PRESERVING RADIO HISTORY ACROSS COLORADO

Archives: People

  • Don Kinney

    Don Kinney traded CBS News in New York for Denver and put in roughly three decades on Colorado news, at KLZ, KOA and public TV.

    From CBS to Colorado

    Back in the 1960s Kinney wrote and produced for CBS News. His colleagues there included Walter Cronkite, Charles Kuralt, Roger Mudd and Harry Reasoner, and he was on the CBS team that covered NASA launches.

    In 1969 he arrived in Denver to work news at KLZ, on both radio and television. After five years there, he switched to KOA as a reporter and anchor.

    The State of Colorado

    Almost 26 years of his career went to The State of Colorado on KRMA Channel 6, now Rocky Mountain PBS, where he was both host and producer. Over that stretch he sat down with more than 270 print journalists. When the show’s direction was headed from facts toward opinion, he chose to retire, in July 2002.

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  • Max Goldberg

    Max Goldberg started out selling newspapers on a Denver street corner, moved on to sports talk on KFEL radio, and later had a hand in getting Channel 9 on the air. KUSA still calls him the “Father of 9News.”

    Radio and business

    Goldberg was 21 and doing sports commentary on KFEL when radio found him. A year later he switched to KFXF, which became KVOD. In 1936 he opened an advertising agency of his own, where his work covered public relations and political campaigns, Senator Ed Johnson’s among them. Outside the agency, he published the Intermountain Jewish News and wrote over 800 columns for the Denver Post.

    Channel 9

    In 1951 Goldberg teamed up with William Pyle and Thomas Ekrem, who had been his bosses at KVOD, to form the Colorado Television Company. On July 12, 1952, the company was granted the license for Channel 9, then KVOD-TV; it was renamed KBTV before signing on. Goldberg hosted the interview show On the Spot on KBTV and later on KLZ-TV, and The Max Goldberg Show ran with him from 1960 through 1966.

    He died October 25, 1972, at 61.

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  • Thomas McClelland

    In the 1930s Thomas McClelland was chief engineer at KLZ. He is remembered as the radio industry’s first casualty of World War II.

    Pearl Harbor

    McClelland joined the Naval Reserve in 1939 and was called back in September 1941, assigned to the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor. During the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, he got his enlisted crew out of the ship’s radio room, then was overcome by smoke there. In 1943 the Navy commissioned the destroyer escort USS McClelland in his honor, the first time a broadcasting professional received that recognition.

    Earlier career

    As a kid, McClelland built crystal sets and ran a spark-gap transmitter, and he later trained in radio engineering in the Navy. Kansas City’s WDAF had him as chief engineer by 1928. He arrived at Denver’s KLZ in the 1930s. There he oversaw a studio remodel and a new transmitter installation, kept the station on the air through a hotel fire, and in 1938 sent the remote truck to a Colorado forest fire so listeners could hear live reports from the scene.

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  • Evan Slack

    Evan Slack spent nearly 60 years as a farm and ranch broadcaster, reporting on Denver’s big stations before building his own regional farm network.

    Career

    In 1985 Slack launched the Evan Slack Network, which expanded to more than 40 stations across nine states and Canada. His Denver stops: five years at KHOW, eight at KLZ and several more at KOA.

    Back in 1952, Springfield, Missouri, is where he first picked up the farm and ranch beat. He later spent three years in the Marine Corps and earned an agriculture degree from the University of Missouri.

    The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association gave Slack a lifetime membership. He also has a spot in the National Association of Farm Broadcasters Hall of Fame, and in 2011 the Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado Hall of Fame welcomed him too.

    The Colorado Broadcasters Association reported on September 22, 2020 that he died September 19 at age 86. Its tribute counts a 68-year radio career at KOA, KLZ and KFKA, while the Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado bio above says nearly 60 years, so the numbers differ. It adds that the Evan Slack Network was later bought by Russell Nemetz and renamed Western Ag Network, that his interviews ranged from John Wayne and Elvis Presley to President George H.W. Bush, and that he was National Association of Farm Broadcasting president in 1987 and a member of its Hall of Fame in 2009.

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  • Herb Schubarth

    Herb Schubarth got his start as a radio engineer at KRDO in Colorado Springs and eventually became Gannett Broadcasting’s vice president of engineering.

    From the Navy to KRDO

    During World War II, Schubarth taught radar electronics in the Navy. Discharged in 1949, he took a radio engineering job at KRDO. The Korean War called him back into service, and after he returned to KRDO as chief engineer he helped put KRDO-TV on the air in 1953.

    Denver and beyond

    He joined KBTV Channel 9 in Denver in 1961. By 1967 he was chief engineer there, and he had driven the station’s first remote broadcast truck from Washington, DC to Denver. Later he was corporate director of engineering for Mullins Broadcasting and then Combined Communications. When he retired, he was Gannett Broadcasting’s vice president of engineering, with 16 TV and 13 radio stations under his watch.

    Three years as IEEE president sit on his résumé, along with the NAB Engineering Achievement Award in 1993.

    His obituary adds that he was hired as a KRDO-AM radio engineer in 1949, came back from Korea as chief engineer and helped design and install the facilities that put KRDO-TV on the air in 1953. At Channel 9 from 1961, he built the first 9NEWS live truck in his driveway, and in 1981 he became vice president of engineering for Gannett Broadcasting and Combined Communications. KUSA general manager Mark Cornetta called him a pioneer in television and a first class human being.

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  • Warren Chandler

    Warren Chandler (died May 22, 2010) spent nearly 25 years at KLZ radio and TV as a newscaster, weather forecaster and program director, in the years when KLZ led Denver’s news ratings.

    Career

    Chandler was a Denver native. In World War II he served in the Navy as a radioman, on the USS Ticonderoga and USS Topeka. Later, at the University of Denver, he helped set up the campus station, KVDU.

    In 1953 he came to KLZ radio and KLZ-TV and remained through 1977. A 1957 Broadcasting ad for KLZ’s nighttime programming listed him among the station’s news reporters, alongside Merwin Smith. After KLZ he worked at KOA-TV and KWGN-TV, spent two years in Chile with the Peace Corps, and won the Smokey Bear Award for his forest-fire prevention work.

    An Associated Press obituary, with information from The Denver Post, says he was born in Denver on June 6, 1926, graduated from South High School and earned a communications degree from the University of Denver. It describes him as a former Denver TV weatherman with almost 40 years in local radio and TV, mostly at KMGH-TV, the former KLZ-TV, and puts the Peace Corps years in Chile in the late 1970s.

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  • Merrie Lynn McNabb

    Merrie Lynn McNabb, who went by Merrie Lynn on the air, was a Denver radio and TV personality and producer. The Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado credit her programming ideas as innovative in both media.

    Her work was split between the microphone and the back office: she was a special events director, producer and host of live remote broadcasts, and a key member of a management team. She and Tom Mulvey co-hosted a talk show for seniors that aired for two years on KHOW, KEZW and KDEN. She was also an author and lecturer, and an instructor for the Department of Homeland Security.

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  • Tom Mulvey

    Tom Mulvey spent decades in Denver radio, selling and managing, switched KBTR to an all-news format, and later co-hosted a talk show aimed at seniors.

    Sales and management

    Mulvey began in sales with Channel 2 in Denver, KLZ and KTLN. After a stay at KOA, he became sales manager of KHOW in 1957, and later its general manager. From 1963 until 1967 he was associated with KLZ, KLAK, and KOSI. As general manager of KBTR, which is today’s KNUS, he changed the format from rock to all news.

    Talk shows and other pursuits

    A talk show for seniors, which Mulvey co-hosted with Merrie Lynn McNabb, aired across KHOW, KEZW and KDEN. Outside the studio he co-founded Media Memo magazine, started Colorado MAC News, and lectured on broadcasting at Metro State. He was also mayor pro tem on the Littleton City Council.

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  • Jack Miller

    For 32 years, Jack Miller ran KCOL in Fort Collins, and he led the station’s coverage of the 1976 Big Thompson flood.

    The road to Fort Collins

    Miller’s radio career began in 1956 at WJAG in Norfolk, Nebraska. Around 1959 he was general manager of KCSR in Chadron, Nebraska. Then in 1971 he relocated to Fort Collins to serve as vice president and general manager of the AM and FM stations at KCOL. He stayed 32 years, also oversaw KUAD-FM in Windsor along the way, and retired in 2003.

    His guiding idea, as he put it, was that serving the community belonged in every broadcast day.

    Recognition

    He held the presidency of the Colorado Broadcasters Association for two terms, 1977–78 and 1982–83, and Builders in Broadcasting profiled him in 1986.

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  • Fred Hobbs

    Fred Hobbs (born April 21, 1932) started spinning records in Denver as a teenager and worked his way through Boulder and Denver radio into TV news management.

    Radio

    Hobbs was a disc jockey at KFEL-FM in Denver in 1948. He hosted on KBOL in Boulder from 1951 to 1954 and came back in 1957 as afternoon host, promotion manager and program director. In 1960 he joined KDEN in Denver as an on-air personality and news director, and in 1966 he became the state government reporter for KLZ.

    Television and later work

    He also anchored weekend news on KLZ-TV starting in 1966, and was news director of KWGN-TV Channel 2 from 1977 to 1982. Later he taught public relations at the University of Colorado and founded PR Associates in 1989.

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