I read a generic headline about a journalist missing, but what a shock to see the person missing is Ray.
I recently found out about the death of Dr. Bill Wattenburg in August of this year and now there’s some disturbing news about Ray.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Longtime-San-Francisco-journalist-Ray-Taliaferro-13418925.php
I’ve been listening to various talk radio hosts in New York, Minneapolis, Texas and other cities around the country. This week, on several stations, I’ve heard the news story about San Francisco mayor, London Breed, commenting on the reality of the streets of San Francisco.
By Adina Firestone (IMG_7066 (1)) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Joe Pags, talk radio host, recorded his very own San Francisco parody:
(The actual parody begins at 15:21, if you don’t want to listen to the news story and their banter. That begins at 10:08.)
https://player.fm/series/the-joe-pags-show/joe-pags-show-7-20-18
Joe Pags website:
I saw Phil Matier on local news this morning discussing with Scott Wiener the legality of conservatorships to deal with the issue. I can’t find the podcast but here is an article about Wiener’s proposal:
This article highlights how the homeless and addict issue affects daily life:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Neighbors-disgusted-over-despair-on-block-hit-13015964.php
I’ve seen many lost souls wandering the streets in San Francisco. I’ve been threatened several times from drugged out zombies. I’ve seen piles of poop still hanging onto sides of buildings and have seen, more than I care to recall, a number of people pulling down their pants in the middle of the sidewalk and dropping ‘whatever’ there. It’s disgusting.
There is one addict who roams the streets and steals clothes from laundromats. He wears a new outfit every day. On Friday he was wearing a skirt. Last week he was dressed all in black with a matching hat. The week before he was in all white with a cape and crown. He’s been out there for years. He strips down to nothing and changes his clothes on the sidewalk, for all to see. He leaves piles of clothing everywhere from his latest laundromat haul. He tinkers with the bottom of street light poles, pulling off caps to the wiring inside. I’ve seen several zombies do the same. It must be a hiding space for who knows what.
This past week someone dropped a box of needles near the entrance to a popular restaurant.
Welcome to San Francisco!
This is a sane article about the FISA memo:
The Library of Congress
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-republican-memo-kass-0204-story.html
CCA-2.0
Many former KGO Radio listeners used to listen to that talk station to hear various sides of an issue. It was a curious audience, open to opposing arguments that expanded their knowledge of issues. It was with great regret I had to abandon that programming in December, 2011 and forced to seek other talk formats. I tried to hang on, listening to Gil and others on that other station that is now Spanish. Gil’s screeching wife drove me away from that place and, even though I had been a fan of Gross, that was it for me. Couldn’t listen to him any longer and would not listen to him now. I was *gasp* forced to the other side.
At first it was cringe-worthy. Every little thing was sensationalized by the other side to some scandal or another. But, an interesting thing happened. An election. And, with it, some very curious political happenings.
I’ve listened to and watched both sides as this little FISA thing has been unfolding. It is curious that most people have no idea this is even happening.
So, as a former KGO Radio listener, if you still have that curiosity within, this article gives a detailed account of what one team of journalists has discovered and, if it is revealed as true, then we have other things to worry about than what national park will be open today.
Do not allow others to tell you how to think. Listen to all sides and then you decide. It’s difficult to do because we don’t know what to believe any more.
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.
There is a lot of construction going on in the city now. Electrical upgrades, gas pipe replacements, road redesign, and who knows what else. It’s loud and dusty and ‘good luck’ finding a parking space.
I did notice one city work crew on my way back from lunch this week. I had to do a double-take because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. One of the crew was standing in the bed of a big truck, one of those huge construction type of vehicles. Below him, another guy was standing in the street a short distance away in front of a heavy-duty wheelbarrow. The guy in the truck was tossing bricks, one at a time, to the guy standing near the wheelbarrow, who was catching each brick and placing them, one by one, into the wheelbarrow.
Really, SF? Think about that next time the city is asking for more tax dollars out of your pocket.
Think about that in November.
CCA-SA 3.0
It’s not the song that is creepy but Joe’s rendition of it.
Joe Pags is the type of radio host that draws listeners in and keeps them coming back for more. He brings an irreverence to radio but he respects intellect. I don’t agree with his politics but I appreciate the logic he incorporates into arguments. He Rickrolls callers off the show, but it’s never mean-spirited because, you know, he loves you like a brother.
Lately, his shows have been hilarious. You never know when it will hit, he’ll be talking his host talk and taking calls, and then the show veers off in another direction with unexpected results. I can’t explain it, you have to hear it.
One example is a recent segment on the creepy clowns hysteria. The last time I laughed so hard over a radio segment was the ‘Float On’ confession on the BBC Radio 2 show, Simon Mayo’s Confessions. I wish I could find a copy of that audio because now I laugh every time I hear the song ‘Float On’ by the Floaters.
On Thursday, Joe Pags brought in the clowns. He had me laughing so hard I was nearly crying and, unknown to me, blobs of wet mascara dripped underneath my eyes and somehow, smudged off above them so it looked like I had two sets of eyebrows. I’m sure you can imagine how it looked:
![By courtney murray rhodes [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Rainbow_striped_green_eye.jpg)
By courtney murray rhodes [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
This is the show, the clowns section begins at 57:13 on the audio and lasts through 1:17:40:
https://player.fm/series/joe-pags-show-69067/joe-pags-show-10-6-16
This is Joe Pags website:
You can listen to his podcasts and hear him live on iHeart:
http://www.iheart.com/show/The-Joe-Pags-Show/
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Pags
How could I not add this?
Here is a version of another well-known Judy singing the song:
I don’t think the Joe Pags version of the song will be on YouTube anytime soon.
![Pierre-Joseph Redouté [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Wandflower_redoute.JPG)
Pierre-Joseph Redouté [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
After this experience, he will do more to help other families in the same situation. On his radio broadcasts, he will bring more attention to missing children and will partner with the appropriate organizations to do that.
I missed most of this because of the long holiday weekend. Last week, he’d mentioned on his show that he had a problem with his daughter and he sounded worried over it but he couldn’t say anything more about it. What I didn’t know was that she was missing. He was able to speak out publicly on his Friday show. His daughter was found safe on Saturday, thanks to all of the help provided by those who heard his pleas on the radio.
Here are some articles about what happened:
http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/157294/update-joe-pags-teen-daughter-located-safe
This is how it played out on his Facebook page. I can’t see the page with the Facebook blocking mechanism, but if you are able to then look for September 3rd as the date he announced his daughter had been found.
https://www.facebook.com/JoeTalkShow/
According to the articles, this happened on Wednesday, August 31st. He first talked openly about it on Friday, September 2nd. I’d heard him mention something about a problem with his daughter on Wednesday and Thursday. Here’s where you can listen to podcasts of his shows:
http://www.iheart.com/show/The-Joe-Pags-Show/
(you don’t need Flash installed for the player.fm site):
http://player.fm/series/joe-pags-show-69067
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Pags
I was not surprised to hear that Talk 910 has disappeared into the ether. I hadn’t been listening to it for at least a year, now. It seems to have gone out with a whimper. There is no uproar over the program change. I heard about it recently and it seems it’s been a week or more since the change.
I searched around for any information about the change:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/NewsTalk-910-AM-sf-espn-deportes-8409787.php
http://www.radiolineup.com/stations/KKSF-AM
http://www.yelp.com/biz/910am-san-francisco
http://www.talkers.com/tag/kksf/
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?695883-iHeart-pulls-the-plug-at-910-now-ESPN-Deprtes
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ba.broadcast/UvLnp447O_s
This is a bit off-topic, but as I searched for information about the Talk 910 change, I found an interesting thread that is very dishy about that media blogger guy:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ba.broadcast/I9oQ9rHGYuk
That’s about all I could find about the recent program change at Talk 910. I’m sure Gil Gross will land on his feet. Same with LLoyd Lindsay Young (if he doesn’t decide to retire) and the news staff. Gil was good at one time. I’m sure he could be good again. The wife thing was a failed venture. She might be good at crossword puzzles, but a talk show host she is not.
The not taking calls thing was idiocy on a station called Talk 910.
No Talk, no listeners, no ratings. Not a surprise.
HELLOOOOO! Lloyd Lindsay Young!
BigMacSC99 at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
One station I stream now is WOR710AM-New York and they have a late morning host I enjoy, Mark Simone. On Thursday, he was discussing baseball with a guest and the subject was a guy named Lindsay (don’t know if that’s how the baseball guy spells it). That’s when Mark said the first name he thought of and, hey, guess who it was…
It’s at the very beginning of Simone’s second hour on May 26, 2016. They are talking about baseball and there it is (1:12 into the podcast)… he even references the year.
http://www.wor710.com/media/play/27028506/
Want to know where Lloyd Lindsay Young, everyone’s favorite weather guy, has worked through the years? HELLOOOOO! Wikipedia!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Lindsay_Young
I’ve said this before, but it’s interesting that the programs I listen to now all take listener calls. It’s a regular part of the programming. It’s also interesting that these stations are all climbing and growing in the ratings. hmmm. nuf’ said.
Want to hear a guy who loves taking calls? He loves to debate and Rickroll anyone who mentions his counterpart on the show. Oh, and the guy loves to sing. He’s not too bad, but his Motown sing-alongs are so bad you can’t stop listening. Unlike Gil’s wife, whose voice is so bad and screechy you have to turn it off. Have I mentioned she should not be allowed on radio?
I love to hear the callers, and the phone lines light up on both the Mark Simone show and the other guy I love hearing, Joe Pags. Below are some links to his show:
http://www.iheart.com/show/The-Joe-Pags-Show/
https://player.fm/podcasts/joe-pags
These guys may be conservatives, but they know how to put on a radio show. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to hear the other side every so often. It is getting really messy on both sides now, so it’s good to hear what everyone has to say about it.
That’s all I have for you. I hope you are all on your way to a fun Memorial Day weekend! Enjoy it!
kgoformerlisteners 