eight years. Bernie Ward soon nabs it. Years later, he'll offer an accurate self-assessment when interviewed by the Chronicle: "I'm aggressive. I'm unapologetic. I'm essentially the left version of all of the crazy right."
About this time, I'm surprised to hear Bernie laud Jim Eason. When Eason is "on," Bernie says, he's one of the best there is. Also about this time, Bernie greets Rush Limbaugh (then on KGO weekend evenings) at the airport and they have dinner. Rush wisely refuses to discuss politics and probably flatters Bernie while giving him professional tips, because Bernie speaks well of Rush from then on. Bernie also begins to emulate some of Rush's on-air habits, such as one-sided conversations with staff. (For reasons I don't understand, I like this in Rush but hate it in Bernie.)
January/February 1993: Michael Krasny replaces KQED-FM's Kevin Pursglove on Forum, the public affairs program Pursglove founded in 1987. Pursglove left in early January during a massive KQED shakeup. He'll go on to make $69,722 a year as press secretary for San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer and then even more annually during his four years as spokesperson for eBay. The more articulate Krasny expands Forum from its narrow focus on politics to a wide range of topics that include politics.
July 1994: Lee Rodgers leaves for KIRO in Seattle. He's a morning person, and Ronn isn't going anywhere. The late Duane Garrett, KGO's main fill-in host, was an attorney and nationally known Democratic strategist who'd managed Dianne Feinstein's successful senatorial campaign. He and Bernie now compete openly for Rodgers' slot. Duane wins.
After three years of fill-in, Brian Copeland gets a 4-7 Saturday slot. He was already a highly successful comedian before Ronn played Copie's impression of Ray ("Jay Tallahassee: the Most Paranoid Black Man on Radio") on his show. Once they heard it, KGO management snapped Copie up. In his early teens, he'd been a regular caller/guest on Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins' weekend night show on KGO in the late 1970s. I don't know whether his successful career in television journalism preceded or followed Copie's arrival at KGO.
Meanwhile, rumors abound that Capital Cities/ABC, KGO's owner, intends to buy KSFO. Brad Kava reports that KGO general manager (since approximately 1978) Mickey Luckoff is behind the purchase. His motive? "To buttress KGO and prevent anyone else from launching a competing talk station."
August 1994: Jack Swanson returns as program manager at KGO and now KSFO. Swanson was program manager at KGO for eight years in the 1980s before leaving in 1990 for KING in Seattle. Usenet poster Duncan Shaw encapsulates KSFO's impending changes and their background: "KSFO dropped it's simulcast of then oldies KYA 93.3 FM a few years ago and dove into a talk format. Mostly satellite (Liddy, King, Williams, and the WOR hosts), with local hosts Gene Nelson (mornings) and Peter B. Collins (PM drive). The station has never really done well in the ratings. Cap Cities/ABC has bought the station, and will take over operations September 1st. Rumors are that a 'Hot Talk' format will be put on KSFO, similar to what Cap Cities did to KMPC (Los Angeles) when they took over the station in May."
September 1994: Capital Cities/ABC begins operations at KSFO, but Hot Talk is still four months away. In the meantime, the lineup as posted by Duncan Shaw is: "5 - 9 am Jeff Blazey (formerly of Blazey and Bob on KOME), 9 - 12 Noon The Fabulous Sports Babe (ESPN Radio), Noon - 3 pm Shann Nix (moves over from KGO), 3 - 7 pm Tom Leykis." Radio cognoscenti lament the disappearance of Nelson and Collins. (As a kid listening to KYA, I enlisted in Emperor Nelson's Royal Commandos. I forget whether we were going to invade LA, or just what we were plotting.) At KGO, Copie upgrades to Shann Nix's 10-1 midday weekend slot.
December 1994: Ronn begins a contract-dispute walkout. Duane becomes his main replacement, with Gene Burns replacing Duane at 7-10.
January 1995: KSFO goes Hot Talk (all right-wing, all the time). Swanson, architect of the new programming, is a political liberal and also radio personality Melanie Morgan's husband. Swanson explains the Hot Talk concept to Brad Kava: "We are saying you are not nuts for being conservative, even though you might feel that way living in the Bay Area." Kava notes that, "In his tenure with KING-AM in Seattle, Swanson looked on while KVI-AM, a competitive all-conservative station that also used the tag 'Hot Talk,' become the top-rated news-talk station. He never could come near catching it; his station there had a liberal slant." Michael Savage (real name Michael Weiner) is transferred to KSFO from his 7-10 weekend KGO spot. KSFO ratings will soar under Hot Talk, despite the loss of me as a listener. Kava quotes Luckoff on how he explained Hot Talk to Capital Cities/ABC: "I told the company that there were a lot of conservatives in them there hills."
March 1995: Ronn returns after three months. Gene becomes KGO's main fill-in host under a one-year contract.
Bernie Ward and Associate News Director Susan Kennedy bring KGO a national award for investigative reporting about "monetary and sexual improprieties" involving San Francisco priest Martin Greenlaw.
June 1995: Bernie begins filling in for Jim Hightower on Hightower's nationally syndicated weekend talk show. Gene is hospitalized for a mild heart attack. He's back on the air before the month is out, vowing to reduce his fat intake.
July 1995: Lee Rodgers arrives at KSFO. Duane tragically takes his own life from the Golden Gate Bridge.
August 1995: I remember a month-long competition for Duane's spot. By the end of August, KGO decides that, effective Labor Day, Bernie will move from 10-1 to 7-10, while the 10-1 slot goes to Shann Nix. Metro's North Bay Bohemian will later profile Shann. It reports that, while at the SF Chronicle, Nix:
...dabbled in undercover work, once posing as a freshly converted Moonie to investigate the cult's "indoctrination camps." Her impersonation of a San Francisco high school student for a series on safety conditions in the inner-city school system sparked a riot of controversy and ethical questions, while her ballsy crashing of Hugh Hefner's wedding only solidified her anything-goes reputation.
September 1995: Hightower is fired "shortly after he points out, on the air, that Michael Eisner's salary is $78,000 an hour and then airs a skit in which Mickey Mouse sang 'I'd love to own the world.'" [--Tom DeVries, in The American Prospect]. (Although Disney's aquisition of ABC involved a lengthy process, the process wasn't completed until February 1996. So I'm still unclear as to whether, as is frequently claimed, Hightower was fired after Disney had somehow gained control. When I have time, I'll try to pin down more details of this episode.) Hightower is replaced by Bernie.
Background on Gene Burns appears in Boston Radio Watch, 09-14-95:
The Boston Globe is reporting this morning that talkmaster Gene Burns will return (sort of) to Boston airwaves on Monday, October 2. Burns will host a 10am to 2pm show from his San Francisco's home on WKOX AM 1200 in Framingham, MA. He's expected to relocate to the Boston area later in the year.Burns held highly-rated 10am-2pm shift at all-talk WRKO AM 680 from 1986 and 1992. In the fall of '92, he left Boston for a lucrative syndication deal at WOR-AM in NYC. (WRKO, which was part of a much smaller Atlantic Ventures at that time, couldn't accommodate him with such a setup.) WRKO-AM did carry his 2-hour syndicated show on tape-delay.
Last fall, in a dispute with WOR management, Burns walked out on his contract -- with a year remaining. After leaving WOR, he underwent complicated neck surgery which kept him housebound in NYC for a couple of months. Aftewards, Burns headed to KGO-AM in S.F.
October 1995: Bernie's national syndication sparks the SF Chronicle to run a feature article on him, laying out much of his background. Excerpts:
After he got the ax [at Bellarmine High in San Jose], he roamed the halls of Congress looking for volunteer work. The only one who bit was then- Representative Barbara Boxer. "I thought I'd be opening mails or be a go-fer. But within a week they had me handling legislation, and by the end of summer they offered me a job."I became her expert on the Pentagon. I'm the guy who found the $7,000 coffee maker that got her the first national exposure. We snuck onto Travis Air Force Base, and the airman who gave us the tip got us out on the flight line and on a C-5. Then we got into an office, went through their microfiche and confirmed what they were paying for it. After that, I became one of the experts on the Hill on Pentagon procurement." ...
"Bernie is excitable and brave," said Ken Berry, who accompanied him as producer in the riots and is now KGO news director. "The greatest thing about him is his memory and his mind. He doesn't take notes. We would drive the streets, get out and talk to people. Then he clearly and systematically ran down everything we'd seen in the last half-hour for radio without missing a point or a significant angle. We're human beings and our hearts are pumping and we're scared. But Bernie in the midst of this does a brilliant point- by-point summation and puts things in perspective. It was really a beautiful thing."
"It's a losing battle," Ward said in 1991 when he was the only radio reporter able to talk himself past the police lines when the Oakland- Berkeley hills fire broke out. "There isn't any water." When flames finally drove him away, his tape recorder was partly melted.
January 1996: A new San Francisco mayor takes office: Willie Brown. Ray Taliaferro, Bernie Ward and Bill Wattenburg maintain a pounding drumbeat of criticism against him.
February 1996: The Walt Disney Company buys Capital Cities/ABC, and with it KGO.
March 1996: One of Bernie's less savory callers directs racist slurs at Mayor Brown. Bernie is slow on the dump button, and something about a "monkey" slips through. Bernie apologizes profusely on the air, but Willie demands he be fired. For good measure, the mayor throws in a call for Ray's termination as well. A compromise is hammered out in which KGO's hosts are subjected to the humiliation of "diversity training." In addition, the Rev. Amos Brown guest hosts Bernie's God Talk at least twice, several African-Americans guest host for Ronn, and the station takes up a collection for recently-burned African-American churches.
July 1996: Gene takes over Jim Eason's 2-4 slot; Eason departs for KSFO. KGO had hired Eason the summer of 1967, but he may have taken a hiatus in North Carolina in the 1980s or 1990s. The McDougal Diet had helped him lose weight and improve his physical condition, and John McDougal became a frequent guest of the grateful Eason.
January 1997: Dr. Laura moves from KPIX to KGO, airing 12-1. This is evidently when the noon news is cancelled and 15 minutes taken from Ronn for Paul Harvey.
July 1997: Ronn lands a five-year contract with KABC to simulcast his morning show, broadcasting from each studio on alternate weeks. The astonishing upshot is that 31-year KABC legend Michael Jackson is bumped to weekends. Jackson, known for his moderate views and dignified English accent, was a DJ on rock-and-roll KYA in the early 1960s. He then went to KEWB (now KNEW). There, suspects amateur radio historian David Kaye, Jackson may have been the first in the Bay Area to host an all-talk show.
The respected trade periodical Talkers ranks Ronn thirteenth on its list of greatest radio talk show hosts in history. Jackson is eleventh.
Jackson displays poise under pressure by staying in required morning talk host format while responding to the demotion: "Was I surprised? Yes. Was it something I wanted? No," he tells downtownnews.com's Shireen Alafi.
The good news for Ronn is soon tempered by more disquieting developments. Tomm Looney of downtownnews.com: "The KABC program director and general manager who hired him were fired shortly after he arrived. The new guys -- GM Bill Sommer and PD Drew Hayes -- reportedly never liked Owens. Hayes' management style -- sources call him a 'screamer' and say he has a temper -- reportedly didn't sit well with Owens either." The new management team neglects to promote Ronn's show as the old team had promised.
September 1997: Bernie's nationally syndicated weekend show is cancelled.
October 1997: Late night weekend host Chris Clarke tells the Chronicle's Jerry Carroll he was "fired after 10 years of loyal service." Carroll explains: "Clarke thinks he got the ax for knocking Dr. Laura Schlessinger, KGO's popular advice-giver, and ripping Michael Savage, the fast-rising right-wing afternoon talk-show host." Whether or not that's true, the Bay Area is the ultimate beneficiary. Within weeks, Clarke is permanently replaced by the extraordinarily knowledgeable John Rothmann. Rothmann seems to participate more in the community, culture, and politics of San Francisco than any other host, and still has enough left over to treat dissenting callers with respect.
October and November 1997: High drama at KGO as Bernie's contract ends. Having lost his national show, will he now lose even his local microphone? Almost, but after crawling out from under an avalanche of food cans for charity, management comes around. A flavor of the newspaper coverage:
10-26: Ever since word leaked out that KGO would not renew Bernie Ward's AM radio contract, the talk show host's supporters have been protesting. With cans. Cans of corn. Cans of peas. Cans of applesauce. Cans of soup. Source: Stephanie Salter's entire column.
10-30: Tomorrow is the last day liberal talk show host Bernie Ward has a contract at KGO radio. Nobody knows what's next. His supporters plan a noon rally at the station on Front Street. Bring a can of food for the poor. You shoulda seen the journalists slink through the door at Monday's rally. "I've never seen news guys avoid a situation so well in my life," said Susan Prather of El Cerrito. "Hey, Ed," a ruffian called to news anchor Ed Baxter, "nobody would do this for you." Source: Jerry Carroll.
A "ruffian"? Bernie has goons, now?
11-4: KGO gabber Bernie Ward got a new contract with KGO. "I didn't expect to be here," he said Sunday on "God Talk." Credit the push by his fans. Source: Jerry Carroll.
May 1998: In the Southland, Ronn still finds himself in choppy waters. Jackson, obviously in pain, actually lies about the ratings and Ronn calls him on it.
July 1998: Dr. Laura expands to1-4, Gene goes to 7-10, Bernie moves to 10-1, and Shann returns to weekends. The noon news and Ronn's fifteen minutes are restored.
August 1998: Ronn's simulcast ends when KGO buys out his KABC contract.
February 1999: Although no longer a priest, some glitch in canon law qualifies Bernie to perform weddings as if he still were. He does so on the air for Valentine's Day. Stephanie Salter reports.
July 1999: News anchor Mary Ellen Geist discloses the "creepy" hot-tub encounter she had with Yosemite murderer Cary Stayner months before he was arrested.
October 1999: A moving 48 Hours program featuring the dramatic story of how Jack Swanson's toughlove helped Melanie Morgan take back her life from a gambling addiction makes its first airing on CBS. (My wife tells me the program itself reveals Swanson to have had a more pivotal role than CBS's two Web articles suggest.)
January 2000: Oakland's KNEW (910) lurches from adult contemporary music to radio's first technology news format. "CNET radio" is a partnership between the station's owner, Dallas-based radio station chain AMFM (created when Chancellor Broadcasting recently merged with Capstar Broadcasting) and CNET Inc., a San Francisco "technology information" company. KNEW is best known for two decades of country music, but, from about 1967 to 1969, it ran 24/7 talk shows. Ray Taliaferro was in its lineup then, together with such luminaries as Joe Dolan and Van Amburg. David Kaye insists that Rosie Allen (highly respected in ba.broadcast) started there as well. However, such pictures as this drain all credibility from that particular claim.
June 2000: Jim Eason retires. Dr. Laura transfers to KSFO, and respected KRON news anchor Pete Wilson takes Laura's 2-4 KGO spot.
September 2000: Clear Channel Communications, the largest and most controversial radio station chain in the country, buys AMFM and becomes the owner of KNEW. A Clear Channel timeline can be seen here.
July 5, 2001: Bernie appears on The O'Reilly Factor to debate media coverage of the Gary Condit/Chandra Levy affair. Click here for a debate "scorecard."
September 2001: A life-threatening leg infection strikes Gene on a cruise to Tahiti, preventing him from pontificating about the World Trade Center disaster. Before returning to the studio, he broadcasts the show from his San Francisco hospital.
October 2002: The San Franciso Chronicle reports:
Mr. Spann died from emphysema, the result of a career spent in smoke-filled radio booths, said his former wife Barbara Noel....
"For Owen, talk radio was the last neighborhood. It was his neighborhood, and he would get together every day to talk with his neighbors," said Jack Swanson, operations director at KGO Radio in San Francisco, where Mr. Spann worked from 1963 to 1984....
"Whatever you hear on KGO today was probably defined more by Owen Spann than any other person," Swanson said. Mr. Spann's show was the most-listened-to in the Bay Area for more than a decade between the 1970s and 1980s.
January 2003: CNET radio ends in failure at KNEW. The station will revert February 1 to its talk show format of more than thirty years ago, but now mostly syndicated: Glen Beck, Neal Boortz, Larry Elder, Phil Hendrie, Lionel. Mornings are local with Bay Area legend Alex Bennett. At 25,000 watts, KNEW has five times the broadcast power of KSFO, but only half that of KGO.
February 2003: Her ratings sagging, Shann Nix is replaced 7-10 weekends by a flaming Karel, broadcasting from his home in Long Beach. Shann will eventually remarry and move to England. My wife and I, vacationing in Southern California more than a year earlier, had heard Karel on KFI and loved him. I thought at the time he'd be perfect for KGO. I still do. He has an interesting blog.
March 2003: Michael Savage begins a weekly Saturday afternoon one-hour show on MSNBC-TV.
May 2003: Peter B. Collins launches left-wing All American Talk Radio from the North Beach studios of San Francisco radio network Icicle. The show is broadcast Monday-Friday 4-6pm Pacific time on the Sirius satellite radio network and on local stations in Eureka, CA and Santa Fe, NM. It can also be heard live on the Internet and Icicle offers free Internet archives of recent programs. Collins had a slot on KGO-AM in 1976 and later on KNBR and KSFO. Respected by many broadcast aficionados, he has a great voice and is highly intelligent, articulate and informed. But I find his delivery slow, without enough energy and little sense of spontaneity. I've never heard him argue, though, so perhaps that's his forté.
June 2003: Morning News co-anchor Ted Wygant retires to Surprise, AZ. He joined KGO in 1966 and was made news director in 1974. Mary Ellen Geist moves into his spot from the Noon News, where Jennifer Jones replaces her alongside Bret Burkhart. (KGO doesn't yet have Jones' bio up, but Mike Ward, now heading his own radio production and syndication company, has revealed "Jonesy" to be none other than his former Saturday co-anchor at Sacramento's KFBK.) David Kaye posts a reflection on Wygant to Usenet:
Michael Savage, whose Disney contract expires at the end of the month, is pulled from the air at KSFO June 2 and at WABC (the other ABC talk show station) in New York June 18. Savage complains to the New York Post:
The irony of the last sentence seems lost on Savage.
July 2003: On July 1, Savage takes to the air again, but now on a rival station in what's reported as "a lucrative deal" with KNEW. A week later, he's fired from MSNBC, prompting an article by Karel.
September/October 2003: Lee Rodgers suffers a heart attack, but returns in seven days. Word on the street is he was also out for an extended period several years ago when his knee was badly injured in a car accident that was not his fault.
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The claims presented on this web page are solely my responsibility. Nothing here has been authorized by KGO-AM Radio, Inc.; ABC, Inc.; The Walt Disney Company; or any of the management or staff of those companies.
This page created and maintained by Keith Woodard10-5: And some really bad news for KGO radio talk-show pundit and pain-in-the-butt Bernie Ward: The word is that KGO is not renewing his contract, and October could be his last month of causing trouble on the air...The problem seems to be that KGO did a focus group on Bernie, and he was either hated too much or not hated enough, whichever it is that's bad for talk-show hosts. Source: Rob Morse.
11-3: We'll find out this week what lefty talk show host Bernie Ward's fate is on KGO. An offer on the table last I heard. If he hangs on, credit the canned-food campaign of supporters. The station was inundated. Source: Jerry Carroll.
Owen Spann, the consummate interviewer who helped define talk radio as a medium and controlled Bay Area airwaves for more than two decades, died Monday in Palm Springs. He was 76.
One of my favorite times on KGO was about 15 years ago when Dunbar and Wygant cut up between 5:15 and 5:30 each morning. It was one of the few times I awoke before 7:00am for anything, let alone a radio station. Ted Wygant has a great sense of humor and is very quick on the uptake.
"This is out of bounds - in plain English, they took me off the air in
New York to pressure me to sign below market value in my home market,
San Francisco. It's like they're saying, 'We're punishing you.' It's astounding a
corporation can act this way in this day and age. 'The Mouse' is trying to intimidate me," he said. "It's bullying of the worst kind."
This chronology was only begun November 11, 2003 and is still being revised and expanded.