KNBR's Radnich/Bruno 'Schmoozfest Ruined by Producer Play; KGO Radio Update and Do the A's know the way to San Jose?

The Mid-Week 'PULSE from the 'City by the Bay'

NEWS, NOTES, AND COMMENTS

SF Bay Area Media; KNBR Foibles, Do the A's know the way to San Jose? KGO/Luckoff meeting and other sundries to mull and ponder....

Leave it to KNBR's illustrious "producers" to screw up one of the few decent and funny bits on an otherwise increasingly bizarre sports station that calls itself the "Sports Leader". Gary Radnich's 30-minute morning shtick with Content Factory's syndicated sports host Tony Bruno, (KNBR 1050, 7-10 PM) is a relatively funny, often hilarious amalgam of rapid-fire show biz news, intermittent sports chit-chat, and a vast array of obscure Hollywood/Vegas celebrity potpourri. In the mix are callers, sometimes with shtick themselves, that provide the fodder that both Bruno and Radnich feed off; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but by and large the half-hour schmooze fest is a staple of SF Bay Area morning radio. Until now.

Radnich's producer is Mike Hohler. The word "Producer" is intentionally in quotes because KNBR's producers do very little producing and provide all the necessary ammo in local media circles that morale at the CUMULUS outlet is in serious malaise. More on that later.

The Radnich/Bruno affair has now been hijacked by an audio onslaught of "sound drops", occasionally funny, often pointy, but now a gimmick that has ruined a segment of the show that many considered sacred radio ground. Bruno's back and forth with Radnich, as previously noted, is often quite entertaining, but the bozo's in the back room have gone overboard on the "drops" that are now destroying what was once a pretty funny bit. The continual "bye-bye's", "good byes", "you bastard" was and is funny, but not when it's aired repeatedly over and over to a point where the "sound" becomes nothing more than mere noise, and takes away from the program.

Occasionally, Radnich is heard on-air imploring the boys in the back to "stop it", but at times, the listeners don't know if it's part of the shtick, or Radnich is really calling off the audio quagmire, and indeed it's a messy quagmire. Message boards around the SF-area Internet dept. are quickly bemoaning the shows intense reliance on the sound effects, citing what I've discovered, that the segment is quickly losing it's appeal.

More on KNBR: according to a source with knowledge of the station's apparatus, the general mood and morale inside the all-sports station is "awful". The source, who's been at the station for several years, requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from management. Not helping matters was the recent revelation that Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey, (as noted in John Gorman's media blog) just paid himself a $700,000 bonus in a time when the company just laid off several of it's personnel in these challenging economic times.

KNBR is one of the few Cumulus properties that makes money, and the fact it's in the nation's 4TH-largest market, is largely the reason Dickey's intention to further cut back personnel has been delayed in his SF operations. KNBR's overall ratings in SF in the 6-plus Arbitron book make it the 13Th-ranked station, but it's core Adult Male demo of 25-54 is in the top five, which is attractive to advertisers.

Radnich, the weekday evening sports anchor at troubled independent KRON-TV, (it's owned by Young Broadcasting, which filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Feb.) has an expiring contract at the end of 2009 and his future in the local TV picture here remains clouded and is a source of intrigue from several media analysts.

There's speculation that he could possibly be looking at NBC 11, the San Jose-based peacock affiliate that currently has Raj Matthei as it's sports anchor, but whose relative obscurity makes Radnich the ideal candidate for the station to make a pitch to; only problem is several factors, including money, Matthei's contract, and whether the station could afford Radnich, who commands a salary in the high, six-figure range. That may not be for long as the local TV news shrink their talent's compensation, even so-called "star talent". Stay tuned.

******KGO RADIO UPDATE: The dominant Citadel-owned talkie, ( 810 AM) which lost it's #1 status to KOIT-FM, had a pep talk last Friday to station personnel from it's long-time GM, Mickey Luckoff. Word was that Luckoff informed station talk-hosts, producers, and news reporters and anchors, that KGO was "safe", despite the impending implosion by penny-stock Citadel, which is rumored to file a Chapter 11 BK any day now.

*******"San Jose A's? No way. The south bay city, home to the NHL's San Jose Sharks, is forming a committee to explore the feasibility of building a ballpark near the HP Pavilion, to possibly lure a baseball team, probably the Oakland A's, whose ballpark development in nearby Fremont, recently fell apart. Several problems with this idea, among the biggest: the cross-bay SF Giants territorial rights of the area as backed by MLB, among them. Other notable problems is the state of the economy and the inability of most civic entities to build new stadiums, particularly in times when their own budgets are being slashed. Although the A's ownership have stated they would finance a new baseball-only structure, the cost for infrastructure, EIR reports, and the lengthy would-be litigation involving, possibly, the Giants, local residents that object to any city-involved stadium issues, make it highly unlikely that the Athletics would seriously consider San Jose. The best guess here is that the franchise will focus back on Oakland's impending proposal and/or a wait-and-see if the economy improves.