Sorry, Ronn, we’ve moved on.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/KGO-ends-Ronn-Owens-Show-after-42-years-12496942.php
I checked the Cumulus stock price about a year back and it was hovering at the $.30 mark. Since then it has declined to under $.10 and, somehow, Ronn Owens is holding onto his diminished celebrity status at the once-famed KGO radio station. As the sfgate article states:
As of Monday, “The Ronn Owens Show” has ended, making way for the debut of “The Ronn Owens Report” the next day.
The new show, premiering Tuesday, will air weekdays… and cover whatever topics Owens finds interesting that day.
“My goal is to be a 2018 version of Paul Harvey and Andy Rooney,” he said in an interview in his KGO office after his final show.
Owens said the decision is a “win-win” for him and the station. “They get the credibility of still having me, and it helps me because ‘Ronn Owens KGO Radio’ gets me a better table than just ‘Ronn Owens.’”
That sums it up. He’s hanging on by his fingertips because he wants people to know ‘he’ deserves a better table at a restaurant because, technically, he’s in media. I guess ten minutes every week day is enough to make restaurateurs suck up to ego.
How’s this for timing, ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950) aired last night on KQED. I watched snippets of it, including the scene where Norma Desmond rides in her aging luxury automobile to the studio where she had been a money-making star in earlier days. The few people who remembered her showed respect. Others looked with curiosity at a relic of time gone by.
Ronn is a relic who will be remembered by former KGO listeners as the guy who always claimed he could do or say whatever he wanted without corporate interference but when it came time to prove that, in December, 2011, he gushed something similar to ‘this will be a good change’ after his colleagues had been escorted to the door.
Jody, in the comments section:
The final chapter in killing KGO began to play out in 2011. That’s when Cumulus announced it was rebranding KGO as “news and information,” and moved from a news-talk format to a primarily news format. The company fired all but one of the regular M-F talk hosts and instead expanded its news operation.
I wanted to hear the “new” format and was listening to Justin Wittmayer as Ronn Owens first guest who said that there are glorious days ahead with the “NEXT GENERATION OF KGO,” and the new format.
The beginning of the end:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/12/02/kgo-radio-plans-immediate-shift-to-news-oriented-format/
To be fair, I know Ronn’s comment about getting a better table was an attempt at humor.
But those of us, who used to listen to him over the years, know there is a bit of Norma Desmond lurking in his soul:
You used to be big. You used to be a morning host on KGO Radio.
I am big, it’s radio that got small.
kgoformerlisteners 