A couple of clarifications for context:
Tuna says (in Ben Fong-Torres' book The Hits Just Keep On Comin') that he got off on the wrong foot with Robert W. on his first day at KHJ in fall 1967, when his opening line was "I'd like to thank Robert W. Morgan for warming up the audience for me". From then on, Morgan poked fun at Tuna on the air, usually centering on a pun that Charlie had made the day before, which RWM could make sound spectacularly unfunny even if you'd laughed at it the day before when Charlie delivered it.
It was three years later (October, 1970) that Morgan went to WIND, Chicago. During his last show, he made reference a couple of times to Tuna being very good...and had Charlie on by phone, where he was very gracious and talked about looking forward to seeing Tuna at his going-away party that night.
Morgan was gone 15 months. In January, 1972, KHJ told Tuna they were giving Robert W. his morning show back and offered Tuna 9-Noon. As M-ONeil notes, Charlie felt he'd earned his morning drive stripes, so he turned the offer down and went to KCBQ, San Diego. Tuna didn't mention Morgan on his last show (though he was expecting to do one more than he did) and Morgan didn't mention Tuna on his first. Charlie Van Dyke was brought in from KGB to do 9-Noon (he stayed six months before taking morning drive at WLS, Chicago).
Morgan lasted 18 months the second time around before walking out with Bill Drake and The Real Don Steele. Tuna returned to L.A. to do mornings as part of the KROQ-AM launch in September, 1972. A year later, he moved to mornings at KKDJ...about 60 days ahead of Morgan's debut on KIQQ. Morgan did his first show as "Danny Van Tuna" (a triple shot; at Danny Martinez, who had filled some of KHJ's mornings, Charlie Van Dyke, who returned from WLS to take the job full-time, and Tuna).
From there, it can be argued that for the next 20 years, Tuna had the better career. He stayed at KKDJ, becoming its program director while still doing mornings when the format flipped to AC and the calls to KIIS-FM in October, 1975. At about the same time, Morgan left KIQQ and took the weekend/fill-in jock job at KMPC.
In May, 1977, Tuna returned to mornings at KHJ when Van Dyke went home to KLIF in Dallas. But six months later, John Sebastian was named PD of KHJ and severely curtailed Tuna's talk time...it got worse with a further format refinement in June of 1978. Tuna bailed for mornings at KTNQ in September '78...and a few months later was told that the station was going Spanish. He survived, though...moving to what had been KTNQ's FM sister, KGBS-FM, which changed calls to KHTZ, in August, 1979....the same month that Morgan, after four years in weekends and fill-ins, finally replaced Dick Whittinghill in morning drive at KMPC.
But it was only about a year later that KMPC went talk. Morgan held on, surviving the talk format and coming out the other side playing Adult Standards. A couple of years of that and Morgan was itching to be relevant again...and jumped for a disastrous two years at KMGG, ending in 1986 when that station became Power 106. All through this, for seven years, Tuna had been doing mornings at KHTZ. That station flipped to Classic Rock, but Tuna went to its new AM sister...oldies KRLA...and Morgan went back to mornings at KMPC (the line about hair and teeth was actually in 1986, between the KMGG and KPWR gigs, during the last hours of KHJ, when RWM sat in with Dave Sebastian Williams).
In 1990, Tuna moved to mornings at oldies KODJ, which later became KCBS-FM. It wasn't until 1992 when Morgan's career started outpacing Tuna's again, with the move to KRTH. Tuna took Morgan's old KMPC job, but the format was now sports talk and didn't last long. Tuna did country at Orange County's KIKF for several years, and was there when Morgan announced he had lung cancer in 1997.
According to Tuna, in the Ben Fong-Torres' book, he and Morgan became friends near the end, and Morgan did tell KRTH that he thought Tuna should be his successor. KRTH went with Charlie Van Dyke instead, and after only a couple of years, began the Gary Bryan-Hollywood Hamilton-Gary Bryan shuffle.
My take? If KHJ had stuck with Tuna in 1972, when Robert W. came back from Chicago, Tuna would probably have had a ten-year run (more than double Morgan's) in mornings at KHJ. I seriously doubt he would have joined Drake and Steele in the walkout. Don't get me wrong. Morgan was beyond great. But nobody (not he, Tuna or KHJ) won in his 1972 comeback.
Only three guys did mornings at KHJ when it mattered...Robert W. Morgan, Charlie Tuna and Charlie Van Dyke. Morgan and Van Dyke have had morning shows at K-Earth. It doesn't make sense for Tuna not to.
---Michael Hagerty
