After more than 30 years of setting an alarm clock for an unbelievably crazy early hour, I have decided to end my reporting and anchoring stint for morning drive radio. I am ready for a new lifestyle, but I don’t exactly know what that looks like yet. I hope it will include lots travel and definitely heaps more time with my husband Jack Swanson, Director of News and Programming at KCBS Radio in San Francisco, who has stoically put up with this crazy schedule of mine for far too long.
This change also means the opportunity to be more involved in my work for Move America Forward, the organization I co-founded in 2005 which advocates for our troops and their missions. We have raised over $4 million dollars for care packages we send to Iraq and Afghanistan where our men and women serve with distinction and honor.
I look back proudly on the 8 years that I worked at KGO Radio in San Francisco, the 14-year run as co-host of the Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan show on KSFO, and the year I spent hosting the syndicated America’s Morning News in Washington, D.C.
I am extremely grateful that I could help KSRO Radio in Santa Rosa over the past two and a half years, by adding to their brand as one of the iconic NewsTalk Stations left in the Bay Area.
I was honored by the Radio-Television-Digital News Association and the Associated Press with the Edward R. Murrow and Mark Twain Awards in 2015. As News Director, I am proud of our hard work at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions to provide on-the-spot coverage during one of the most memorable political seasons of our times. (Wow, who does that anymore?)
The best part of the past few years has been working for super smart, talented and kind programming wizard Jim Murphy, as well as legendary broadcasters such as Michael O’Shea and Lawrence Amaturo (both of whom are true gentlemen.)
Before any of the gushy stuff happens, I am not writing my obit, I am not retiring, and I won’t be leaving the airwaves until after November or as late as December in order for my boss to find my replacement.
I’m just hitting the pause button.
But until then, see you on the radio at o’dark hundred. KSRO 1350 and FM 103.5 or live on the web at KSRO.com
Mel