Wow, talk about a time delay on news. I’ve got to get used to this happening more often. I moved across the country, and what would have been local news plastered everywhere is something that I instead have to dig up to find. I heard that a radio talk show host from KGO AM 810 in San Francisco died last month.
At first, I heard it was Gene Burns. Or I misheard. But it turns out that the radio voice that I heard for years that has left this world was none other than Pete Wilson. Known throughout the SF Bay Area, Pete Wilson was better known for his superb TV news investigation, presentation, and commentary. But he was also on a powerful AM radio station for 10 hours a week, every weekday from 2-4 pm. His topics of interest ranged from politics, to social issues, morality, politics, local news, and politics.
He was a little liberal, a little conservative, and sometimes a little hard to pin down. Gene Burns and other KGO hosts have sometimes told him to take a position and not go “ehhh…” from time to time. I remember him as being very thoughtful, opinionated, and a great way to spend one’s weekday afternoon while working on menial tasks. I listened to his show in high school sometimes, and through college at Davis. Some weekday afternoons when I found myself in the mouse lab taking care of pinkies, Pete Wilson was going on about whatever fancied him.
Pete was a native of Wisconsin, and got his degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before going on to do radio and TV, leading him to the San Francisco Bay Area. The same graduate school that I’m going to be taking some classes in at some point in the coming years.
Pete was known for wanting to argue with everybody about everything, so much so that he said that he wished that people with political bumper stickers would leave their car windows down so he could argue with them. That’s my story about him. He died on July 23, at age 62. (article)
I grew up on talk radio, which influences how I do my show - kind of a talk-radio conversational format, with a little magazine, too. Musical bumpers surrounding the breaks, and opinions.
May your memory last, Pete.
