Golden, Krikorian Again See KMPC’s Revolving Door

In the wacky world of sports-talk radio, you just never know what will happen next.

Word came late Thursday that KMPC has fired midday hosts Brian Golden and Doug Krikorian.

It’s the second sacking for both. They were also fired last June in an apparent money-saving move by the station, but both ended up back on the air.

This time, they apparently were let go for something as trivial as not showing up to test drive a sponsor’s car at Willow Springs Wednesday.

Golden, a loyal trooper if there ever was one, was ill, and Krikorian was busy rehearsing for a bit part in a movie about Ty Cobb.

“If they had told me it was mandatory for me to be in Willow Springs, I would have gone,” Krikorian said. “But I got approval to miss it. This is the damnedest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Is this firing permanent? No telling.

Golden’s and Krikorian’s ratings have been increasing, and program director Scott O’Neil likes their work.

Calls to General Manager Bill Ward and O’Neil were not returned.

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Down at XTRA, the new morning show so far is a bust.

Rick Schwartz, a relative newcomer to the talk-show business, had a great thing going at nights with Steve Mason. They called the gig, “Too Much Show,” and it really was too much.

The program often veered away from sports, but rarely from being fun and entertaining.

They called their regular callers a dysfunctional family, and that’s what they were. Ed from Anaheim, who would play his trumpet upon request, was a regular. So was Drew from San Diego, until the law caught up with him and jailed him for an alleged series of bank robberies.

The show was fun--and always upbeat.

But Mason left the station in January, and now Schwartz has moved to mornings, hooking up with a couple of former FM disc jockeys, Mike Berger and Jeff Prescott.

With the popular “Loose Cannons” duo of Steve Hartman and Chet Forte having their time cut to two hours, it’s now Berger, Prescott and Schwartz in the mornings on XTRA.

Sounds like a law firm. Might as well be. In a word, their show is B-O-R-I-N-G.

They still identify the station as “XTRA sports 690.” But there are no sports on this show. On Tuesday, the main topic was smoking. On Thursday, it was junk mail.

Schwartz is positioned off by himself in XTRA’s Woodland Hills studios. The other two are together in San Diego. This three-man show could be called “Too Many, Too Little.”

“Too Much Show” was everything this show isn’t.

Schwartz, always the optimist, isn’t complaining.

“It’s a big promotion for a guy who’s been in radio for only a year and a half,” he said. “I’m now the station’s morning guy in L.A.

“Given time, I’m very confident that with the talent of Mike and Jeff, the three of us will put together a great show.”

They’ve got a ways to go.

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Schwartz, the son of a doctor, grew up in comfortable surroundings in Beverly Hills. He attended UC Santa Barbara for two years before transferring to UCLA.

Schwartz, who turned 31 Wednesday, said he has always been a positive thinker, but a visit to war-torn Yugoslavia in November of 1991 gave him a new outlook on life.

“When you stand over dead children and watch mothers looking for their sons in make-shift morgues, when you get pulled off a mine and you get shot at, you realize life is very short and very precious and you have to make the most of every day.

“When you see what I saw, you realize the everyday problems we have are not all that important.”

When he returned home in January 1992, he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a sportscaster. He kept beating on XTRA’s door until he got a weekend show, and the career took off from there.

Also, not long after returning from Yugoslavia, Schwartz was having dinner with friends at DC-3, a Santa Monica restaurant, when he noticed what he said was “the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

He went right up to her. “After what I had just been through in Yugoslavia, there was no way I was going to be scared to talk to a beautiful girl,” Schwartz said. “I was in the fame of mind that you had to go after what you wanted.”

The girl was Michelle Turley, a nationally known model.

Schwartz asked her to lunch, and she accepted. After the lunch date, they spent every day together for the next two weeks, then went to Las Vegas to be married.