KCBS (AM) - Content & Personalities

Content & Personalities

KCBS is well known for a number of personalities. On weekday mornings, the morning anchor team chats with Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, former Oakland Raiders coach, and sportscaster John Madden. Morning team members Stan Bunger, Steve Bitker and Susan Leigh Taylor talk with Madden about a wide variety of topics, generally focusing on sports. The station also hosts special segments each weekday with CBS News technology analysts Larry Magid and Brian Cooley and longtime food and wine editor Narsai David.

Similar to its sister stations such as WBBM and WCBS, KCBS does traffic and weather on the :08s (promoted as "traffic and weather together every ten minutes"), sports updates at :15 and :45 past the hour, and business news ("Moneywatch") at :25 and :55 past the hour. KCBS Cover Story airs weekly as an extended look at a major issue in the news, while In Depth is a weekly long-form interview program. In addition, KCBS simulcasts 60 Minutes and Face The Nation, which is also standard practice at the other CBS-owned all-news radio stations. KCBS generally simulcasts the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley live from 3:31 to 3:38 p.m. weekdays; listeners hear the opening stories two hours before they appear on KPIX-TV.

Bob Price, a longtime business anchor and editor for KCBS who worked for over 20 years at the radio station, anchored from what is currently called the San Francisco floor of the New York Stock Exchange before his retirement on November 5, 2009. Jason Brooks currently anchors business news since Price's retirement.

In 2011, Kim Wonderley was the morning traffic anchor (5 a.m. to 10 a.m.). She simultaneously was traffic reporter for other Bay Area radio stations. A KCBS direct mail piece claimed, "More people rely on her morning traffic reports on KCBS than on any other station." Patti Reising was a weekday afternoon news anchor in 2011.

KCBS occasionally runs a "Mystery Newsmaker" listen-and-phone contest. Listeners hear a sound bite in the morning (7:40 a.m.) and are invited to be the tenth caller to correctly identify the speaker at a certain point in the afternoon (usually 4:40 p.m.) in order to win a prize.