PRESERVING RADIO HISTORY ACROSS COLORADO

Archives: People

  • Ricardo Salazar

    Ricardo Salazar bet everything on a struggling Greeley AM station in 1997 and turned it into “El Tigre,” one of Northern Colorado’s best-known Spanish-language stations.

    Career

    Salazar was a Los Angeles–based radio consultant and a former Spanish-language voice of the Raiders. In 1997 he bought KGRE 1450, then on the air only 10 hours a day and losing money, for $150,000, using his life savings and maxing out seven credit cards. He relaunched it as regional Mexican “El Tigre,” and it was profitable by the end of the year. By 2006 it was bringing in more than $600,000 a year and growing 20 to 30 percent annually.

    He went on to add KGRE-FM 102.1 and KFCS in Colorado Springs. He died in 2018 at 67, and his daughter Lindsay Salazar continues to run the station.

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  • Florence Hernández-Ramos

    Florence Hernández-Ramos is the reason Denver has KUVO. She took Hugo Morales’ idea for a Hispanic public radio station and turned it into the station that signed on in 1985.

    KUVO

    A University of Colorado Boulder graduate with legal training in civil rights, Hernández-Ramos met Morales of Radio Bilingüe in 1982 while working as a paralegal in the Colorado attorney general’s office. She did the research, landed the grants, arranged the equipment purchases, assembled a board and set up training programs. KUVO signed on August 29, 1985, and since 1994 has broadcast from the Five Points Media Center on Welton Street.

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  • Steve Leigh

    Steve Leigh has woken up the Vail Valley on KZYR since 1992, and in 2021 he bought the station.

    Career

    Leigh became morning host in 1992 at the Avon station then on 103.1, which turned into modern rock “The Mountain” in 1994 and moved to 97.7 as “The Zephyr” in 2001. After Rocky Mountain Radio Group bought KZYR in 2017, Leigh purchased it in 2021 through his company, KNS Broadcasting, and kept doing mornings as the owner. KNS also owns KKVM 104.7, “The Mile,” which started in 1975 as KVMT, Vail’s first radio station.

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  • Jim Bedford (B.F. Deal)

    Jim Bedford, who wrote as “B.F. Deal,” was one of the Telluride locals who put KOTO on the air in 1975.

    KOTO

    In 1974 Telluride could barely pick up any radio. Bedford was part of what he called an “odd assortment of local folks” who formed a nonprofit, got an FCC construction permit for a 10-watt FM station, and talked the Town Council into $10,000 for equipment over two years. KOTO was legally established on October 3, 1975, and got on the air within six months of the permit. Bedford and a partner named Greene drove around town in a pickup truck testing the reception.

    He wrote up the station’s history for Telluride Inside in 2009, by which time KOTO had been broadcasting for 34 years with more than 200 volunteer DJs.

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  • Stu Haskell

    Stu Haskell spent 45 years in radio, from programming KTCL‘s alternative sound to running iHeartMedia’s Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming stations.

    Career

    Haskell grew up in a radio family. His father, George, co-founded KNEB in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. In Colorado he helped develop the modern rock and alternative format at KTCL 93.3, helped launch 96.1 KISS FM in Greeley, and worked as program director at several stations before moving into management. He became market president for iHeartMedia Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming. Colleagues remembered him as a rare manager who understood both programming and sales.

    The Colorado Broadcasters Association named him Rex Howell Broadcaster of the Year in 2018. He died October 18, 2020, the morning after his 71st birthday, and was named to the CBA Hall of Fame class of 2026.

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  • Dick Maynard

    Richard G. “Dick” Maynard has spent more than 60 years in radio and built one of Grand Junction’s best-known station groups, Jan-Di Broadcasting.

    Career

    Maynard co-founded Jan-Di Broadcasting in 1984 and launched KEKB-FM that year, right in the middle of a Western Slope economic slump. The station went on to a record-setting 48 share among adults 25–54. Jan-Di added KBKL-FM (KOOL 107.9) in 1996 and bought KMXY-FM (Mix 104.3) in 1998. On the air, his morning show Heller and Maynard: The Breakfast Flakes picked up several CBA Station of the Year awards and Country Music Association recognition.

    He was the Country Music Association’s General Manager of the Year in 1990, Colorado Broadcasters Association president in 1995, CBA interim director in 1999 and served on the National Association of Broadcasters board from 1995 to 1998. The CBA named him Rex Howell Broadcaster of the Year in 1997 and put him in its inaugural Hall of Fame class in 2025.

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  • Murphy Huston

    Murphy Huston was one of Denver’s most familiar radio voices for almost four decades, first on KHOW and then for more than 25 years on KOSI.

    Career

    Huston started in 1968 at WBIZ in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and moved up to WISN in Milwaukee. He came to Denver’s KHOW in 1986 and quickly became one of the most recognizable voices in town. In 1997 he moved to KOSI, where he stayed until he retired in 2024. He also hosted Colorado Lottery TV programming for about ten years.

    Off the air, he co-founded Golfers Against Cancer, which has raised more than $25 million for cancer research. He won more than ten Colorado Broadcasters Association awards and was part of the CBA Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 2025.

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  • Ron Mitchell

    Ron Mitchell spent his first decade in Denver radio news before moving to Channel 9, where he stayed 25 years.

    Career

    Mitchell started in 1960 at Denver’s KICN (the 710 AM station now known as KNUS), then worked at KOSI AM, KXXI, KMOR and KBTR. In 1971 he made the jump from KBTR radio (the same 710 frequency, renamed in 1961) to KBTV Channel 9, later KUSA. There he produced a five-part series and a half-hour documentary on building the Eisenhower Tunnel in 1973, and worked as a field reporter, assignment editor and backup anchor during his 25 years at 9News. He was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado Hall of Fame in 2012.

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  • Arch Andrews

    Arch Andrews worked Denver radio news and programming in the early 1960s, then became the voice of Colorado’s outdoors on TV and radio for decades.

    Career

    A Minneapolis native and Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War, Andrews worked at stations in North and South Dakota, Iowa and Omaha before arriving in Denver in 1959. From 1959 to 1965 he worked at KICN (710 AM, today’s KNUS), at KTLN as program director, host and newsman, and at KGMC (1150 AM, later KWBZ) as news director.

    As public affairs director for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, he hosted Wildlife Reports on KBTV/KUSA 9News for 17 years, billed as the longest-running program on Denver television. He also voiced the Colorado Outdoors Report, which went out to more than 60 radio stations, and narrated nearly 20 nature films. He died in 2016 at 87, and was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado Hall of Fame in 2018.

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  • Hal Kennedy

    Hal Kennedy started out spinning records and reading news on Colorado Springs radio after World War II and became the longest-running TV anchor in the country.

    Career

    Kennedy was born May 23, 1924, in North Dakota. He landed at Omaha Beach with the 29th Infantry’s Signal Corps and fought across France and into Central Europe. After the war he settled in Colorado Springs and went to work at KVOR radio as a disc jockey and newsman.

    He joined KKTV Channel 11 as “sales services director” and quickly became the station’s news anchor. He anchored KKTV News for 33 years, from 1956 to 1989, and served as news director for most of that time. When he retired he was the longest-running anchor at any U.S. TV station. He was named Colorado Broadcaster of the Year in 1989, and a 1999 Gazette Telegraph poll picked him as the best local broadcaster of the century. He died in 2006 at 82, and was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado Hall of Fame in 2019.

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