Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Check two three, four, five six seven.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hello, it is the Weekend Fix.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, and the Weekend Fix is kind of the it's
the little vent on the back of your your air fryer.
The event hasn't been cleaned in a long time. It's
very dirty. We get there's so much stuff that goes
on during the week that we don't get a chance
to kind of relax. I mean, granted, there's some efree
every once in a while, we kind of screw around
(00:33):
a little bit in the middle of the week, but
there's a lot of effery. This is an opportunity for
us to kind of relax a little bit more, and
you can get this every weekend. We hope to be
able to do this. If you're subscribing to the podcast
wherever you're listening, it'll just show up. But otherwise, if
you search for the podcast, you'll see it on the weekend.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, it's been a full week since you unveiled your
feet and people around here are still talking about it.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, Yeah, there were some there's some things that go
into this feet issue. The flip flops that Bill and
Heather gave us, I mean for me, but they gave
it to the show for the purposes the greater good.
We're too big, But they were such a nice couple
(01:15):
and they were so nice to give them to us
that I couldn't just turn around and say sorry, they
don't fit. So I wore them, you know, almost the
entire show. And you had an opportunity finally, lucky you.
Was very excited for you this podcast off the way
that I already feel like.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's on me.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So no, I had the idea of talking about what,
why this, why radio? Why did you do this in
the first place? Like what you had an opportunity to
do a million other things. You went to college.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I needed a job, I know, but still I just
liked to my mom about this. She's like, I'm so
glad you knew that what you wanted to do. And
I said, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I had no idea what's your major? I have no
idea what I'm eighteen years old. I have no idea
what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I needed a job. It's an odd amount of pressure
that we put on people at eighteen to figure out
what they're going to get.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
It really is, who the hell are you at eighteen?
And I had worked, as you know, through the deli
back home, and I was back there working on a
weekend or a spring break or something like that, and
they said, one of the family, friends of the family
that ran the deli, said you need a job at Chico.
I said, yes, you said, I worked at a radio station.
I'll make a phone call. They needed somebody part time.
(02:33):
That's how I started in radio. It wasn't a dream.
It wasn't I want to be on the radio one day.
It was I needed a job that sounds cool, I'll
do it, and then I just stayed.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
But there was clearly something about it that I loved it.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
I loved it right away. I loved the news gathering.
I loved writing news. I loved talking on the air.
I loved doing music, introducing songs, doing that. But I
found that quickly to be not as stimulating as I
needed my job to be. So that's how I kind
of funneled it all into news. I love that I
(03:08):
got to play in sports from time and time again,
even if it was just scores or just box scores
or actually getting to talk about a game. That was
always cool.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I loved it right away.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
It didn't feel like a job.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
It's what they always say, right.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
You know, do what you love doing and you won't
work a day in your life. And that's how I
felt from go.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
But you also, from what I know of your stories
from that time, you also worked with some really great people.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, that.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Helped foster that feeling towards radio. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I worked with wonderful people at my first station, you know,
Veronica Carter and Mike Baka, and then into kfb K,
where you know you had just left. It was a
freaking dream team in there, It really was. It was
the dream team of radio reporters that it just kind
of ushered out when I came in with my last
so to speak, of people, and I was the youngest
(04:03):
and everyone we were all and I was in my
early very early as twenty one, twenty two, but I think,
you know, there are people in their mid thirties there,
Marna Davis, Venus Stromberg and you know, the Brett Burkhertz
and all of those guys had left. But it was
like this time and I was the tail end of
like great Bay area reporters, and Sacramento included because everyone
(04:28):
went on to San Francisco or Seattle or what have you.
But I learned a lot. I loved what they did.
They were so creative. I fed off of that. I
just I've loved every iteration of this job, from just writing,
running the board, you know, sports, music, news, all of it.
I've loved every minute of it.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Oh what about you? Oh did you love this show?
Do you love working on this show? I mean, yes, Scott.
Everything falls off often, but there.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Is you bring up a time when like there was
something where you were like, I want to be just
like Mike Sugarman, right, I want to be like Bred Burkhart.
And that's a really special time to And I'm not
saying there's nothing to strive for. There absolutely is. No
one's going to be harder on themselves than me. I
can do better every segment of every day.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I know that.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But like, in terms of what you want to be
when you grow up, that's who I wanted to be,
you know.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And it's funny that you bring that up because I've
I felt I feel like there's people who don't people
in my family included, Like, I have no idea if
my kids have any real clue about what I do
for work. I mean, they've seen the show, they've been
to the radio stations that I've worked at, but I
don't know if they if they get what the amount of,
(05:48):
you know, reading and writing that was involved, especially through
the news gathering portion of it. The amount of reading
and writing that you have to do now, the amount
of like general knowledge that you're supposed to have about it.
If we're going to talk about a million different topics
over the course of a week, we have to know
at least a little bit about a lot of different topics.
(06:09):
And I've always had this feeling that people don't quite
get there's still a job aspect to this. Yeah, it's fun,
I love this job. We both love this job, but
there's still a work aspect to it that I don't
think people recognize or realize necessarily. And we're subject to
the same feelings that everybody else is in whatever job
(06:31):
they have. And sometimes it's the petty like why is
that guy the manager? Why does she get this job?
I'm better than she is, or I'm better than he,
and it's just that's what happens in a place of
any place, any place of employment.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Your story is a much better story about how when
you were a kid you would drive by on your
bike to the local radio station, and that your mom
would have him announce your birthday every year, and how
you all wanted to be that guy and like that
that meant so much to you.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I love that story. It's a weird I chalk it
up to being you know, seven, eight, nine years old,
whatever it was, and hearing Ron Walters on KTB saying
that it was Gary's birthday and hearing that on the
radio the Little Box, I mean, I remember specifically the
radio that my mom would always listen to every morning
(07:25):
when we were getting ready, and when he said that
it was my birthday, I lost my mind. How did
that guy know? How is it possible?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Magic? That guy radio was magic when you were little.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It was it was magic. It was such a it
was such a great feeling. I remember that I eventually
got to meet him, you know, ten years later or
whatever it was. He was still two in the morning show,
to give you an idea of how long that guy
had been around, and told him that, and he was like, well,
this is this is the job for you, Like, this
is what we do. And he was nice enough to
help kind of pull the curtain back and explain. Your
(08:00):
mom called me on the phone that day, like, I mean,
I obviously got it, but he was trying to explain
it's not magic, it's just it, but we have to
keep up the illusion. So when I was in high school,
like like you said, I would, I would ride by
every morning the radio station and sometimes I would stop
in unannounced and just say, hey, I got a few minutes.
(08:23):
Do you mind if I just sit here and watch.
I didn't have to do anything. You don't have to
let me talk on the radio. I don't have to
play music. I just want to watch how you go
from commercial to song, to interview to commercial. And it
seems from the you know, the speaker side of it,
it seems flawless. Whereas the chaos that exists, especially in
(08:48):
a small town radio station like that, where it's one
person in charge of everything, ripping stories off of the
off of the wire, queuing up the record, or queuing
up the tape, make it to that the commercials are
ready to go. And that to me, watching that sort
of juggling act was fascinating.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
That was fun.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
And I didn't know that you could go to school.
And granted there's aspects of that you cannot be taught.
You can't be taught that. You do learn that there
are there's crazy times in a radio station, but they
don't teach you how to do it. You have to
do it right, That's that's how you learn to do
it is by doing it. And that always fascinated me.
(09:29):
So I did you know I did the same path
you did once we got to college. Was the Information
and Communication Studies, I think was the official term of
the major.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So irrelevant because all of our college, all of our
learning came from working at radio stations. Yeah, college was.
It was a good time. There were other reasons to
go to college, right, But I do miss the adrenaline
of doing everything, of being a one man band, you know,
going on the air, doing the show, being your own producer,
(10:00):
the board, all the things, queuing up the commercials, not
having time to peek because you've got to put in
the next commercial, like all that stuff, you know, Like
that was a good time. I mean, I kind of
grew up in a radio household. My parents commuted to
the city every day, and they listened to the religiously
listened to the morning radio shows and KCBS or KGO
(10:23):
and afternoon and it was a very much sh we're
listening to the radio kind of thing, so maybe there's
something there too of oh, this is important.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
The radio is important. It was ubiquitous and you're right.
I mean, we would listen to the local Pedaluma station
while we were at home, but in the event that
we ever drove anywhere, like I can remember driving from
our house in the northern part of the San Francisco
Bay Area to my grandparents' house down in San Miguel,
So Central California. It was about a four hour drive,
(10:53):
and if it was Dad and I, if it was
any of us, we would get up early, usually leave
by four or five o'clock in the morning to get
through traffic through the Bay Area before we got down there.
And KCBS was the radio station period. That was all
we listened to. And that top of the hour chime
that was the CBS news, you know, radio brand to
(11:17):
introduce their top of the hour news. It's like a pavlock.
You could not get away from that. I remember lying
across the seat in our in my dad's pickup truck
sleeping or half sleeping kind of thing, and that that
was the chime that would just permeate through every memory
I have.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Did you interview at KCBS?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I never did.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
I was rejected by KCBS twice. That was my goal
to work at KCBS because.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Of what you just said. That was it.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
That was like in my house, it was Casey that
was like the place to go and for news because
I was a reporter. You know, the whole idea of
being a talk host and working at you know, KG
that was not something on my radar. Ever. It never
was until Robin here said, what do you think about
hosting a show? Was like, I've never thought about that.
But anyway, KCBS was the gold standard. Like that was
(12:11):
the dream. And so the idea is I'd go to
KFBK and then I'd go over at KCBS, like so many.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
People done that.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
They did not want me, and I didn't want and
you know what, if I was honest with myself, I
didn't want to work for CBS. I'm not CBS. There's
nothing about me that CBS. Even when I was a
news reporter, I wasn't CBS. And I just remember, you know,
going in there, and again I was really young. I
was like twenty four twenty five years old also. But
(12:39):
then coming down to KFI, and then Ken Cole, who
was our boss in Sacramento, went over as a consultant
to KCBS and says, I want to bring you there,
and I was like, decision time. Here it is, Here's
what I wanted.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
My whole life.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And I was but I had already been down here,
and I was like, oh man, because KFI when I
land here was like coming home. It was like the style,
the people, everything was. It fit me to a t.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It is funny that once you get once you get
something that you want, that old thing comes percolating back up.
I had the same thing a relationship, right, yeah, exactly.
Right about the same time that I was coming down
to KFI, I got a call also from San Francisco
that was like, hey, you know, we work together in Sacramento.
Maybe maybe should think about coming here, right And I
(13:27):
was to the point where I'm thinking I could. I
could live in my parents, I could live in the
house that I grew up in and we could buy
it from my parents, like that would be our house
and I could commute into the city every I mean,
I've done that kind of math before. I eventually turned
them down and came down here. Yeah, so wild anyway, Always,
if you have topics that you'd like us to cover
on the Weekend Fix, you can always email us. You
(13:49):
can always send us direct messages social media however you
want to do that. We'll see you.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Know, Monday.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
On the radio, you've been listening to the Gary Shannon Show,
you can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio lap