Swanson out at KGO-KSFO as Cumulus takes over

Swanson

Jack Swanson, longtime executive at KGO-AM and KSFO, is leaving the stations which recently changed hands from Citadel to Cumulus. He said in an email to his staff that he and wife Melanie Morgan will be “going to a very small island very far away to recharge, and think and reinvent.” He emphasized that he is not retiring.

“This has been a tremendous run,” Swanson said in the email.  “Cumulus is inheriting the greatest staff in the radio industry. To a person, they are all rock stars.”

"I will be popping up somewhere soon,” he said in the email with the subject line "Farewell.”

He has been with KGO for 28 years, rising to operations manager and has a string of 120 No. 1 rating books for KGO, an eye-popper for his resume.

Also leaving is Ken Berry, program director at KSFO since 2009. Berry was news director at KGO in the 1980s and 90s. Radio Ink says that in addition to Swanson and Berry, six other people were let go.

Swanson was the right-hand man of Mickey Luckoff, who headed the stations for decades and left last year in a noisy spat with Citadel management.

“He will be sorely missed,” said KSFO fill-in host David Gold in a post on his blog. “It is so sad to witness radio consolidation result in diminished radio. Sad day.”

Media blogger Rich Lieberman is predicting that management will cancel KGO's "Afternoon News," though he cites no source for that information.

Last week, longtime KABC/KLOS Los Angeles president and gm Bob Moore was let go by Cumulus, fueling talk of a bloodbath at the former Citadel stations.