At the end of Damon Bruce’s KNBR 1050 show on Wednesday afternoon, he announced that he recently agreed to host a show on Saturday from 1-4 pm on KGO. Bruce mentioned that his handling of the Penn State (Jerry Sandusky) scandal a week ago drove KGO — which is now underneath the Cumulus umbrella along with KNBR — to see if he was interested in hosting a talk show about general topics, including sports.
Bruce said that on this new show he’d still talk Niners, Giants and Cal football (Bears games are carried on KGO), but that even though he doesn’t allow his KNBR show to veer into the territory he calls “fiesta politico,” he’s comfortable broadening his topical horizons to a certain extent on the news talk station. Bruce added that he was brought in to “young up” the station.
KGO has seen declining ratings over the last few months.
A good portion of Bruce’s show last Monday focused on the Sandusky report, and he continued his passionate, raw, no-frills coverage of the brutalities and subsequent cover-ups the rest of last week. Instead of playing devil’s advocate or focusing on what the tragedy could mean for the Nittany Lions football team, Bruce broke down exactly what Sandusky did, and argued that remaining silent about the crimes and what they really were (not “abuses,” but “rapes”) doesn’t do justice to the victims.
Bruce won’t get a scheduled day off anytime soon; along with his show from noon-to-3 on weekdays and this new Saturday gig, he also does a postgame show after San Francisco 49ers games with Larry Krueger.
