16 October 2017
The 2017 Broadcast Legends Holiday Bash at the Basque!
Yes, friends and neighbors, it’s time once again to raise a glass of cheer to our friends and colleagues at the annual Broadcast Legends holiday luncheon!
This year’s Holiday Bash at the Basque takes place on Friday, December 15, from 11 AM to 2 PM at the elegant Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.
While we haven’t assembled our full cast of characters for the event, you can be assured that the entertainment will be top-flight, and will feature a galaxy of stars from across the local radio and television firmament.
To make your reservation for the Holiday Bash at the Basque, please click here.
25 July 2017
Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame Class of 2017
MARK YOUR SCHEDULE:
Saturday, September 23
Basque Cultural Center
South San Francisco
11 AM – 2 PM
The Broadcast Legends will celebrate the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame‘s incoming Class of 2017 with a special luncheon on Saturday, September 23, at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.
The BARHOF Class of 2017 includes Peter Cleaveland (News), Dan Ethen (Engineer), Ron Fell (Management), John Mack Flanagan (Program Host), Richard Gossett (Program Host), Lee Jones (Specialty), Michael Krasny (Talk Show Host), Dan Sorkin (Program Host), Doug Sovern (News), Tony Tremayne (Pioneer; née Mel Fritze) and Rich Walcoff (Sports).
In addition, Chris Jackson of 98.5 KFOX will be honored as the recipient of the first Don Sherwood Award as the most popular radio personality in the Bay Area, as selected by the public. John Mack Flanagan, longtime personality on KFRC, KRQR, KSFO/KYA-FM and KWSS, goes into BARHOF as the people’s choice for the Sherwood Award in the Legends category.
Rosie Allen
Our host for the festivities will be Rosie Lee Allen, formerly of KGO Radio and herself a 2008 inductee into BARHOF.
The doors to BARHOF 2017 open at 11 AM for a no-host mix and mingle, followed by lunch and the ceremony at noon.
For reservations to the BARHOF 2017 celebration, please click here.
28 May 2017
Ken Ackerman: A Tribute To A Legend
CHRS President and Broadcast Legends board member Steve Kushman (left) with Ken Ackerman.
Ken Ackerman, an inaugural member of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame and co-founder of the Broadcast Legends, died on May 28 at age 95 of natural causes.
Ackerman’s radio career began in Sacramento, where he “got the radio bug” while attending Grant Union High School. In 1942, he landed a job at KQW. At the time, the station was still licensed to San Jose, requiring some programming to originate there. Ackerman spent time in the San Jose studios as well as KQW’s San Francisco studios.
He told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carl Nolte in 2009 that he remembers doing live broadcasts of big bands — Muggsy Spanier at the Bush Garden, a jazz band at the Mocambo, Del Courtney, Desi Arnaz, Ray Noble or Bob Crosby and his Bobcats, “live and direct for your listening pleasure from the Rose Room at San Francisco’s famous Palace Hotel.” Some of those live broadcasts would be distributed nationwide.
11 April 2017
Legends Honor San Jose’s KLIV
The Beach Boys perform at a 1964 concert promoted by San Jose’s KLIV
San Jose’s venerable KLIV (1590 AM) has been honored with the 2017 Legendary Station Award by the Bay Area Radio Museum and Hall of Fame, in recognition of its seven decades of service to listeners in the South Bay Area, and will be celebrated at a special Broadcast Legends luncheon on Tuesday, June 20, at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.
Founded in late 1946 as KSJO, the station began its life as a thousand-watt, daytime-only outlet located in an orchard at the corner of Story Road and Lucretia Avenue in still-rural San Jose, then watched as the city grew up around it over the years.
In 1960, the station’s owners – seeing no real future in FM radio – sold off KSJO’s FM sister and changed the AM station’s call letters to KLIV, while continuing to broadcast from its home on Story Road.
During the 1960s, KLIV established itself as one of the most popular stations in the region, playing popular Top 40 music aimed at the growing number of baby boomers whose parents began settling in the area, catering to the surfer boys and girls who headed over the hill to Santa Cruz every summer weekend, and helping inspire dozens of garage bands across the South Bay.
KLIV’s Bob Kieve
Fifty years ago, in July 1967, Robert S. Kieve and a partner purchased KLIV for $974,000; to this day, Mr. Kieve continues to operate KLIV under the Empire Broadcasting banner as one of the dwindling few independent major-market radio station owners in the United States. He was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame (BARHOF) in 2007, and recently celebrated his 95th birthday with the station’s alumni and current staff.
Among the popular voices that have graced KLIV’s airwaves over the years are John McLeod (BARHOF 2010), Mikel Hunter Herrington (2008), Dave Sholin (2008), Bob Ray, Ross McGowan, George Sampson, John Lester, John Bettencourt, Larry Mitchell, Jack Hayes, Peter Boam and Mac McGregor.
KLIV joins previous Legendary Station honorees KCBS, KGO, KSFO, KNBR, KFRC, KSAN, KPEN and KYA.
The Bay Area Radio Museum and Hall of Fame, founded in 2005, is a program of the California Historical Radio Society (CHRS), and is dedicated to preserving and honoring the history of radio broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area.
23 February 2017
Radio News: Past, Present and Future
MARK YOUR SCHEDULE:
Thursday, March 16
Basque Cultural Center
South San Francisco
11:30 AM – 2 PM
Over the years, the Broadcast Legends have presented all sorts of programs at our quarterly meetings — everything from old-time radio re-creations to kids TV.
One thing we’ve never done, till now, is take a look at Bay Area radio as it was in the 1960s, as it is now, and what it might look like in the future.
Remember what things were like in, say, 1967? What you could and couldn’t say … What sort of equipment we used … What our newscasts were like fifty years ago, in the time before satellites.
Make your reservation now!
How do things stand now? What’s been the effect of consolidation on news people and jocks and the listeners? And what might we see in the future? More news or less? Fewer owners? What about sports coverage? What about the business side? Where will the money be coming from, and who will do the selling?
We have a great panel lined up, which is scheduled to include Stan Bunger (Morning Anchor, KCBS); Stan Burford (Traffic Man, KGO); John Catchings (KFRC); Gil Haar (KYUU, KFRC); Jack Swanson (KGO, KCBS); and Peter Cleaveland (KGO), who will also act as the moderator.
This panel of folks has got years and years in the Bay Area radio. They have seen it all and helped to create much of it.
Join us and add your memories to the discussion on Thursday, March 16, 2017, at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco. Social time begins at 11:30 AM, followed by lunch at noon, and our program at about 1 PM.
8 November 2016
’Tis The Season — For The Legends Holiday Bash At The Basque!
Circle Friday, December 16, on your calendar right this minute. That’s the date of the annual Broadcast Legends Holiday Celebration, and you do not want to miss it.
Music, laughter, drama and good times all rolled into one.
The Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco is where you’ll find it all, starting with no-host cocktails at 11 a.m.
The Legend of the Year will be announced, and Darryl promises to break his very own record for the shortest General Meeting in history.
1 August 2016
Broadcast Legends To Host Radio Hall of Fame 2016 Celebration
As it has each year since its inception, the Broadcast Legends will host the 2016 edition of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame luncheon, which will be held at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco on Saturday, September 24, beginning at 11:30 AM.
This year’s class of inductees include Dianne Nicolini and Hoyt Smith, both currently of Classical KDFC, in the Program Host category; Wes “Scoop” Nisker (News); Kevin “The Rat” Radich (Sports); Narsai David (Specialty); Dave McKinsey (Executive); Robert Hammett and Edward Edison (Engineers); Hilly Rose (Living Legend); and Wilda Wilson Church and Dean Maddox (Pioneers).
More than 5,000 ballots were cast for this year’s BARHOF nominees, in public voting conducted by the California Historical Radio Society and its Bay Area Radio Museum.
The BARHOF 2016 celebration is open to the public. Advance reservations are required, but membership in Broadcast Legends or CHRS is not required.
For more about this year’s inductees, please visit the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame’s website.
For reservations, please click here.
24 April 2016
Boss Of The Bay KYA Gets Its Day With The Legends
You’re invited to take a trip back in time to when radio was boss as the Broadcast Legends celebrate “The Boss of the Bay” — 1260 KYA — which is being honored on Thursday, June 23, with the Legendary Station Award for 2016.
The KYA reunion and celebration will be held at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco, from 11:30 AM to 2 PM.
The Emperor himself: Gene Nelson at 1260 KYA (1965)
KYA becomes the latest station to be honored with designation as a Legendary Station by the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame (BARHOF), a program of the California Historical Radio Society. KYA joins the first-ever station to have received the award, KCBS, along with KGO, KNBR, KSFO, KFRC, KSAN and KPEN.
Even though KYA has been gone from the Bay Area’s airwaves since 1983, it can rightfully claim its heritage as the Bay Area’s longest-running Top 40 station, having begun its 25-year tenure in 1958. (By contrast, KYA’s chief competitor, the original Big 610, KFRC, had a twenty year run, from 1966 through 1986.)
9 February 2016
A Legends Lunch For All The Radio Boys and Girls!
Join the Broadcast Legends for lunch on Friday, March 18, at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco for a fascinating discussion about radio in its very earliest days — nearly a century ago!
Our guest speaker will be Mike Adams, Professor Emeritus at San Jose State University, member of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame (Class of 2011) and author of several essential volumes on broadcasting history, including “The Radio Boys and Girls: Radio, Telegraph, Telephone and Wireless Adventures for Juvenile Readers, 1890-1945,” which will provide the basis for our program.
“Radio in 1922: What the Boys and Girls Knew,” looks at a single year and compares the rise in broadcasting, and what Americans were being told about its significance, with the information young readers were getting in their Radio Boys and Radio Girls series books. The year 1922 was an important one in the transition from the dots and dashes of the wireless hobby to the radio as a source of entertainment and information.
The Broadcast Legends
Spring Quarterly Luncheon:
Mike Adams and Radio In 1922
Friday, March 18, 2016
11 AM – Reception (No Host Bar)
Noon – Luncheon
1 PM – Feature Program
Basque Cultural Center
599 Railroad Avenue
South San Francisco
14 January 2016
Al Hart: Farewell To A Legend
We awake today to the sad news that Al Hart has passed away at the age of 88. A longtime member of the Broadcast Legends, Al came to the Bay Area about 55 years ago from KEEL in Shreveport, La., to work at KABL (960 AM) before moving to KNBR (680 AM).
KCBS morning news anchors Lois Melkonian and Al Hart (1995)
But it was at KCBS Radio a few years later that he hit his stride, becoming perhaps the most iconic voice on this iconic station’s staff. Al arrived at KCBS in 1966, and was part of the team that transformed the station in 1968 to the all-news format that continues to thrive there to this day.
Before moving to his role as morning co-anchor on KCBS, Al had been working afternoon drive on the station. Following his retirement, he continued to be a welcome voice on KCBS, appearing with current morning co-anchor Stan Bunger on the weekly Wednesday chats with John Madden — always bringing along a batch of his signature snickerdoodle cookies, as well as the latest ruminations from Charlie The Checker.