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American broadcasting company Cumulus Media abruptly announced Thursday during a morning talk show that it’s ending the KGO (810 AM) news-talk format as listeners know it, and company officials told SFGATE in an email that it will be revealing a new brand on the channel on Monday.

Ray Taliaferro, an outspoken liberal who from 1977 through 2011 hosted an overnight talk radio program on KGO, has been found dead. His son tells ABC7 News his father's body was found behind Brooks Stadium in Paducah Ky.

Long-time Bay Area journalist and radio host, Ray Taliaferro, is still missing. The 79-year-old was reported missing in Paducah, Kentucky where he was last seen on Nov. 10. Taliaferro is said to have met with his manager at a pizza restaurant in Paducah earlier that day. He's a man many people listened to on KGO Radio in the Bay Area for many years. Friends said Taliaferro was also the president of the Arts Commission, Leukemia Society, and the San Francisco NAACP chapter. "Millions of people spent the night with Ray Taliaferro Monday through Friday 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.," said...

KGO which is basically the affiliated liberal side of the same KSFO – KGO radio family (“sister stations”) is in the middle of massive firings and shakeups. KGO changed their format a long while back, the stalwart of liberal talk didn’t work and their ratings dropped, with the exception of course of the longtime KGO talk host Ronn Owens who does have a dedicated audience and instead he has now moved over to KSFO taking Mark Levin’s slot. Mark Levin has been taken off his current live 3pm to 6pm slot, and instead for now put into a “red hear”...

Child pornography conviction On September 20, 2007,Bernie Ward was indicted by a grand jury on two federal counts of Attempting to Distribute and one count of Receiving child pornography via the internet from December 2004 to January 2005. The police investigation of Ward originated with a complaint from a Stanislaus County homemaker who was posing online as a dominatrix under the screen name "Sexfairy2005" and who had engaged in online chats with Ward According to the police report, Ward sent pornographic images of children to the chat partner, which caused her to contact police. The police began collecting evidence with...

A KGO-TV news crew was robbed at gunpoint of camera equipment while accompanied by a security guard in West Oakland in broad daylight, the latest in a spate of holdups in the city targeting the media, authorities said. The crew and security guard were on the 2700 block of Chestnut Street when they were robbed shortly after 2:30 p.m. Friday by three men, at least one of whom had a gun, police said. The robbers fled with camera equipment. None of the robbery victims was injured.

Lee Rodgers, Rest in Peace Written by Melanie Morgan I really don't want to write about this, I don't want to think about this, and I don't want it to be true. Lee Rodgers, friend and mentor, is dead. I owe everything that I have in my professional life to Lee Rodgers, who took me under his wing back in 1988 in the halycon days of KGO Radio. Lee was a nighttime talk show host, a former rock and roll DJ, hired by my husband Jack Swanson. He hired him twice, in fact. "Lee Rodgers was a real radio guy....

Let's start with all the things San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi did wrong: 1) Mirkarimi bullied his wife, Eliana Lopez, when he grabbed her right arm and bruised it Dec. 31. 2) When police first contacted Mirkarimi about the episode, the sheriff did not cooperate with the investigation. Instead, he circled the wagons. 3) He hired a small army of attorneys for himself and his wife, which slowed the legal process. He's the elected sheriff of San Francisco, and he tried to move his trial outside the city. 4) When Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment,...

ALL ACCESS hears that CUMULUS cuts have hit the on-air staff at Talk KGO-A(M)/SAN FRANCISCO hard, with hosts GIL GROSS (2-4p), GENE BURNS (7-10p), RAY TALIAFERRO (1-5a), and JOHN ROTHMANN (10p-1a) let go on THURSDAY as the station prepares to add more news programming on MONDAY (12/5). GROSS, the nationally-known host and newsman who joined KGO's lineup in 2007 and confirmed his departure to ALL ACCESS, bade his local listeners farewell on FACEBOOK, posting, "It's been fun SAN FRANCISCO. Truly the most fun I've ever had was at KGO. See you soon." KGO will be going to an essentially all-News...

Here's the first post-Labor Day chance for you to hear what the Republican candidates for Guv sound like live, unscripted and grilled by someone who knows how to ask questions: A "moderated conversation" at 9 a.m. Thursday on the highly-rated "Ronn Owens Program" on KGO (810 AM). And they'll be welcoming calls, too, so start dialing. Well, most of the Republican candidates will be there. Ex-Rep. Tom Campbell and Insurance Commish Steve Poizner will show. Ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman won't. Here's a reminder about about all the backstage drama behind this. Whitman's reason for blowing off one of the nation's...

The Supreme Court is still pondering whether to permit fleeting expletives on the airwaves, but a San Francisco radio station isn’t waiting for the decision. A host on San Francisco’s top-rated KGO told his fans Tuesday that the station had fired him over comments he made a few days before the election about Joe Wurzelbacher, the suddenly famous unlicensed plumber who got caught up in the candidates’ tax policy debates

Joe the Plumber has ticked off a lot of pundits, but over the weekend, he cost one his job, at least temporarily. Charles “Karel” Bouley, a weekend radio personality on San Francisco’s KGO, had just gone from a listener phone call into the top-of-the-hour news feed, with his microphone off– or so he thought. Instead, his mic was still live, broadcasting his musings on that night’s news to thousands of listeners to KGO, the Bay Area’s #1 radio station. He didn’t have nice things to say about Joe Wurzelbacher, the unlicensed Ohio plumber who ended up caught in the tug...

A left-leaning San Francisco radio host who doubles as a columnist for the Huffington Post let loose an expletive-laden, on-air diatribe in which he called for the death of Joe the Plumber. Toward the end of a segment on his weekend radio show on KGO in San Francisco, Charles Raymond Bouley Jr., more popularly known as Karel, shouted on air, "F--- Godd--- Joe the Godd--- Mother F---ing Plumber! I want Mother F---ing Joe the Plumber dead!"

Warning: Graphic language. Charles Karel Bouley is a weekend host on KGO-AM and a contributing writer for The Huffington Post. Watch and *listen* to video verbatim!

DEATH TO 'JOE'CAUGHT ON TAPE: KGO Talker Wants Ohio Plumber Killed*** EXCLUSIVE TO THE RADIO EQUALIZER ***BREAKING: KGO / San Francisco libtalker / Obama supporter Karel has been caught on tape calling for the death of Joe The Plumber. According to a key industry source, this DID go out over the airwaves. Here's the clip (NOTE -- EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WARNING):

BREAKING: KGO / San Francisco libtalker / Obama supporter Karel has been caught on tape calling for the death of Joe The Plumber. According to a key industry source, this DID go out over the airwaves. Here's the clip (NOTE -- EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WARNING):

Audio H/T to Radio Equalizer’s Brian Maloney who picked up this on-air obscenity laced diatribe from San Francisco KGO radio host Karel, who called for the “death” of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, AKA “Joe the Plumber.” “F__G__D__Joe the G__D__M__F__plumber! I want M__F Joe the plumber dead.” Maloney notes some interesting background information on the San Francisco radio host: Karel, also known as Charles Karel Bouley, is an evening and weekend host at KGO radio in San Francisco. Based in Los Angeles, Karel is a gay activist who also writes for the Huffington Post website. This latest incident caps a weekend of...

Warning: Graphic language. Charles Karel Bouley is a weekend host on KGO-AM and a contributing writer for The Huffington Post.

KGO San Francisco Radio host Charles Karel Bouley (aka Karel) who, according to Wiki..., once played an audio of 'Ding-dong the Witch is Dead' as a 'tribute' to President Reagan upon his death and who wrote in a March 2007 article at the Huffington Post that White House spokesman Tony Snow's daily 'lying to the American people' caused his cancer, wants 'Joe the Plumber dead. During the 11-01-08 9PM Saturday broadcast of ABC national news, Karel, the local host can be heard over-talking the national news broadcast stating: "F*** GD Joe the GD Plumber!" "F*** him. F*** him." "I want...

SAN FRANCISCO – Bernie Ward, the popular radio talk-show host disgraced by federal child-pornography charges, was sentenced Thursday to seven years and two months in prison. Ward, who is married and has four children, was fired in December 2007 from KGO-AM in San Francisco after a grand jury indictment accused him of actively uploading and sharing images of child pornography on the Internet. His KGO-AM shows included the Sunday morning “God Talk” program.“I feel very sorry for you and your family,” Judge Vaughn Walker told Ward. The judge said he was troubled by Ward’s hypocrisy — while the former priest...