‘The best bitch is Margie Boule!” How’s that for a tease?! Now you must listen to the podcast to learn why Margie shared that announcement with me (wait for it). Margie and Jim Bosley were the ground-breaking hosts of KATU’s AM Northwest, starting in 1977. Here Margie recounts an awkward start, but they grew to have wonderful chemistry on the air, and were lifetime friends. Margie spent more than two decades as a columnist for the Oregonian. We discuss the column she wrote about me and my fledgling comedy career. Unfortunately, several times in her career, she was subject to discrimination and some horrible harassment. Fortunately she is a survivor and talks now about the lessons for all of us.

Steve Arena and I had similar paths to Portland TV.  We were both interns who, through hard work and good fortune, landed on-air jobs in  a top 25 market right out of  college.  Steve was at KATU for 25+ years. most of them as sports director in the "Good Old Days" of local sports coverage..  He worked along side many TV news legends, and kept is sanity.  He also got out when the gettin' was good, and he's been just as successful in the dry cleaning biz.  I surprised Steve by recalling our first ever interaction, which he didn't recall, for good reason.

Walden Kirsch was a KGW news reporter for 17 years. We both started there in 1983, within 9 months of each other. He never fit the mold of your classic TV news reporter, but he was brilliant, principled, and brought the most interesting stories to our newscast. In this conversation we re-live some of the memorable events & stories, the controversial ones, and how a volatile news director wreaked havoc on the staff in the 90s. Walden & I both survived. The news director did not.

Click Dirt Devils - YouTube  Photographer Terry Renteria     Hood River Bridge (Singing Bridge) - YouTube   (Photographer Milt Ritter)

Bill was only in Portland, as a main anchor at KGW, for a few years,  but he had a big impact.   Stories of newsroom pranks are legendary, especially with his co-anchor, friend, and sometimes foil Kathy Smith.  (Listen to Kathy's podcast to get her side of the story)  Among the stories here, how Bill and Sports Director Scott Lynn stripped down and took a photo in Kathy's bathtub-- at her home. Also learn the words of wisdom Bill shared with me when I was a young reporter that stayed with me throughout my career.  Bill moved on to KCBS in Los Angeles and then covered many national stories as a CBS News correspondent and for 48 Hours.  Now Bill lives on an orchard in Northern California.  He's an accomplished artist while he and his wife run a TV production company.

Helen Raptis started like many of us. Got her foot in the door & said "I'll do anything." And she has-- receptionist, actress, artist, news, features, sports, & for the last two decades host of AM Northwest. I hosted with her for a couple years. What a blast. Re-live the Denis Leary/raspberry jam story, and the last minute, "mega star" guest she didn't know one iota. You can stream Helen's one-woman show "At Wits End" at www.fiveohm.tv .

Lew Frederick grew up in Atlanta in the 60's, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a part of his neighborhood, so he was part of the civil rights movement in our country from an early age.   No surprise, then that issues of equality have been important to him through out his career as a radio and TV journalist at KGW in Portland, in his work with Portland Public Schools, and now as a state senator.  Lew has great things to say and share, but the most revealing, I found (and didn't know until this interview close to 40 years after we first met), he came to Portland to be a mime.  Now you have to listen.

Jim Little was the lead meteorologist at three different news stations in Portland over more than 20 years.  He got his start in the science in the USAF, so he knew his stuff,   but it was "who" he knew that helped get him his start in the business, and again later as he got a job in his home town of Portland.  Hear how weather reporting changed over his time,  why he left TV forecasting, and of course the infamous green hairspray story.

The man stayed at one station in the same market for four decades.  He was Portland's Walter Cronkite.  I didn't know Mike served in the army, and it was as the Vietnam War was ripping apart our country.   And he did a little sneaky surveillance duty while working at the Pentagon.  Learn about Mike's perspective on TV journalism then and now.  It's amazing to think of all the stories he covered and the places he went to inform us of the issues that were important to our city and the state.

On a high school field trip, Carl Click came to the KGW TV studio and watched Kathy Smith anchor a newscast.  Four years later they were working in the same newsroom together.  Kathy was the main anchor.  Carl was a sports reporter.  Listen to them relive the good old days.  With very little experience Kathy began in TV in Boston and worked her way up and cross country to Portland. Hear how she used an audition from one station to get hired at another, handled a male-dominated era of the business,  survived an interview with a "handsy" sports icon,  and laugh at the pranks, on and off air, she traded with a network-bound co-anchor.

Carl Click talks with long-time Portland icon Craig Walker.  Craig turned the family radio business into a life and career in Portland media.  He was the beloved morning drive host of two major radio stations, the face of a nightly TV magazine show, and the voice of Meier & Frank marketing.  Learn about the "red sweater contests",  how Craig beat out Carl for a job, and the miracle of almost three decades of health after a life-saving liver transplant.