The first report came Saturday morning at 6: 45 when KCBS anchor, Dave Padilla, announced that Raiders owner, Al Davis, had passed away referring to a message on the team's website.
A few minutes later, both Padilla and co-anchor, Janice Wright, did an immediate phone interview with sports anchor, Hal Ramey.
The CBS Radio news at the top of the hour led with the death of Davis, ditto ABC Radio News on KGO.
Soon after, many local outlets, including KTVU's "Mornings on Two", (Weekend) began earnest coverage.
Both ESPN's Internet division, (ESPN and ESPN News) devoted healthy coverage to the Al Davis passing, (considering an early Saturday morning event, pretty top-notch coverage).
An unlikely outlet and the frequent target of my wrath delivered first-rate salvos: KNBR's Patrick Connor scored some significant phonos with Gary Radnich, Ronnie Lott, and most impressively, Raiders radio analyst and ex-coach/player, Tom Flores, who sounded utterly drained.
Nice job, P-Conn, (see how simple conversation need not be destroyed by sound drops?)
**Later on as the day progressed, local TV got heavily involved, but ran the obligatory repeated shots of a San Leandro sports bar and mostly inane comments from the assorted fans. What was good was a shot of Raiders headquarters in Alameda of a makeshift memorial--too bad we didn't get more of that with actualities instead of the repeated story line from Ricky's. (And I like Ricky's, but too much predictable reaction.)
Nice salvos: KCBS anchor Stan Bunger with John Madden this morning. Madden was most effective in his description of the side of Davis few people knew. And he did so with a noticeable emotional edge. Good radio. (A slight irritant, but I wish Bunger would have asked him if he'd been asked about a temporary gig with the Raiders as several news reports had suggested. No-go, but I'll let that slide).
*Then there was poor KGO Radio which didn't have a clue, (as usual, on the weekend). KGO simply isn't the place to go to on radio when news breaks.
Joannie Griggans was doing her Saturday exercise show and Gene Burns began his "Dining Around" program at 10 AM. The first mention of the Davis death came via a news update at the bottom of the hour. KGO's network connection, ABC provided more info than KGO.
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