‘ Forum’ host Michael Krasny announces retirement from KQED.
KQED morning host, ‘ true talk show pioneer’ retires
Michael Krasny, a voice of wisdom for nearly 30 years as host of KQEDFM’s morning callin show “Forum,” announced his retirement Monday.
Krasny gave plenty of advance notice to assuage his loyal longtime listeners. The last broadcast of his weekday hour, from 9 to 10 a. m., will be Feb. 15, his 28th anniversary at the station.
“I like the symmetry of going out on the anniversary of the day I started,” said Krasny by phone. “I've always liked Mark Twain’s comment that age is mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it shouldn’t matter. But I turned 76 in September and realized that age does matter.”
A new grandfather, Krasny also recently retired as a tenured professor of English at San Francisco State University, where he has taught since 1970.
It was his calm and professorial tone that worked so well in the callin format. “Forum” is a serious show about ideas, which is also how he handled himself at San Francisco State. “I see myself as an educator,” he said. “Public radio is an educational forum, and I have always valued what my callers have to say.”
This has brought him a roster of guests that includes Maya Angelou, William F. Buckley, President Jimmy Carter, Cesar Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Francis Ford Coppola, Jerry Garcia, Allen Ginsberg, Werner Herzog, John McCain, Toni Morrison, President Barack Obama, Camille Paglia, Rosa Parks, Nancy Pelosi, Sean Penn, Salman Rushdie, Carl Sagan, Bernie Sanders, Patti Smith, Charlize Theron, Wayne Thiebaud, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, David Foster Wallace,
Gene Wilder and George Will.
“Krasny is a true talk show pioneer,” said longtime radio reporter and author Ben FongTorres. “He changed the sound, the content and the impact of a local talk show, by bringing a literate, highly intelligent voice to it and by being a sharp, probing interviewer.”
In an era with fewer radio listeners, “Forum” has been resilient. It consistently ranks at or near the top of the drivetime charts. Already under assault, drivetime radio has taken a blow during the pandemic as fewer people commute by car and more work remotely from home. Still, Krasny pulls in a weekly average of 240,000 listeners, with another 70,000 listening online and through his podcast.
He has always been particularly strong in interviewing authors, being one himself. His own books are “Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life,” “Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic’s Quest,” “Sound Ideas” and “Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means.”
In 2017, Krasny was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame.
All this for an academic who never set out to be a radio host. He grew up in Cleveland watching TV talk shows through the long winters, “everybody
“Public radio is an educational forum, and I have always valued what my callers have to say.” Michael Krasny, KQED radio host and SFSU professor
from Dick Cavett to William F. Buckley to Johnny Carson,” he said. He got his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin and was hired as a lecturer at San Francisco State in 1970.
Always interested in politics, he pitched a talk show to KTIM, a small FM station in Marin County, near his home in San Anselmo. He had never been on the radio before he launched “Beyond
the Hot Tub” at KTIM in 1983. From there he moved on to KGO. He was hired to host “Forum” in 1993, replacing Kevin Pursglove, who had created and launched “Forum” in 1987.
Krasny never had a signature signon or gimmick. Then, as now, he starts at 9 a. m. with the signon as reassuring as a cup of coffee. “Good morning and welcome to ‘ Forum,’ ” he says. “I’m Michael Krasny.”
His last day expects to be pretty much the same.
No extravagant farewells.
“It is bittersweet,” he says. “I keep thinking about the day my father retired from an ice cream factory. He was sorry to be leaving, and I have that same feeling of ambivalence. But it is time.”
At 10 a. m., Krasny is followed by Mina Kim. Her show will continue as KQED searches for a replacement for Krasny.
“Michael is a Bay Area jewel,” said Holly Kernan,
KQED’s chief content officer. “His is a model public service career, and he has brought depth, compassion and the expertise of a literature professor to the airwaves on a daily basis.”