PRESERVING RADIO HISTORY ACROSS COLORADO

Archives: People

  • Steve Weed

    Steve Weed is a Denver radio personality best known as the longtime co-host of KALC-FM’s afternoon program Slacker & Steve.

    Colorado radio career

    Weed worked at Alice 105.9 during the station’s early years and became Slacker’s regular on-air partner in 2006. Slacker & Steve mixed music, listener calls and relationship-driven conversation and became one of the station’s longest-running programs. The pairing ended in May 2024 after approximately eighteen years.

    Where is Steve Weed now?

    Weed departed Alice 105.9 in May 2024. Public professional profiles subsequently identified his independent work through Steve Weed Media.

    Sources

  • Sam Hill

    Sam Hill is a Denver radio personality and programmer associated with KALC-FM (Alice 105.9).

    Colorado radio career

    Hill joined Alice 105.9 as the station’s midday personality and also created Sam Hill’s Sunday School, a specialty program highlighting Colorado music. According to Radio Online and RAMP, she arrived in Denver in 2005 as Alice’s assistant program director/music director and midday host. She left the Alice midday show in May 2018 but kept the APD/MD role.

    In March 2011, while still at Alice, Hill was promoted to program director of KQMT/99.5 The Mountain. As reported by Radio Online and RAMP on August 22, 2019, her position was eliminated after 14 years with the Entercom cluster. Supplied by the archive: Mike Peterson took over the KQMT program-director duties.

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  • B.J. Harris

    B.J. Harris is the “BJ” in BJ & Jamie, the morning show you’ve probably had on in the car if KALC-FM (Alice 105.9) is one of your presets. He’s as much a programmer as he is a personality.

    Career

    Denver wasn’t his first stop. Harris worked on the air and in programming roles in Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix and Tampa. Out of WFLZ-FM in Tampa he did the syndicated MJ and BJ Morning Show, and at one point he was Clear Channel’s national director of CHR programming.

    He became part of the Alice 105.9 leadership team in 2003, then shifted over to mornings. Since 2012 he’s shared the mic with Jamie White on BJ & Jamie.

    Where is B.J. Harris now?

    As of October 2026, he’s still co-hosting BJ & Jamie on Alice 105.9, covered by the multi-year extension that was announced in August 2024.

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  • Jamie White

    Jamie White is a radio personality best known in Colorado as a founding voice of KALC-FM’s Alice 105.9 era and as co-host of BJ & Jamie.

    Colorado radio career

    White joined the newly launched Alice 105.9 in 1994 and became part of Jamie, Frosty & Frank, the station’s influential morning program. The show later moved to Los Angeles while continuing to be heard in Denver. After additional work in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Denver, she returned to Alice 105.9 in January 2012 to co-host mornings with B.J. Harris.

    Where is Jamie White now?

    As of October 2026, White remains co-host of BJ & Jamie on Alice 105.9. Audacy announced a four-year contract extension for the show in August 2024.

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  • Dan Mitchell

    Dan Mitchell is the voice many Denver classic-rock fans connect with afternoons on 99.5 The Mountain and with Breakfast with the Beatles. He’s a radio personality and production director, born in Denver, and his career has stretched beyond forty years, including 36 years in a row on the air in his hometown. Alongside KQMT/99.5 The Mountain, his name goes with KAZY, KMJI, KKHK/The Hawk and KXKL/KOOL 105.

    99.5 The Mountain

    Entercom’s KQMT-FM/99.5 The Mountain had him by 2008, and he grew into one of the classic-rock station’s signature afternoon voices. Think familiar records mixed with music history and storytelling. His regular and specialty features included The List with Dan Mitchell and Breakfast with the Beatles.

    His last regular Denver show aired on July 15, 2016, and he relocated to Texas. Dan Hardee took over afternoon drive after him. Mitchell returned to The Mountain’s Denver airwaves in 2019 with a Saturday-morning Breakfast with the Beatles.

    Where he’s heard these days

    As of October 2026, he’s still on the air with a classic-rock show that several stations carry. Affiliate pages put him in weekday afternoons on Red 103.1 in Tennessee, on 93.9 The Duck, and on Rock 105.1 in McAlester, Oklahoma. His bio describes a music-focused show with the stories behind the songs, and says he now lives outside Colorado after the 2016 move to Texas.

    KAZY to KMJI to The Hawk and KOOL 105

    Before the Mountain came a run of Denver stops. As the 1980s wound down, he was on the air and directing production at KAZY-FM. Industry reports from April 1989 have him moving from KAZY to KMJI-FM, where he stayed as production director, so he was at another major Denver music outlet while FM formats and call letters kept changing.

    Mornings came next at KKHK-FM/99.5 The Hawk. A 1997 Westword item names him as the station’s morning host, in the middle of a crowded Denver adult-rock race for listeners.

    His following stop was KXKL-FM/KOOL 105. He was on the station’s roster by 2002, and in 2006 he described himself as its afternoon-drive host, also heard around the country on the Jones Radio classic-hits format. In 2007, when CBS Radio shook up its lineups, he shifted from mornings to middays. He also produced the “Kool Colorado Christmas” charity CD and gathered the talent for it. His professional profile says that project earned a 1994 Colorado Broadcasters Association fundraiser award benefiting Family Tree.

    Giving back

    Mitchell hosted the Easter Seals telethon on TV every year from 1992 through 1998, and from 2014 on he hosted a radiothon for the Tennyson Center for Children. Between those and the award-winning shows above, he’s often put music and listener requests to work raising money for Colorado families and nonprofits.

    Growing up on the jukebox

    Music grabbed him in the mid-1960s, listening to the jukebox at The Eight Ball, the Denver pool hall his dad owned. DJ was the goal by 7th grade. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver from 1977 to 1980, and when that ended, his first on-air work came at a small AM station in Denver in the summer of 1980.

    Sources

  • Nina Blanco

    Nina Blanco is a Denver radio personality, music director and morning-show host. Her career has carried her from Illinois to St. Louis and then through several Colorado stations. When she moved up in 2026, Mix 100 noted that she was the first Hispanic woman to headline morning radio at a leading commercial FM station in the Denver market.

    Where is she now?

    As of October 2026, Blanco co-hosts Denver’s Morning Show on KIMN/Mix 100 from 6–10 a.m., and she also stays part of the station’s programming team as Music Director.

    Morning radio and industry work

    Denver’s Morning Show debuted Sept. 8, 2026, pairing Blanco with Josh Griesemer and moving her out of afternoons into the 6–10 a.m. slot. KSE called it a first: a Hispanic woman leading a Denver morning show at a big commercial FM outlet. Blanco framed it as a matter of representation, and said she hoped some young listener anywhere in Colorado might hear her and picture doing the same work.

    Within the industry, Blanco is also known as an emcee for Morning Show Boot Camp. In 2023 she and Ryan Smetzer were named the first official emcees in that conference’s long history.

    Mix 100 climb

    She signed with KSE Radio Ventures’ KIMN/Mix 100 in 2023, starting out on middays and doubling as Marketing Coordinator. Her 2–4 p.m. shift grew by September 2024 into the full 3–7 p.m. afternoon drive. In November 2024 she became Music Director, and she later signed an extension that keeps her at Mix 100 through 2027.

    Early career and Colorado stops

    Blanco grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and went into radio straight out of high school. Her first station was WCIL-FM in Carbondale, Illinois. In 2015 she moved to St. Louis for nights at the Emmis Top 40 outlet KNOU/Now 96.3, and she eventually became its morning co-host. That stretch put her squarely in a major-market morning format and gave her the live-event experience she would later bring to Denver.

    In Colorado she first did middays at Max Media’s hip-hop station KFCO/Flo 107.1. After that she co-hosted mornings at iHeartMedia’s KPTT/95.7 The Party, which raised her profile around Denver.

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  • Kirk Crespin

    Kirk Crespin is a Lamar civic leader and radio owner who helped restore heritage southeastern Colorado stations KLMR-AM and KLMR-FM after destructive weather knocked the stations off the air in 2022.

    Riverside Communications and KLMR

    In November 2022, Crespin and his wife Andrea joined Dan and Kathy Cochell in creating Riverside Communications, LLC. The company signed an agreement to acquire KLMR 920 AM and KLMR-FM in Lamar from 25-7 Media with the goal of returning both stations to the air.

    The effort followed a July 2022 microburst that destroyed critical KLMR facilities. The prior owner subsequently shut the stations down and surrendered the licenses. Crespin and Cochell viewed restoration of the stations as both a business project and preservation of an essential local information service.

    Crespin, who was serving as mayor of Lamar, brought business and community leadership to the partnership while Cochell contributed extensive radio programming and technical experience. Their work returned KLMR to local service in 2023.

    Colorado stations

    KLMR-AM; KLMR-FM.

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  • Greg Neft

    Greg Neft is a Colorado Springs broadcaster and journalist. If you commuted around the Springs in the early 2010s with KRDO NewsRadio on, you heard Greg both in the morning and on the drive home.

    KRDO NewsRadio

    Greg was the morning news reporter at KRDO NewsRadio 105.5 FM/1240 AM and co-anchored Drive Home with Dan Cochell. Local readers liked the pairing too: in 2010, the Cochell-Neft team finished second for Local Talk Radio Personality in the Best of Colorado Springs voting.

    Moving on

    Greg and Dan both left KRDO in spring 2012, as the station adjusted its staffing during tough economic times.

    Sources

  • Dan Cochell

    Dan Cochell is a Colorado Springs native whose voice has been in Southern Colorado kitchens and cars for nearly four decades. If you’ve tuned in to KRDO NewsRadio on your way home, odds are you’ve heard him.

    Early days and KRDO

    Dan started in radio in the late 1980s and by the 1990s was on the air in southeastern Colorado, where his family lived in the Lamar area. Back in Colorado Springs he put in a short stretch at PEAK-FM before joining KRDO NewsRadio in 2005. On 1240 AM / 105.5 FM he was the morning news anchor, promotions director and later half of KRDO’s Drive Home with Greg Neft, which took second place in a 2010 Colorado Springs talk-radio personality vote. The Gazette named him Best Radio Personality in its Best of the Springs 2012 awards, and his first KRDO run ended that April after six years.

    Real Radio 1580 and KOA

    Later in 2012 he was back on the dial at KREL 1580 AM, where his company, DC Enterprises, ran the station’s local programming for owner Pilgrim Communications. Branded Real Radio 1580, it mixed local news and talk with syndicated shows, and Dan also lent his voice to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. He later spent more than two years as a news anchor at Denver’s KOA 850 and filed Broncos halftime updates. Along the way he taught broadcasting and journalism at Falcon Middle School in District 49, eventually broadcasting KRDO programs from a fully equipped studio in his classroom.

    Back at KRDO, and KLMR

    In January 2021 Dan returned to KRDO NewsRadio as afternoon news host, weekdays from 4 to 7 p.m., and in 2024 he was named the station’s program director while staying on the air. In 2022 he and his family also got involved in rescuing the heritage Lamar stations KLMR-AM and KLMR-FM through Riverside Communications. As general manager he rebuilt the operation around local news and community service, and he hosted the live local talk show Anything Goes, which he could run remotely from Colorado Springs.

    Giving back

    Community work has been a thread throughout his career. His “Up for Down Syndrome” campaign raised more than $100,000 for Southern Colorado organizations, and on August 4, 2025, the City of Colorado Springs proclaimed Dan Cochell Day for his journalism, civic engagement and charity work. He describes himself these days as happily retired, spending more time on painting, travel and other interests.

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  • Joe Kilgore

    Joe Kilgore was a Denver broadcast engineer at KOA in the 1960s. If you listened to KOA 850 in those years, the clean 50,000-watt signal reaching your radio was partly his responsibility.

    Chief engineer at KOA

    The 1964 Radio Annual lists Joe as chief engineer of KOA 850 in Denver. At the time KOA ran at 50,000 watts, was owned by Metropolitan Television Company and had studios at 1044 Lincoln Street. He took over the engineering leadership after longtime KOA engineer Jesse Slusser retired.

    This is a short page built from industry directory records. If you worked with Joe or have more to add, we’d love to hear from you.

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