Good News: You’re On in L.A.; Bad News . . .

So who is Ronn Owens, the KGO-AM San Francisco talk-radio host who at once is in the enviable and somewhat perilous spot of replacing Michael Jackson, starting Monday, on KABC-AM (790)?

At 51, he’s been in radio 29 years, 22 of them at KGO, long enough to know that his new show is like “a big ship. You don’t turn it around instantly. You’re talking about listening habits that have been developed over years. You’re talking about a period where, no matter who comes in to any time slot, there’s going to be X% of people who don’t like me.”

Or who like the other fellow--the previous host?

“Or who like the other fellow and who will blame me for that,” he replies easily in an empty office at KABC. “So it will take time for people to get used to me, to decide if they like me and want me in their homes every morning, and the station has been very specific about saying, ‘This is a long-haul thing.’ They understand it’s not going to turn around instantly.”

But Owens--who got the job, according to KABC, because he consistently beats Rush Limbaugh in the ratings, which Jackson hasn’t done here since 1991--is also quite confident that he’s the man for the job.

After all, he notes, KABC will be sharing him with KGO; the morning program will be simulcast on both Disney-owned stations. “They obviously must think 50% of me is better than 100% of someone else,” he says with a laugh.

But is it such a big deal, after all, to beat Limbaugh in San Francisco, probably the nation’s most concentrated liberal enclave? “Good question,” he says, grinning, “but the answer is simple. San Francisco has got about 700,000 people, and the Bay Area has 5 [million] to 6 million. And you start going to Contra Costa County, you’re going to find that [it’s] not necessarily different from Orange County. The Bay Area is like any other community with a lot of suburbs and a lot of people who vote Republican and a lot of people who are more conservative than liberal.”

The first week, Owens will be doing the broadcast just for the Southland. The actual simulcast begins July 21. He’ll rotate--one week in Los Angeles, the next week in San Francisco. He has rented a condo in Century City; his wife and two young daughters will be with him here this summer.

Asked how his show will be relevant to both cities, Owens explains that “90%-95% of the show is really not going to change. I grab articles from anywhere around the country and turn them into discussion topics. With the other 5 [percent] to 10%, one of the things I know how to do, not that it’s easy, but that you generalize a little more. [For] example, the big issue in the Bay Area, especially San Francisco, was the new stadium. Now [if] I’m doing that same show on KABC and KGO, instead of talking the specifics of the issue, what becomes general is, ‘Should the public be financing a stadium?’ That’s as interesting to people in Los Angeles as it is in San Francisco.

“Another example: Willie Brown. California Speaker of the Assembly for Lord knows how long. He’s now mayor of San Francisco. If he were to come on the program, it’s not going to be on San Francisco issues, it’s going to be on more statewide issues. And I would still be able to use Willie because Willie’s a colorful character.”

*

Of Jackson, the 30-year KABC veteran who is moving to weekends, Owens says, “Our styles are different. Michael is more formal. I tend to be a little looser. I’ll throw a lot more off-the-wall stuff out. And Michael is a bit more ideological--he tends to be more liberal overall--and he probably talks with guests more than I do. But Michael and I over the years have interviewed probably 85 [percent] to 90% of the same people. Very often they do my show in San Francisco and then come down and do Michael’s here in L.A., or they will have just come from Michael’s the day before.

“Philosophically I’m just non-ideological,” Owens says. “I’m very common sense. I tend to be a bit more liberal on social issues”--he favors abortion rights, and is pro-gay rights, pro-gun control--”a bit more conservative on foreign affairs, economics. Sort of a neo-con, if you will. And I’m extremely conservative on crime. I’m one of the people involved in getting ‘three strikes’ on the ballot. We had an on-air campaign for petitions, and we started it in Petaluma where Polly Klaas was murdered.”

Born Ronald Lowenstein, he grew up in Queens, N.Y. His father was in the metals and minerals business; his mother ran a firm that made bridge table covers and table mats. “Ronn” was “an affectation” he glommed onto at 17 to set him apart from the pack. At the time, he was doing some weekend newsbreaks on WINS in New York.

An only child who wanted to be in radio from age 11, he took his abridged last name for the opposite reason. In that era, a white-bread name was a virtual requirement, and ethnicity often hidden. “At that time, you never used a name like Lowenstein,” he notes. “So my mother said, ‘Why don’t you just drop the L and the TEIN?’ ”

He graduated from Temple University in 1967, having majored in sociology, and taught school for 18 months--it served as his exemption from Vietnam--before studying for his master’s degree at the Annenberg School for Communication in Pennsylvania. He dropped out when he got a gig at WCAU in Philadelphia, and moved to stations in Miami, Cleveland and Atlanta. In 1975, KGO called.

Owens often runs a fast-paced McTopic show, throwing out a batch of subjects in his opening “churn” for listeners to react to. He makes clear where he stands but does not bash callers. If bored, he might cut off someone with a simple “Nah.” In the 9 a.m. hour Friday, Owens said he’d pay $5 or $10 to see Ron Goldman destroy O.J. Simpson’s Heisman Trophy; sided with the ACLU in opposing a Los Angeles proposal to ban more than two members of the 18th Street gang from any public gathering as “discriminatory”; attacked GOP House members who oppose funding for the National Endowment for the Arts--”If every piece of artwork was like a Grandma Moses painting, do you really think they’d be pushing so hard?”--and called Martha Stewart “a cold fish.”

And come Monday, he said in the interview, “I’m not sure [KABC] is going to be crazy about it but I’m sure I will make some reference to Michael in the beginning. Because he’s a giant. You just don’t go in and take over. . . . And then I’ll just go and do my regular show.”

* “The Ronn Owens Show” will air weekdays 9-11:45 a.m. on KABC-AM (790).