PRESERVING RADIO HISTORY ACROSS COLORADO

Archives: People

  • Larry Zimmer

    Larry Zimmer (1935 – January 20, 2024) was the voice a generation of Colorado sports fans grew up listening to. If you ever followed the Colorado Buffaloes or the Denver Broncos on the radio, you heard Larry.

    Voice of the Buffaloes

    The Buffs were his first love. Over 42 seasons Larry called 486 CU football games and 525 men’s basketball games play-by-play. During the three seasons CU was away from KOA, 1982 through 1984, he did Colorado State football, then returned to the Buffs. He gave up his sports director job at KOA in 2004 but kept a seat in the CU football booth as an analyst until after the 2015 season. National networks also tapped him for the Olympics, the College World Series, World Cup skiing, NFL Europe and NCAA basketball.

    Coming to KOA

    It was Bob Martin, who headed sports at KOA, who hired Larry in 1971 to call University of Colorado football and to provide color commentary on Broncos games. He worked more than 500 Broncos games, four of them Super Bowls: 19 seasons as radio analyst, followed by seven as play-by-play voice. He also covered games for the ABA’s Denver Rockets and the NASL’s Colorado Caribous.

    Before Colorado

    Born in New Orleans, Larry attended LSU and then earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri in 1957. His first assignments were Missouri Tigers baseball and prep sports. He went on to Ann Arbor, calling University of Michigan football, basketball and hockey.

    Honors

    He died at 88, closing out one of the longest and most influential careers in Colorado sports broadcasting.

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  • Peter Boyles

    Peter Boyles is one of Denver’s best-known talk voices. If you’ve ever had a morning commute with KHOW or KNUS on, you’ve heard him argue about Colorado politics, crime and culture.

    Decades of Denver talk

    Peter worked in Denver radio as personality-driven talk was becoming a bigger part of the AM dial. His career included KLAK, KHOW and other Denver outlets before a long association with KHOW, where his morning program was known for long interviews, strong opinions and a focus on local stories. His broadcasting life also touched many of the city’s best-known radio figures, including Alan Berg, whose 1984 murder is a subject Peter has kept revisiting on the air.

    KNUS

    After leaving KHOW in 2013, Peter joined Salem’s KNUS 710, continuing the long-form conversation and listener calls that defined his work.

    Where is he now?

    As of October 2026, Peter still hosts The Peter Boyles Show on KNUS. Show archives from 2026 include new Saturday broadcasts with retrospectives on Alan Berg and conversations about Denver radio history with longtime local broadcasters.

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  • Don Martin

    Don Martin spent many years in Denver radio and was the city’s pioneering airborne traffic reporter. Ever sat stuck on a Denver highway hoping for a tip on the best detour? Don blazed that trail.

    Early days

    As a student at Denver’s South High School, Don was already tinkering with broadcasting. Stops later in his career included KIMN, KICN, KJAE, KLAJ, KFML, KMYR, KOA, KHOW and KTLN.

    The view from above

    Flying over the metro area, Don gave listeners an overhead look at the traffic below. He’s credited with coming up with “the Mousetrap,” a Denver name for the I-25/I-70 interchange that has lasted, and many commuters remember him as the “Sky Spy” on KHOW.

    The KIMN newsroom

    Running the news department at KIMN as news director, Don assembled a newsroom that earned real respect. Then KIMN changed hands, and he relocated with his staff and equipment to KLAK/KJAE-FM. KIMN got sold yet again, and that time he returned to the station he had left.

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  • Danny Davis

    Danny Davis was the morning voice KIMN brought in at its peak. If you got ready for school in Denver in the late ’60s with KIMN on, there’s a good chance he was in your kitchen.

    KIMN’s big hire

    In 1968, KIMN recruited Danny as a headline morning personality, the same year Billboard named KIMN Station of the Year. He was part of the promo-heavy culture around the station, including community appearances and a KIMN traveling basketball team that played schools around the region as a fundraiser. After his first run, Danny worked at KHOW and other stations, then returned to KIMN in the mid-1970s.

    Beyond Colorado

    His career later took him to Honolulu, Portland and Phoenix. Even after decades elsewhere, he kept talking about Denver and KIMN in interviews and at reunions.

    Where is he now?

    As of October 2026, Danny is based in Phoenix and still active in media and community work. A 2025 long-form interview called him a Hall of Fame Denver radio veteran living in Phoenix, and his professional profile lists long service with the Cameo Foundation of Arizona.

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  • Chuck Buell

    If you were a Denver teenager in the mid-1960s with a transistor radio pressed to your ear, you knew the voice of Chuck Buell, one of the defining personalities of the KIMN era.

    Denver in the 1960s

    Chuck arrived in Denver in 1963 to study at the University of Denver, picking up weekend shifts at KDAB. A year later he had an afternoon slot on KIMN, which was the city’s dominant rock-and-roll outlet at the time.

    Promotions were a big part of his job there. In 1965 he took 80 listeners on a fast trip from Denver to St. Louis for a Beatles concert, part of the group’s second American tour.

    The Chicago stretch

    Four years into his KIMN run, WLS in Chicago hired him away. There he did evenings, then afternoons, and eventually took over as music director.

    Back to Denver, then FM

    Chuck returned to the KIMN lineup in 1978, taking the afternoon drive shift, a show built to sound like a polished morning program airing later in the day. With listeners drifting toward FM, he switched over to Y108 in 1983.

    Elsewhere, he also worked in major markets, including San Francisco, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego, and did a lot of voice work.

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  • Jay Mack

    Jay Mack (born James MacIsaac) was the KIMN jock who sounded like a whole cast of characters. If you listened to KIMN in the ’60s, you may remember Betty Jo Bioloski, Niles Lischness and Farley McKluth, all of them Jay.

    Boss Jock

    Jay joined KIMN in 1963 and blended record spinning with character comedy. He prerecorded lines for his made-up characters and wove them into his show, so it sounded like an ensemble cast. That made him one of KIMN’s most recognizable “Boss Jocks” while the station was at the center of Denver teen life.

    A long Denver run

    His career went well beyond that first stint: KBTR, a return to KIMN, then KTLK and KDEN, and another long chapter at KXKL starting around 1990. He also worked at KOL in Seattle, WFUN in Miami, KNAK in Salt Lake City and WDAF in Kansas City.

    Remembering Jay

    Jay came back for KIMN’s big 30th-anniversary reunion in May 1984, when former personalities gathered in Denver. He died on March 2, 2002, at age 64.

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  • Roy Gunderson

    Roy Gunderson, “Roy the Bell Boy” and the “Ding Dong Daddy of Denver,” helped make KIMN 950 the top Top 40 station in town at the end of the ’50s. If you were in Denver after school in 1958 or 1959, odds are good you had him on.

    Afternoons on KIMN

    Roy joined KIMN in 1958 and took over the afternoon shift. Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado records that he quickly pulled well over half of the listening audience, a staggering number that shows how dominant KIMN was and how much a single DJ could matter in the early Top 40 era.

    The KIMN gang

    He was part of a colorful group of KIMN personalities whose names, stunts and appearances were inseparable from the station. With Pogo Poge, Royce Johnson, Boogie Bell and others, he helped create a kind of radio where the announcers were local celebrities. Colorado Music Hall of Fame histories still count “Roy the Bell Boy” among KIMN’s signature voices.

    Leaving Colorado

    By 1961 trade reports had Roy, the former KIMN personality, set to become general manager of a new station, KDAK in Carrington, North Dakota, a sign of the management jobs that could follow success as a major-market DJ.

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  • Pogo Poge

    Pogo Poge (Morgan Branch White, 1924–2010) was the kind of disc jockey who’d broadcast from a window full of snakes just to get you to tune in. If you were a Denver teenager glued to a transistor radio in the late 1950s, you probably knew him.

    Denver’s stunt king at KIMN

    Born in Monroe, Utah, and educated at Utah State University, Pogo became one of the defining voices of KIMN 950 as it grew into Denver’s dominant Top 40 station. He hosted the Coca-Cola Hi-Fi Club, packed dances and remote broadcasts, and built a following with stunts: a marathon broadcast from a downtown jewelry-store window surrounded by snakes, flagpole sitting, endurance broadcasts and, true to his name, traveling by pogo stick.

    He wasn’t just a gimmick, though. KIMN’s air staff turned into local celebrities, and Pogo helped set that model. The Colorado Music Hall of Fame’s history of the station puts him at the front of its famous group of jocks and remembers a Denver where kids gathered around the radio and treated the KIMN lineup as part of the city’s pop culture.

    Hawaii and home

    After Denver, he moved to Hawaii and kept the Pogo Poge name at KGMB, then crossed into television as Pogo on the long-running children’s show Checkers & Pogo. He also turned up in several episodes of Hawaii Five-O. He later retired to Utah and died on September 2, 2010, at age 86.

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  • Gregg Cassidy

    Gregg Cassidy is the programmer who put Alice on the Denver dial. If you remember 105.9 flipping to a new, personality-driven station in 1994, this is the guy who built it.

    Launching Alice

    Gregg came to Denver from WLUM “Hot 102” in Milwaukee when Secret Communications prepared a new format for 105.9 FM. On April 20, 1994, after KBPI moved from 105.9 to 106.7, the open frequency became KALC “Alice,” with Gregg as program director. It was pitched at women in their late teens through mid-thirties and was called “Warp AC.”

    “Stationality”

    Gregg developed Alice with Secret Communications executives Frank Wood Jr. and Chuck Finney. Instead of letting a music category define the station, the team leaned on personality, production and what Gregg called “stationality.” In a 1997 retrospective he said the original idea was deliberately personality-driven and meant to let listeners form their own connection with the brand.

    The mix of adult-leaning alternative music, unconventional imaging and a highly visible lineup worked well enough that the Alice name and format variations later showed up in other American markets.

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  • Frank Wood Jr.

    Frank Wood Jr. was the radio owner behind Denver’s Alice. If you were a ’90s Denver listener who loved a quirky, grown-up alternative station, his company gave you that.

    From WEBN to Denver

    Frank came from the family behind Cincinnati’s WEBN, known for irreverent production and creative promotion. He later bought KBPI in Denver through Progressive Broadcasters Incorporated, which became Secret Communications.

    Creating Alice

    In April 1994, Secret moved KBPI from 105.9 to the stronger 106.7 signal that had belonged to KAZY. The old 105.9 became Alice under program director Gregg Cassidy. Frank, Gregg and programming executive Chuck Finney built the idea together: adult-leaning alternative music with real personalities, which Frank called “Warped AC.” Other markets later borrowed the name and format.

    Remembering Frank

    Frank died in 2025, and broadcasters who worked with him remember a boss who put creativity, humor and offbeat ideas first, the same spirit you heard on WEBN and on his Denver stations.

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