If you can’t stand to listen to radio anymore you can thank these companies. While KSFO airs mostly nationally syndicated talk hosts, KGO runs mostly local hosts on weekdays. KGO was the #1 radio station in San Francisco for 3 decades; it was a 50,000 watt powerhouse whose signal went from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains – from Mexico to Canada and on up to Alaska. This is my response: Today I honor our legendary broadcaster Ronn Owens. On Saturday, November 1, 2008, Karel was hosting his weekly KGO at 9 PM when the sound engineer unintentionally failed to mute Bouley's microphone during the national news break.  =  More than a dozen full-time staffers at San Francisco's KGO Radio and KFOG 104.5 FM were laid off on Thursday (March 31) by parent company Cumulus Radio in … iHeart Radio, formerly known as Clear Channel (the name of the beast that started this whole buggery), has a few weeks to come up with $6 billion of the $21 billion they owe creditors. KGO 810 announces its new on-air lineup, featuring the addition of three veteran talk show hosts, Mark Thompson, Pat Thurston and John Rothmann. I never felt more at home in a job than when we were all working on breaking news.  −  Sports, music, news and podcasts. In the postwar period, KGO produced many live music programs, including that of Western Swing bandleader Bob Wills, whose music was a staple of the time. At that time it operated with a then-impressive 1000 watts.[3]. Attack Of The Cover Versions: Covered In Tapestry (Celebrating 50 years), Beer Premiere! They weren’t interested in making money off of radio – they were simply interested in what the next quarter would mean for their profit statement. I am proud to now be joining the greater San Francisco Bay Area in that time slot. From 1978 until last year, KGO, under former GM Mickey Luckoff, was No. Thursday, May 25, 2017. Dr. Dean Edell began his regular medical programs at KGO,[citation needed] leading to nationally syndicated broadcasts. KGO was responsible for the News Talk format, and it employed the absolute greats in the field. That's why so many friends were shocked when he took his own life instead of asking for help they gladly would have given", A Technical Description of the KGO Facility in 1924, The Complete KGO Collection (Archival Recordings) in The Bay Area Radio Museum, Mass mass media in the San Francisco Bay Area, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=KGO_(AM)&oldid=1015142801, Radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Former subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2017, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2010, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Games that start before 7 pm on weekdays air on KSFO.[13]. Popular nationally syndicated radio program, The Armstrong & Getty Show will move from KGO (810 AM) to KSFO (560 AM) and will be heard weekdays from 6:00am to 9:00 am PST. Two of KGO's three towers partially collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17, 1989. That said, its overall reach is greater than any FM signal in the Bay Area (according to radio-locator.com map referenced below). Longtime KGO radio host and scientist Bill Wattenburg dead at 82. The Afternoon News won those awards – but, Bret Burkhart was a force unto himself. To all my friends who were laid off today: I am so sorry for your loss. It was the voice of San Francisco. Brian Copeland sues KGO radio over firing, claims race and age bias. At least 20 people, including the entire news staff, as well as some staffers from sister station KFOG, were laid off with the change. But it uses a directional antenna to protect the other Class A station on 810 kHz, WGY in Schenectady, New York. Then, the station More awards than I know. – DreX has hosted KGO’s nighttime talk show, The DreX Radio Show, since his debut on the station last January. Leaving KGO was the toughest professional decision I have ever made. It was then that he was hired by San Francisco radio station KGO. Claudia Lamb worked at KGO from 2007 to 2011, producing and writing the afternoon news at KGO Radio in San Francisco, which was then the number one rated News and Talk station in the country. Cumulus Media-owned radio station KGO 810 is undergoing a sweeping change from its current mixture of political commentary and call-in shows to a more news-heavy format. Entercom seems healthy with only $500 million in debt, and $9 million in cash on hand. The original two-story brick building, constructed specifically for the station on East 14th Street, was demolished sometime in the 1980s. For what it's worth, I clearly remember Pat Michaels being on KGO in the evenings around 1969 give or take. That all changed when Citadel bought the ABC-owned radio stations for an obscenely high price in 2007. He was hysterically out of control for the better part of a minute as ever bad-mouthed everything that he could think of. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed them to consolidate thousands of Mom-and-Pop radio stations into just a handful of owners. [17][18][19] Originally, long-time KGO host Ronn Owens announced that he would be moving to sister station KSFO in the afternoon slot beginning April 4. iHeart Radio) destroyed radio as we knew it. I just happened upon this thread ten years later. KGO will kick off its new live and local talk radio line-up as it welcomes Bay Area favorites Armstrong and Getty to Mornings on KGO … Brian Copeland was fired from KGO radio in January 2018. The weekday morning news (from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m.) is currently co-anchored by Jon Bristow and Jennifer Jones-Lee. Your email address will not be published. While news and politics impact radio programming and listener response to stations and personalities, RadioDiscussions will moderate any posts that are purely political by deletion, editing or moving the posts to the “Politics not directly related to Broadcasting” section. .hide-if-no-js { 629 reviews of KGO 810 "last Sunday evening, June 11th, Karel was as bad as I've ever heard him. The Crash of 2008 accelerated the demise of radio, but it was on a path to destruction no matter what. Local director-actor Jack Brooks hosted a Saturday-morning entertainment program until his sudden death in June 1984, after directing a production of Kismet for the Capuchino Community Theatre that featured Jim Eason as the poet Omar Khayyám. The moderators of this website are balanced between the two major political parties and we try to keep “pure politics” out of radio discussions and have set up an “open court” for “Politics not directly related to Broadcasting” for additional non-industry discussions. He's an embarrassment to the station and should be let go!" In order to make its Schenectady outlet a clear channel station, GE effected a breakdown of 790 kHz. The cuts meant a shabbier and more worthless product, which drove down listenership, and thus ad revenue. Sure the product SUCKED and ratings dropped but, hey – the Vultures were making bank. It is one of two Talk radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area owned by Cumulus Media. 15 of 15. The format change and termination of many popular talk show hosts sparked outrage among long-time listeners, many of whom called for sponsors to drop their advertising on the station. Why the old KGO Radio Was and Is Still Such a Big Deal. [14] In January 2015, KGO announced they had hired Chicago/San Antonio radio personality Kevin "DreX" Buchar, best known for his successful morning show on Chicago's WKSC-FM, which ran for more than a decade, from 7PM to 10PM. While the new format was initially unsuccessful, Dunbar stressed the "live and local" aspect of the programming by running the talk shows every day from locations such as Johnny Kan's Chinese restaurant, Señor Pico's Restaurant, and the legendary hungry i nightclub. Never forget that News is a noble profession and can make a difference in the world, and you worked in a place that set the standard for it in Radio. Most hours begin with world and national news from ABC Radio News. 0 Radio host and physicist Bill Wattenburg. Lee Rogers says goodbye to KGO Radio listeners at the end of his last show on that station. Both KGO and Dallas-based sister station KLIF shared similar visual News/Information identities after KLIF's parent Cumulus acquired Citadel until 2014, when Talk programming was reintroduced. [22] The solar system uses both CPV (SolFocus) and PV (Premier Power) arrays and provides about 17 Kilowatts, or 33% (one third), of the radio frequency (RF) power output from the 50KW transmitter (or about 1/10th of the total power consumption of their transmitter site over a 24-hour period). The daily schedule included many issues-oriented talk shows, with weekday hosts that included Gene Burns, Gil Gross, Ronn Owens, John Rothmann and lawyer Len Tillem. Therefore, GE effectively removed from the West one of its eight clear channels and added another clear channel to the East, thereby giving the East nine cleared channels and the West only seven. We're talking about the news you're talking about. Next, they cleared out 80% of the staff – such a savings on labor! Why do they hire these lunatics who have no vocabulary, no radio broadcast abilities? The station’s owner, Cumulus Media of Atlanta, has filed a response denying all of his claims. Listeners were encouraged to call in and donate money to help in the fight against these kinds of cancer. The KGO signal also registers with Arbitron as a station listened to in surrounding metropolitan areas. CUMULUS News-Talk KGO-A/SAN FRANCISCO 10a-noon (PT) weekday host ETHAN BEARMAN has exited the station. The Vultures had created a cycle of cutting people and services to keep their bonuses intact. United States Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi turned the system on during an on-air ceremony.[23]. [1], After several late-night test broadcasts, using the experimental call sign 6XG, radio station KGO signed on the air on January 8, 1924, from General Electric's Oakland transformer manufacturing plant. Leo Laporte's weekend syndicated tech talk program was also a casualty of the format change and is no longer being broadcast on KGO. Owen Spann also originated special broadcasts from Europe and Africa, interviewing government officials from those countries. He announced it on his Facebook page. His voice has been an institution on the great KGO 810 for 42 years in the late morning. It was all, about the liberal misrepresentation of reality, facts and life, about censorship, and above all else – being a flagship Zionist voice – … That was then lower than the minimum permissible power for a clear channel station (10 kW)[citation needed], and also was then higher than the then maximum permissible power for a regional channel station (5 kW). Brian Copeland, another KGO Radio talker and veteran of the station is out too. KGO (810 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to San Francisco, California. As was the custom with early radio stations, the programming consisted of performances by local talent, including the KGO Orchestra which provided some of the music, and a dramatic group known as the KGO Players, which performed weekly plays and short skits, often under the direction of Bay-area drama instructor Wilda Wilson Church. Joe The Plumber. This drained the product of any local flavor – and had real consequences in many marketplaces when a local emergency happened and there were no live people to cover it and tell people to evacuate or shelter-in-place. [21] The effort is a testbed for Pacific Gas and Electric Company and is located near the Dumbarton Bridge. As of early next year, Savage will be heard exclusively on his Savage Nation Podcast. KGO radio has been my favorite, go-to station for 30 + years! I likened their cuts to a Doctor telling her patient, “Look, your toe is bleeding – we need to take off the foot to stop it. We finally looked down after they cut three-fourths of the news room, the helicopter, airplane, most traffic reporters, and virtually all admins. John Batchelor (syndicated via Westwood One) airs in late night, while Coast to Coast AM (syndicated via Premiere Networks) runs in overnights. The Grinch left more at Cindy Lou Who’s house than these vultures did. Lynn Jimenez – business reporter (on extended leave), Ed Baxter – former morning and afternoon anchor, Ken Beck – former reporter and news director, Stan Burford – former traffic anchor, reporter, Lin Durling – former airborne traffic reporter, Greg Edmonds – East Bay Bureau Chief, reporter, Mary Ellen Geist – former reporter, anchor, Lou Hurley – former airborne traffic reporter, Michaelyn Meyers – former airborne traffic reporter, This page was last edited on 30 March 2021, at 21:02. KGO – like Wile E. Coyote – continued to run on air for nearly three years after Citadel bought us. All three were replaced. However, due to what was advertised as a 'listener reaction' against the move (in reality, Owens contested the move of his show off KGO as against the terms of his contract), Owens left with the station. When I gave my notice I didn’t have anything left to give to the station. It was the West Coast Flagship station for ABC News. Bernard Vincent Ward is an American former radio personality whose career ran from 1985 to 2007. KGO has its studios and offices on Battery Street in the SoMa portion of San Francisco's Financial District. [5] The NBC Blue Network simply dropped "NBC" from its name to become the "Blue Network," then in June 1945 re-branded itself the American Broadcasting Company. They would buy 10 stations in a market, shove them all into one building that was owned by a subsidy, to whom they would pay rent, and then sell all of the physical assets of those stations (buildings, radio equipment and everything inside down to the last paperclip). In 1941, stations on 790, including WGY and KGO, were moved to 810 to comply with the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA). It was an honor to have worked with you, and to have called KGO my home. RadioDiscussions is a board about radio and electronic media. DJ Mike Show #204 – 4/3/2021: Interview with Christina Bulbenko, Rex Broome, and John Borack of The Armoires! The rest of the station had it just as bad – the cuts were capricious and in one afternoon I watched 412 years of corporate memory walk out the door. Until December 5, 2011, KGO created nearly all of its own local programming, with very limited syndicated content. That’s when everything changed. I fought the good fight to try to keep information on the air. Posted on March 9, 2019. Veteran radio talk-show host Ronn Owens will be moved from KGO radio, his home for the past 40 years, to politically conservative sister station KSFO next … An article in Broadcasting magazine noted that the increase "retired the nation's oldest regularly operating transmitter-a 7,500-watter ... in use since Jan. 8, 1924."[4]. Former KGO 810 radio talk show host Brian Copeland has filed a scathing lawsuit over his firing last year, claiming race and age discrimination. If anybody’s wondering what’s happening to our favorite radio stations, strap yourselves in…. The other is 560 KSFO. On December 1, 1947, KGO switched to a directional antenna and its power was increased to 50,000 watts, the new minimum standard power for a U.S. clear channel station. On March 31, 2016, Cumulus Media gutted two legacy Bay Area stations – KFOG and KGO, changing formats of both, and laying off most of the remaining news departments of the latter. 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