KNX-FM Apologizes for ‘Brunch’ Incident

Dierdre O’Donoghue, host of KNX-FM’s Sunday morning “Brunch With the Beatles,” set off a perplexing series of official station management “apologies” to the listening audience after she quit on the air last weekend.

“I don’t know why the station is apologizing for it,” O’Donoghue said Tuesday. “I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t bad-mouth the station. I could have. I thought about it, but I didn’t.”

O’Donoghue told listeners on the last commercial break of the program that she was “a little worn out” after hosting the weekly show for 16 months and asked listeners to “tune in to me next Sunday on Classic Rock (97.1) KLSX for ‘Brunch With Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.’ ” She also asked listeners to tune in to KCRW-FM (89.9), a public radio station where O’Donoghue hosts “SNAP,” an evening pop music program.

KNX-FM ran hourly apologies for her comments throughout the day Monday. Station officials would not say why they were apologizing. “I don’t know how it happened, but we don’t want it to happen again,” said Charlie Seraphin, KNX-FM’s vice president and general manager. He said the show would continue, but no host had been selected to replace O’Donoghue as of Tuesday.

O’Donoghue said she left the station because her banter with her audience had been limited by management who only wanted her to announce songs and identify the station.

“I tried it once,” she said. “It was horrible. It was boring.”

O’Donoghue said she didn’t tell the station she was quitting because she would not have been allowed to “say goodby.”

“If I was them, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But all too often people on the radio come and go and the audience is left wondering, ‘What ever happened to so-and-so?’ I didn’t want that to happen to me,” O’Donoghue said. “My audience means too much to me.”