1 August 2019
Ray Taliaferro
BARHOF Class of 2019
The Broadcast Legends‘ annual celebration of Bay Area radio excellence will take place on Saturday, September 21, at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.
The luncheon will honor the latest inductees into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, as well as the recipients of this year’s Sherwood Awards – the “people’s choices” for the Bay Area’s most popular radio stars.
13 May 2019
It will be a Foghead Family Reunion on Wednesday, June 12, 2019, as the Broadcast Legends celebrate KFOG (104.5 FM), the recipient of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame‘s Legendary Station Award for 2019.
The luncheon will take place at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco, and will include a roundtable discussion starring a bevy of KFOG legends, with Ben Fong-Torres serving as moderator.
10 February 2019
Spring is in the air, and the Mighty Legends Old Time Radio Players will be on the air at our next luncheon on Tuesday, March 26, at the elegant Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.
In addition to hanging out and catching up with your favorite friends and colleagues from Bay Area radio and television, the Legends radio troupe will present a live re-creation of an episode of “The Lone Ranger.”
Featured in the cast of “The Lone Ranger” will be Dave Parker, who performed on the original radio program, which debuted on Detroit’s WXYZ back in January 1933.
18 November 2018
Elvis (or is it Ben Fong-Torres? ) invites you to spend a blue, blue, blue Christmas with the Legends!
The tree will be trimmed, the stockings hung and the grog, both hot and cold, will be ready on Friday, December 14, as the Legends Holiday Party comes to the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.
This yearly event will feature some things old and some things new to help get you in the holiday mood.
The Legends Annual Meeting will, as always, will be conducted by our Executive Director, Darryl Compton, who will also unveil this years’ Legend of the Year recipient.
1 August 2018
The Broadcast Legends will celebrate the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018 on Saturday, October 13, with a special luncheon at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.
This year’s class – the thirteenth to be honored – was selected in voting conducted among current members of BARHOF. The recipient of this year’s Sherwood Award as most popular personality active on Bay Area airwaves, as chosen by the public, will also be celebrated during the luncheon.
The BARHOF Class of 2018: (top l-r) Beach, Krock, Dung, Edwards, Bristow; (bottom l-r) Heller, Zlot, Burns, Papa, Farr
Among the members of BARHOF’s Class of 2018 are longtime Broadcast Legends Fred Krock, Gordon Zlot and the late Chris Edwards.
The announcement was made in July at the annual Radio Day By The Bay celebration at the California Historical Radio Society‘s headquarters in Alameda.
For reservations, please click here. (Advance reservations are required.)
10 May 2018
You know their faces and voices. You’ve seen the stories that they’ve reported. At the next Broadcast Legends luncheon, you’ll hear the stories behind the stories, as told by several of the finest reporters in Bay Area television history.
Don Sanchez
Belva Davis, Rita Williams, Manny Ramos and Tom Vacar will take to the Legends stage at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco to tell their stories from the front lines and behind the scenes in Bay Area television news, with another fabled Bay Area newsman, Don Sanchez, serving as moderator and sharing his own tales.
Our event is called “TV News: Then, Now and Future,” and it begins at 11:30 AM on June 19 with a no-host reception, followed by lunch and our program.
Peter Cleaveland, president of the Broadcast Legends and a 2017 inductee into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, will serve as master of ceremonies.
To make your reservation, please click here.
5 February 2018
It was a year of protests and violence in every corner of the world, and of political battles and campus unrest — a year marred by the murders of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, and the year that Richard M. Nixon was elected to serve as our 37th president.
The year was 1968, and nearly 550,000 American soldiers were serving in Vietnam.
John Mack Flanagan, with a 45 on his hip and a portable tape recorder in his hand
Not all of that half-million-strong force was there “in country” for armed combat, however. A small group performed a different military duty: providing entertainment on radio and television for their brothers and sisters in uniform.
Among those that served in Vietnam were three men with strong Bay Area media connections — John Mack Flanagan (BARHOF 2017), Dan Ethen (BARHOF 2017), and Michael Bennett.
At the next Broadcast Legends quarterly luncheon, these three will be on hand to tell their stories.
The event, entitled “Something Happening Here: Vietnam On The Air,” takes place on Thursday, March 15, at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco, beginning at 11:30 AM.
16 October 2017
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
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
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.