After 20 years as KRON's sports anchor, Gary Radnich still does it his way. Most of the time it's a slam dunk.

by Peter Hartlaub, SF Chronicle Pop Culture Critic
March 17, 2005

The sportscaster is moving down the third-floor hallway of KRON TV's headquarters at a leisurely pace somewhere between a stroll and a flat-out lollygag.

An urgent-sounding voice comes across the intercom, calling the sportscaster by name with the news that his segment goes live in two minutes. The KRON news set is one floor below, and there's about 100 feet of carpet left to cross -- plus a ride on an elevator that quite frankly doesn't look that reliable.

Gary Radnich is talking about Dean Martin.

"You ever watch those infomercials in the middle of the night? Dean Martin. He would come in, everyone else would rehearse for his show, except him. He quit wearing a tie. Everyone else rehearsed for the show and he came and did the show for the first time," Radnich says, leaving it to the listener to compare the Rat Packer's approach to his own sportscast.

"As I've said, sometimes it bombs, but then again ... "

The thought is still hanging in the air as Radnich walks onto the set, where anchors Wendy Tokuda and Tom Sinkovitz have been delivering the first 24 minutes of the 6 p.m. news.

He has just enough time to clip on his microphone before launching into a five minute ad-lib that starts with the upcoming NCAA basketball tournament and ends with betting tips for Tokuda. The anchors are laughing at the end, even after the station goes to commercial.

Radnich, 55, who marks his 20th year with KRON this week and has spent 13 years at radio station KNBR, didn't last this long by playing it safe. Anchorwoman Pam Moore, who looks forward to Radnich's segments, says no one is surprised when he arrives at the last moment.

"I've been here since 1991, and he's always done that," Moore says. "I don't know if it's the way his adrenaline kicks in or the way his energy works, but that's not for style or for show. That's just the way he is."

A former college basketball player at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Radnich came to KRON in 1985, when ex-football linebacker Wayne Walker was the biggest name in sports television. KNBR senior vice president Tony Salvadore gives Radnich a lot of credit for immediately trying to be himself, breaking the ex-jock-on-the-air stereotype and infusing his sports shows with a casual pop-culture spin long before that approach became the norm.

"Gary just brought a whole different take to it," Salvadore says. "We couldn't really put a finger on it, but we knew he was doing something really unique and different."

After a few guest stints on Ralph Barbieri's show, Radnich joined KNBR full-time in 1992, and with Walker's departure, took over as the alpha male of the Bay Area broadcasting market.

Throughout Radnich's tenure, his disdain for careful planning has remained, and even his career moves seem to be made with an almost self- destructive spontaneity. Radnich spent 34 months from early 1999 to late 2001 combining early morning work on KNBR with the nightly news on KRON -- making his life a series of short naps until he moved to his current 9:30 a.m. radio shift. When KRON lost its NBC affiliation on Jan. 1, 2002, and other big names had left or were trying to flee the station, Radnich groused a little, then signed a seven-year contract that will keep him at KRON until his 25th anniversary.

That's about five years longer than many critics expected the independent station to last. But the move so far has been a shrewd one for the sportscaster. He recently was given a second segment on the 9 p.m. news program, which sometimes gets higher ratings than the nightly newscasts on the local ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates. And Radnich routinely gets five minutes or more, when bigger stations are trimming their allocation of sports to two minutes or less.

"People say, 'Jeez, KRON lost NBC' or this and that. I'm a firm believer that there are trade-offs in everything," Radnich says. "And the trade-off here is I'm still able to do my stuff and still able to have fun when I come in. ... Would I rather have the NBC affiliate? Yes. Would I want to trade contracts with anyone in the market? No."

Radnich arrives at the station on Van Ness a little after 6 p.m., with the newscast already in progress. He's talking even before he enters the windowless KRON sports office on the third floor.

Radnich's wife, Alicia, and their two young girls are here today, and the resulting commotion gives him even less time to peruse the notes handed to him by his longtime producer, Jason Applebaum. Which isn't much of a problem, because there are fewer words on the page than would be on a grocery shopping list for a small dinner party.

Applebaum said he found out how differently Radnich operates after briefly working for a more traditional sportscaster in Los Angeles, who demanded every word be typed out for the teleprompter.

"When we would go to the tape, if there were highlights, we would write 'Kobe to Shaq for the dunk. Kobe finished with 25 points.' And he would read that," Applebaum says.

While viewers may notice there's something about Radnich that's different from other sportscasters, but can't quite place it, it becomes completely obvious behind the scenes.

He moves steadily through the hallways like a shark, as if his life depended on constant movement. When two young co-workers at an editing bay "ooh" and "ahh" over a Syracuse basketball player whose sensational dunk turns into an even better crash landing, Radnich turns away from the monitor. He prefers to see the video for the first time on the air, just like everyone at home. Radnich avoids meetings, rarely talks to the higher-ups at KRON and says that when he sees the anchors on the set, "that's the first time I've talked to them about anything."

When it's time for sports, the teleprompter stops moving. Radnich's only cues are a few hastily typed notes ("Sr. Mary's Wll Be Sweatiung Untill Siunday") that cue the director to roll video tape.

For at least 18 minutes each night, Radnich operates without a net, saying whatever comes to his head, with few boundaries beyond those set by the Federal Communications Commission. He routinely brings behind-the-scenes staff on the program and chides sports anchors at other stations, which shouldn't bother them too much considering he pokes fun at his own colleagues, too. Today the victim is "Bay Area Backroads" host Doug McConnell, whose show is on next.

"I love 'Backroads,' " Radnich says, before commenting on McConnell's snugly fitted denim pants. "The tighter the jeans, the more I lean forward."

In local television, station employees will talk in hushed voices and off the record about anchors who show up a few minutes before their on-air shift and leave a few minutes after. Only Radnich would think to use his schedule as yet another conversation piece, at times encouraging the legend.

"We accuse him of going around the block in the car until it's time to come in," Salvadore says. "He just doesn't want to hang out in anybody's office."

During one of his more serious moments, Radnich defends his work ethic. After the running start he gets during his KNBR show that ends at noon, he usually goes home and reads five newspapers. He says he used to do things the regular way, but knew he would burn out quickly fretting over a script.

"Years ago I'd type everything out," Radnich says. "And then before you know it, it sounds like you're reading it."

Instead, he leaves the KRON building between newscasts, spending time with Alicia and his girls (Radnich also has three grown children from a previous marriage), while using his driving time to map out much of what he's going to say on the air. And he lingers each night after the 11 p.m. news, when most of the staff has left the building, sitting alone in an editing bay and critiquing his own performance that day.

Radnich knows everyone in the building by first name and has nice things to say about his colleagues, but doesn't mince words when it comes to his attendance record.

"I'm not beat up by sitting around in an office, having guys telling me my hairline's going. How does my voice sound? I don't have any of that," Radnich says. "All that office chatter. People complaining. I pretty much cut that out. If I can help you, let me know."

And as long as the building doesn't fall down around him, Radnich doesn't plan on making changes. Sometimes it bombs, but then again ...

"Right now, walking in and walking out, having everyone smile and happy to see you is more important than sitting in a meeting," Radnich says. "Right now, this is where it's at."

E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com