After 20 years, Radnich still on his game
When KGMZ (“The Game”) launched last year with a promotional campaign that ridiculed KNBR as the home of geezers, it was probably taking aim at Ralph Barbieri and Gary Radnich.
It hasn’t worked. Although Barbieri, 66, was let go in April, Radnich, 62, signed a contract extension, and marked his 20th anniversary with KNBR last week. (He debuted Nov. 2, 1992, seven years after he joined KRONTV.)
Radnich has remained employed in an industry that, in recent years, often rewards success (and big paychecks) with dismissals.
He says he has survived because “my style’s a little different. I’m not afraid to say something about someone, but they’re things I would say to him in person.” Beyond candor, he’s also fast, funny and fiercely independent.
He has also rolled with occasional punches. When management decided to pair him with a partner, he agreed to try out the young and feisty Damon Bruce for a month. Within two weeks, it was obvious that it wouldn’t work. “It was just awful,” Radnich said. “He just wanted to get ahead so bad that … he didn’t get it.” Bruce returned to KNBR’s sister station at 1050 AM, where he’s on from noon to 3 p.m.
Since the Bruce experiment, Larry Krueger has been Radnich’s co-host. Radnich says he agreed with the idea of having “someone to bounce off of … as long as it’s ‘The Gary Radnich Show With Somebody Else.’ ” Just kidding. Maybe. (They are co-billed, but at 9 a.m., it is, indeed, “The Gary Radnich Show With Larry Krueger.” Krueger also hosts the 49ers pregame shows with … Bruce.)
Radnich may not be old, but he’s definitely old school. He’s a combo of Don Rickles, Herb Caen and the Rat Pack, zipping around town in a Bentley, his beautiful wife, Alicia, by his side, gliding past well-wishers and valets at places such as Fisherman’s Grotto No. 9, where customers nod their recognition.
He laps up the attention, all the time denying that it’s important to him. He kids with maitre d’s and waiters the way he pokes fun at his colleagues on KRON. At Grotto No. 9, the wait staff approaches his table, and he asks, “Am I showing off? Two waiters!”
About his 20 years on KNBR, he says, “I’ve been treated pretty damned good.” It helps that he has maintained strong ratings. Despite that, there was conjecture last summer, after station owner Cumulus let Barbieri go, that Radnich might be next. Cumulus had also jettisoned several talk-show hosts from sister KGO last December, excepting Ronn Owens.
Radnich went on the air and said he’d signed a new threeyear contract. So there. He says he spoke up about a personal matter because, the night before, his 12-year-old daughter, Jolie, had been bothered by what she’d found on a website.
“I was born missing two fingers,” Radnich says. “I put myself through college (UNLV, in Las Vegas) playing basketball. So, there’s a website, ‘Radnich’s Hand.com.’ She read it, and somebody’s calling me a ‘three-fingered piece of garbage.’ I was stunned. I went in the next day and saw my e-mails saying, ‘Ronn’s going, you’re next.’ I was hung over from that hand thing, so I said, ‘I’m going to end this.’ ” He did it, he said, by speaking out.
Radnich has a parallel contract with KRON, which he has stuck with through tumultuous ownership changes and a reduced status since it lost its NBC affiliation in 2002. He had a long-term contract, he says, and, despite his occasional interest in (and from) other stations, has chosen to stay put, mainly because of changes in the industry.
“The whole business shrank to where sports gets 2½ minutes’’ in a newscast, he says. “At KRON I can have six or seven minutes; I can bring in an interview guest, I can be a symbol and have a little fun. Granted, the audience is smaller, but at least I can walk out and say, ‘You did something.’ ”
On Fridays, he walks out with Alicia, with whom he does segments at 6:45 and 8:45 p.m. She reads e-mails he’s received about sports and other subjects, and he responds. The fact that the emails range beyond sports reflects Radnich’s persona. “You get more response when you’re kidding Pam Moore than for sports,” he says. “By the time we’re on, everybody knows who won the game.”
On the radio, Radnich also goes his own way, talking sports, sure, but questioning, among other things, the very notion of being a fan. “I root for people, not laundry,” he says, meaning team uniforms. “People say, ‘You don’t love the Giants?’ No, but I do love my wife and kids. You’ve got to be close to who you are, as opposed to being what you think people want you to be.”
Watch your back: Ronn Owens is crediting his aching back for saving his life. Early last month, after he found no relief from painkillers, he went to St. Francis Memorial Hospital and had some blood tests done. “All my red cells were positive,” he said. “Every cell was poisonous.” He was diagnosed with endocarditis, whose symptoms “are like the flu, so you would not normally go to a hospital.” After getting “blasted with antibiotics” to battle sepsis, he said, in midOctober, he expected to be recovered by now.
As for staying with KGO past his contract’s expiration at year’s end, Owens wouldn’t go on the record, but sounded optimistic. “I will be working,” he said. “Somewhere.” Jive: Just in time to stuff stockings, it’s “Live Jive,” a tribute to the free-form KSAN of the ’70s. The CD mixes music with “Jive 95” voices: Dusty Street, Wes “Scoop” Nisker, Richard Gossett, Tom Donahue, Stefan Ponek and Edward Bear. Ten songs, all first performed live on KSAN, feature the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Boz Scaggs, the Doobie Brothers, Cold Blood, the Pointer Sisters, Stoneground, the Persuasions and Jesse Colin Young. Co-exec. producers Kenny Wardell and Jim Draper, former Jivers, also included some vintage KSAN jingles. The CD benefits the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics’ Rock Medicine program. (HAFC has merged with Walden House as Health RIGHT 360.) For more info and to get a copy or a download, go to www.live-jive.org.
Live: KFOG’s 19th “Live From the Archives” is on sale at Peet’s coffee shops, and at KFOG.com. The 20 artists, recorded in the KFOG PlaySpace, include Train, the Shins, Foster the People, Florence & the Machine, World Party, Mayer Hawthorne, Thomas Dolby, Ingrid Michaelson, Amos Lee and Keane. Proceeds go to seven Bay Area food banks. A complete track listing is at links.sfgate.com/ZLMN.
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