Jim French To Sign Off As Kiro-Am Radio Host

Four decades, three stations, music, talk and drama - there isn't much Jim French hasn't done as a Seattle radio personality.

Except maybe slow down, which he'll try to do after July 1, the last day of his weekday interview show on news-talk KIRO-AM (710).

Or maybe refocus would be more like it.

French, 65, says he is looking forward to staying with the station to produce his acclaimed "KIRO Mystery Playhouse" series, heard Sunday nights at 9, and to do hour-long interviews of newsmakers and celebrities for weekend broadcast.

But his days as the restrained, unhurried host of a live, traditional in-studio talk show, broadcast weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to noon, are numbered.

French's style is decidedly non-confrontational. He is conversational, polite.

And these days, conversational and polite don't count for much in broadcast ratings.

French goes up against nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh, whose bombastic, conservative soliloquy is aired on news-talk KVI-AM (570).

Among all listeners 12 and older, Limbaugh is No. 1 in the Arbitron ratings here. French is fourth. Among the 25- to 54-year-olds coveted by advertisers, Limbaugh is second and French 17th.

French's replacement starting July 5 will be Lee Rodgers, a 10-year talk-show host for KGO-AM in San Francisco who, compared with French anyway, is a hell-raiser, a conservative who says he will focus on local and regional issues.

"It will be a politically oriented program," Rodgers said.

"Certainly by the standards of San Francisco I'm a conservative on most issues," Rodgers said. "But by the standards of San Francisco, who isn't conservative?"

In describing himself, Rodgers, who also has worked in Chicago and Miami, lists what have come to be the archetypal characteristics of a successful radio talk-show host in the 1990s.

He said he is right of center, "especially on economic issues, but on personal freedom I'm on the liberal side. And I have some libertarian impulses."

If that sounds familiar, you might be familiar with Mike Siegel, who follows Limbaugh's program in the afternoons on KVI.

The reduced role is fine with French.

"When we first discussed a change, all they asked was, `What would you really like to do?' " French said. "So I told them, and they instantly agreed to it, which I think shows a lot of class.

"You have to realize that people's tastes change," shrugged French. "That's just a fact of life, and when you get into this business you have to expect that will happen to you.

"When I got into radio so long ago, I was taught that you are quite literally a guest in people's homes or in their cars. You do nothing to insult them or offend them. I have gotten so used to doing that, that it would be unnatural for me to change."

When French started in radio, politics weren't as important as drama and entertainment.

He grew up in the Los Angeles area, got his first radio job at age 14 and worked for Armed Forces Radio in Japan after World War II.

He ended up at a station in Honolulu briefly before coming to Seattle in 1952 to work for KING-AM (1090) as an evening disc jockey.

In 1958, KIRO-AM offered French the day's most important shift, morning drive time. He didn't leave KIRO until 1971, intending to quit the radio business.

But KVI made French an offer he couldn't refuse, and it was there, in the mid-1970s, that French dusted off his early passion for radio drama and helped revive the genre with KVI's "Theatre of the Mind" series.

In 1978, French and others were tossed out when KVI changed formats. He wrote and produced movies for a couple of years but returned to KIRO in 1980 to host "Midday," where he has been a fixture ever since and a regular stop for those on the lecture and book-tour circuits.

"The only things that don't change are dead," French said. "Radio habits and preferences are constantly in a state of flux, but we don't notice it so much until something comes along that precipitates a big change. And then you have to meet it and change with it."