Lopaka said:
All news...KOGO tried unsuccessfully many years ago, so did 1360 way back when as KCNN.
I was the 6AM to noon anchor for KCNN and that was a strange operation: we mostly ran the audio from CNN TV (that's right most of our programming was television without the pictures). I did six hours of local news breaks, then former 13K (AM 1360's last Top 40 name) Jeff Lucifer did noon to 6PM. We each recorded a half dozen one minute news breaks that were rotated from 6PM to 6AM (some of our new breaks were close to 18 hours old when they aired! CNN was just getting started in those days and the Falklands War was going on when we first put KCNN on the air: CNN's reporters were full of breathless excitement and CNN had all of those annoying news sounders that ran seemingly every 15 seconds. The sound was frenetic at best and it exhausting to listen to. I was really happy when they brought in Monica Zech to anchor 10-2 so Jeff and i got shorter shifts. KGB's disastrous attempt at all-news didn't last too long before they switched over to big band and what became KPOP 1360.
I'm trying to recall when KOGO was all news: it may have been the KOGO Radio Magazine of the early 80's which involved lots of news and features in an strange amalgam format with with lots of news and features and DJ hosts such as Shotgun Tom, Jeannie Cavitt and some lame morning guy from back east by the name of Bob Decarlo. Actually he might have been a good jock, but he knew nothing about San Diego, had an East Coast act and suffered from the overall failings of the "radio magazine" format. I did a weekly documentary series which ran in daily segments. As a journalist it was a rare chance to do something outside the ordinary anchoring of radio news, but as an example of how the KOGO programmers had not a clue, our station was called the "Radio Magazine" but operations manager Jesse Bullet insisted that I call each segment a "chapter." I tried to point out to him that books have chapters, not magazines, but as with so many other things, the details were not important. My favorite story from that station was from my first week I had not yet been on the year (I spent the first week preparing the segments that would run the following week): Program Director Reed Reeker stuck his head in the newsroom door and said "Hey Bobby, you're sounding great man." I didn't bother to tell him I had not been on the air yet, but it reinforced my belief that if your name is Bob, anyone who calls you "Bobby" is generally full of it.
KOGO later did news/talk under Par Broadcasting when they had shows from Imus, G. Gordon Liddy, etc. The late Jack Merker, who had been a very good news anchor at KSDO, was news director but was so consumed with hatred for KSDO that he couldn't think straight. I worked there as morning anchor for two weeks before I quit: it was just too weird.
KSDO was the only San Diego that ever did good all news programming but probably these days no one would make the investment required to do it right again: anchors, reporters, writers, board ops, etc. It's a lot cheaper to just hire a board op and run a syndicated feed or have the minimum wage board op and a screener play gofer to a couple of sports mouths.
I must say that the days of genuine radio news teams were at times a lot of fun, even at the "radio magazine" I recall one time at KOGO when brush fires were breaking out all over the county. We had a few radio-equipped news cars (no cell phones then) and Capt. Stan Brown reporting from a helicopter. That day we were all over the county at times almost among the flames reporting live. At one point there was a fire out in Spring Valley, I think, threatening several homes on a hillside. I was on one side of the hill in my news car, someone else was on the other side of the hill and Capt Stan was hovering above it all and we had the in studio anchor. The four of us passed the mike (figuratively) from one to another, ad-libbing of course, and it was some impressive on scene live coverage the likes of which hardly ever shows up on radio anymore. At an earlier fire scene that day I was doing my live report when I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed the flames coming up over the embankment right behind me. I did a quick "the fire's on my tail so I gotta run" and got the hell out of there. It'd be nice to see someone once again put together a real news team in San Diego: alas it ain't gonna happen, but at least we now have KNX back.
