Eight years after dismantling the station by dismissing well-known talk show hosts and turning from news talk to all news (exceptRonn Owensand weekends), and a couple of years after trying a return to mostly talk, under the slogan, “Next Generation,” KGO’s management has made more major moves. It had to, with the former market leader (30 years at No. 1) foundering in the ratings.
Now, with former CBS Radio market managerDoug Harvillat the helm, KGO has dumped a couple of out-of-town shows,“Dr. Drew”andEthan Bearman, and added米ark Thompson, 9-noon,Pat Thurston(promoted from weekends to a noon-3 p.m. shift) and约翰Rothmann, one of the hosts who’d been pink-slipped in 2011. He’s on from 6 to 9 p.m.Armstrong & Gettycontinue in mornings,Chip Franklinin midafternoons andJohn Batchelorat night. Owens is still doing his daily short feature, “The Ronn Owens Report.”
Who knew?On Jan. 10, I interviewed米argaret Choto help kick off Sketchfest. Two weeks later, she was the fourth “Masked Singer” to get unmasked.
That means the show was in production when we met at the Marines Memorial Theatre, but she kept mum about being “the Poodle” on the Fox show that quickly became a phenomenon.
At Sketchfest, where she looked trim in black leather (actually plastic, she revealed to the audience), she covered a wide range of subjects, getting laughs from the rapturous crowd with every one of them, even when the jokes were familiar to her fans. When, as a teenager, she told her mother she wanted to be a comedian, Mom said, “Oh!米aybe better if you justdie!” Starring in “All American Girl” in 1994, she was in the first TV show featuring Asians. But, she said, “I didn’t have support from Koreans. They were horrified at this foul-mouthed girl comedian carrying the torch. … It’s disheartening when you’re out there, and the people who should be behind you, who are you, don’t like you. … Fortunately, now all those people have died.”
Cho is remembered for her pop-up portrayals of a North Korean general (on a Grammys show), and ofKim Jong IlandKim JongUn. “It takes so little time to turn me into one of them,” she marveled. “It takes me more time to look likethisthan to look like them!”
She has affection for younger foul-mouthed comics likeAli Wong. “She’s my baby,” said Cho. “It took me 20 years to see another Asian American do a comedy special. She’s in my heart all the time.”
Backstage before the event, we remembered having worked together before. It was at a Golden Rings Awards ceremony, with her as an honoree and me as a presenter. That was in 1995, and the event, singling out Asian American entertainers, was the brainchild of a producer who would go on to run for public office. His name:Jeff Adachi.
Bad:On the virtual eve of HBO’s premiere of its documentary, “Leaving Neverland,” about米ichael Jacksonand allegations of sexual abuse, the producers of a Jackson jukebox musical canceled a trial run in Chicago.
The musical is called “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.”
Bad title. But with Jackson, is there a good one? “Dangerous”? “Bad”? “Pretty Young Thing”?
Watching the program over two evenings was saddening and shattering for both myself and my wife,Dianne. She had met Michael and most of his siblings in 1977, when they’d switched from the Jackson 5 to the Jacksons (minusJermaine,再加上米arlon) and were playing the Circle Star Theater and doing some promotion for a new album.
That’s why they were at our flat on Buchanan Street, blocks from J-Town. I did interviews for “Evening Magazine” on KPIX and other stations, and decided against the usual venues: a hotel room, backstage at a concert venue. So, Michael, 18, sat in our kitchen, our dining room and living room. He leafed through a book ofAnnie Leibovitzphotographs and stopped at the portrait of him from five years before, for my Rolling Stone cover story on the J5.
I traveled to Indiana and Ohio for that one, and met a family of performers too young to say much of substance. They were protected by the Motown machine and by their autocratic father,Joe Jackson, who in later years would be accused of his own kind of abuse — against his kids.
Behind the bubbly, buoyant pop music and the singing, spinning, dancing sensation that was Michael, the boys were performing in the face of corporal punishment. They had to be great.
我从来没见过迈克尔之后,1976年再次访问。The first alleged instance of child molestation came, according to the HBO film, circa 1990. Wherever he went, he was photographed with a young boy — a new young boy just about every year, if you believe “Leaving Neverland.”
Sad to say, we believe it.