Museum to preserve massive archive of Bay Area radio broadcasts
The time-tested voices of multiple Bay Area Radio Hall Of Fame (BARHOF) members warmed the air of the Alameda Veterans Memorial Building on Saturday, December 13 as the group brought to life a classic, 1948 Christmas episode of the Ozzie and Harriet radio comedy show, formally known as “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”
About 80 audience members participating in this year’s California Radio Historical Society (CHRS) Annual Holiday Party, enjoyed a brief foray into yesteryear to marvel at the broadcast, took in a recap of this year’s accomplishments for Alameda’s gem of a radio museum, heard live Elvis Presley-centric Christmas tunes, and hobnobbed over tasty, catered fare.
CHRS Executive Director Rachel Lee highlighted the museum and radio society’s growth and achievements over the past year, underscoring its ongoing transition from a club-style organization into a sustainable, nonprofit museum and event space open to the public.
This year’s event “was a celebration for our members and volunteers. It went great and it was lovely to honor them and their wonderful contributions,” Lee said, noting the positives of moving the event from their vintage museum to the more accommodating, mingle- and performance-worthy Veterans Hall, just across the street.
“I didn’t just want a holiday celebration,” she added. “I wanted to note a year that everybody talks about, ticking off key elements of CHRS growth in 2025 and plans for the future.”
This past year, the group launched a fundraising capitalization project, including vintage radio sales and auctions, doubled last summer’s attendance for its festival style “Radio Day By The Bay” event (including a build-your-own-boombox session), and pushed ahead with its highly ambitious archival radio recordings digitization and preservation project, Lee noted.
Stan Bunger, the ever recognizable morning news voice of KCBS radio until 2021, picked up the mic again to underscore the significance of CHRS’s developing digitization project, noting that thousands of hours of past radio broadcasts—stored on old, decaying magnetic tape and other analog media—are “nearing the end of their shelf life,” and will be forever lost without this CHRS undertaking.
For now, Bunger and the volunteer squad he heads are cataloging the material they have so far.
That initial phase will be followed by the monumental, time-consuming task of digitizing the recordings for both research and public access purposes.
“We anticipate an avalanche of this material,” said Lee, forecasting what may take place once word gets out to a larger audience.
Leading off the entertainment segment of the fest was a trio of guitarists and singers performing songs with holiday themes, led by Ben Fong-Torres, famed former reporter and editor of Rolling Stone magazine. He and the ad hoc group spun off a few Elvis Presley-inspired and other seasonal tunes, including “Blue Christmas.”
That auditory tickle was accentuated by a 30-minute onstage rendition of an entire “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” radio show episode—complete with grating 1847 Rogers silverplate silverware ads—that featured eleven BARHOF and past radio broadcast members, headed up by Terry McGovern, DJ of the great old “Jive 95” underground music station KSAN, playing Ozzie Nelson.
Rounding out America’s favorite fictional married couple in the role of Harriet Nelson was Alisa Clancy, 30-year program director and “Morning Cup of Jazz” host at Bay Area jazz station KCSM until last August.
A cadre of other renowned Bay Area radio and journalism celebrities enriched the rarefied air of the event, including Joe Starkey, legendary voice of Cal Football and the San Francisco 49ers on KGO radio, and other memorable mic jockeys and scribes such as Sam Van Zandt, Miranda Wilson, Peter Finch, Elaine Leung, and Michael Bennett. Also in attendance was Alameda PostCast and KCSM-HD2 host Scott Piehler.
Other notables in the crowd included soundman Dan Healy, known for his preeminent audio tech prowess with the Grateful Dead, and Dr. Gloria Duffy, president of the prestigious San Francisco Commonwealth Club/World Affairs Council, America’s oldest non-partisan public discourse forum, and founder of the nation’s first statewide weekly radio broadcast in 1924.
After the two-and-half-hour celebration ended, Lee underscored her greatest wish for 2026: “I would love for people just to visit us and enjoy our museum.” And ever the cheerleader for CHRS and its ambitious public service and growth ideals, she added, “Of course we always welcome donations and it’s a great place to volunteer.”
Learn more about the Radio Museum and CHRS on their website.
Larry Freeman is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact him via [email protected].
