Damon Bruce learns how to play the game
From the main studio of KGMZ (“The Game” at 95.7), afternoon host Damon Bruce can see me in the adjacent room, where his producers, including Ileana Matzorkis, are working. Indicating Anna Kagarakis, who’s by his side, filling in for his update anchor, Gianna Franco ,he booms, “Make a note of how many fantastic women work on my show. Not bad for a seething misogynist!”
Damon Bruce a misogynist? The Bruce who calls Franco “my radio wife” and “the heart of the show”? The Bruce who’s getting married next month to Gillian Madill ,a key figure at Salesforce?
Well, yes. Or at least he was one. Thanks to the Internet, Bruce, 41, will always be known for a rant he uncorked in 2013 while on KNBR’s sister station, KTCT (“The Ticket,” 1050). The targets were women in sports and “fellas out there that have just been so feminized by the sensitive types out there who continue to interject their ultra-feminine, sensitive opinions into the world of sports.”
Conceding “a small handful of women who are any good at this at all,” he said that “the amount of women talking in sports to the amount of women who actually have something to say is one of the most disproportionate ratios I’ve ever seen in my freaking life. But here’s a message for all of them … all of this world of sports, all right — especially the sport of football — has a setting. It’s set to men.”
Bruce is a forceful, often entertaining, off-the-cuff speaker, and his rant sparked a national backlash. Keith Olbermann, then on ESPN, named Bruce “the worst person
“I regret deeply the incredibly talented women who I lumped in with a broad brush. There are many people who are very good at their jobs. I regret a lot of things I said.” Damon Bruce
in the world” in his nightly segment. Then, when KNBR programmer Lee Hammer failed to fire Bruce, he named Hammer “the worst person in the world.”
“The entire Internet turned against me,” said Bruce, who actually welcomes heat. As he told Podcast About Sports Radio, “Getting people a little angry at you is at the heart of what you do.”
Still, he has some contriteness. “I regret deeply the incredibly talented women who I lumped in with a broad brush. There are many people who are very good at their jobs. I regret a lot of things I said — but it’s really interesting to attend your own funeral. You know who was an ally, and who an enemy.”
After his tirade, Bruce was suspended briefly. But KTCT wasn’t where he wanted to be. KNBR was “The Sports Leader,” the bigs. But when he found himself bypassed for several openings there, he was open to an invitation from KGMZ’s program director, Jason Barrett.
KGMZ, which opened shop in 2011, was struggling to compete against KNBR, but by 2014 it was making inroads, according to Barrett, who left last year. Bruce admits being uncertain about jumping ship. “Everyone was worried that the station was going back to its country format. I asked, ‘Is the station stable?’ ” One answer came from station owner Entercom’s CEO. “He called me and alleviated all my concerns.” Bruce got everything he wanted in his contract, including a guarantee that he’d never be paired with a co-host.
Bruce notes that he worked well with Larry Krueger, Gary Radnich’s co-host, when they did 49ers pre- and post-game shows. But speaking of Radnich … In 2011, KNBR management did move Bruce from “The Ticket” to co-host Radnich’s popular mid-morning show. Radnich had been working solo, and he didn’t take to Bruce. “It was just awful,” Radnich told me. “He just wanted to get ahead so bad that … he didn’t get it.”
Bruce says Radnich sabotaged him. “If a person is prepared for a broadcast and ready to talk sports, we’ll get along and have fun. That’s not who Gary wanted to be. He didn’t want to come in early to talk about the day’s show. I wanted it to work, but in a week, he took two weeks of vacation and basically quit on the program.” Bruce was out, and, soon, Krueger was in.
And, now, Bruce is content. Since his youth in Indiana, where he enjoyed listening to Howard Stern (“I had to ask my mother, ‘What’s a lesbian?’ ”) and loved sports, he followed the earliest sportsfocused radio stations, on ESPN and WFAN, out of New York.
In 1998, after graduating from Indiana University, where he studied broadcasting, he took a road trip with a buddy across the country, stopping at three ballparks along the way, and landed in San Francisco, where he got a “menial job” at KNBR, doing production work and editing sports highlights. But he had the goods. As a kid, he was “always curious; always opinionated and extroverted.” He got reporting and hosting gigs at various sports radio networks until he returned to KNBR in 2005, as host of “Sportsphone 680.”
Now, he’s up against the excellent Tom Tolbert on KNBR, but he pays no mind to ratings. (KGMZ program director Don Kollins won’t divulge any numbers but notes that, although Bruce’s program, from 3 to 7 p.m., was often pre-empted for Oakland A’s broadcasts, “he’s doing well; he’s a great soldier.”)
Bruce admits to having aspirations to go national one day, but emphasizes that he’s happy where he is. “If 20 years from now I can be known as the Ralph Barbieri of 95.7 ‘The Game’ — if that’s all I did, I would consider it as good a career as I could possibly have had. It’d be an honor to fit that billing.” Get a job: Tom Saunders was shocked — shocked! — to hear his former fellow KOIT announcer, Laurie Sanders, on KQED-FM, introducing various PBS and local programs. It didn’t even sound like her, he said. But it’s Sanders, doing fill-in work. As with most broadcasting talent, you grab whatever’s available …