Jim Dunbar, pioneer in SF newstalk radio, dies at 89

Jim Dunbar (left) with co-anchor Ted Wygant at the microphone for the morning show on KGO-AM where he developed the popular newstalk format. Jim Dunbar (left) with co-anchor Ted Wygant at the microphone for the morning show on KGO-AM where he developed the popular newstalk format. Photo: Vince Maggiora / The Chronicle 2000 Photo: Vince Maggiora / The Chronicle 2000 Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Jim Dunbar, pioneer in SF newstalk radio, dies at 89 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Before there was the loose blend of current events, commentary and call-ins that became known across the radio waves as “newstalk,” in the Bay Area, there was only Jim Dunbar, trying to rescue a desperate ratings situation on KGO-AM in San Francisco.

Brought in from Chicago and asked to challenge Don Sherwood, the heretofore king of morning drive time on KSFO, Dunbar built a folksy style, calming voice and friendly demeanor into the “KGO Morning News,” a show that long outlasted the notorious Sherwood.

“Jim Dunbar” became its own news brand on morning radio and TV to the point that when a man claiming to be the Zodiac Killer called to demand an audience with attorneys Melvin Belli and F. Lee Bailey, he would do so only on Dunbar’s show.

For 37 years, his was the reliable voice of the morning, and now that voice has been silenced. Dunbar, who survived an assassination attempt while on the air, died peacefully on Earth Day, an event that he helped create. He passed away of the infirmities of old age, said his daughter, Brooke Dunbar. He was 89. A longtime resident of Hillsborough, he was the first San Francisco radio personality to be inducted into the Radio Broadcasters Hall of Fame, in 1999.

“Jim Dunbar is in both the local and national radio halls of fame for good reason,” said Ben Fong-Torres, a Bay Area radio historian and contributor to The Chronicle. “He changed the Bay Area radio landscape by helping turn KGO from an also-ran into the greatest powerhouse on the dial, with a 30-year run at the top of the ratings.”

James H. Dunbar Jr. was born Oct. 9, 1929, in Dearborn, Mich., where he grew up. After graduating form Fordson High in 1947, he attended Michigan State University. He needed a job to help pay his way through and the best option was at the campus radio station, calling the Spartans basketball games. This led to a two-year stint in the Army, where he was a broadcaster at the base station in Fort Riley, Kan.

In 1956, he arrived at WDSU in New Orleans, as both station manager and disc jockey spinning jazz records. On-air, he replaced Dick Van Dyke, who had been lured away to Broadway. At a party in the French Quarter, he met a Southern belle by the name of Beth Monroe. She was still an undergrad at H. Sophie Newcomb College, the women’s affiliate at Tulane University, but Dunbar wouldn’t wait. They were married before she graduated and celebrated their 60th anniversary last December.

Dunbar was playing the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly at WLS, a top-40 station in Chicago, when Dunbar found a job in San Francisco in hopes that his wife would stop complaining about the Chicago weather.

“I told my wife we’ll be here for a year and then we’ll be gone,’’ he recalled in an interview with The Chronicle upon his retirement in 2000. “When I came out here, the station (KGO) was in terrible trouble. It had tried every format from German band music to bird calls.”

Dunbar tried some formats of his own, including the zany “Man on the Street,” interviews of unsuspecting citizens conducted by comics Mal Sharpe and Jim Coyle.

“There were stations doing news and stations doing talk,” he told The Chronicle, “but nobody put it together quite the way that we did.” KGO became so successful that the station expressed regret that it did not copyright the slogan “newstalk.”

“Dad took that station from dead last to No. 1 for 25 consecutive years,” said Brooke. “I don’t know anyone else who has that kind of record.”

For all those years, Dunbar got up at 3:45 a.m., was out the door at 4:30 and on the air at 5:05. He had it it timed to the minute. “He used to say, ‘They don’t pay you to be early,’ “ said Brooke, “But he was only late once in 37 years.”

Ken Berry, retired news director at KGO, was amazed that Dunbar could get into his chair, pick up something from the news wire and turn it into a story like he’d been working all night on it. For most of his career, Dunbar was teamed up with the late Ted Wygant. The 5 a.m. hour was called “the Zoo Hour,” and it was always Dunbar’s goal to get Wygant laughing so hard he’d spit out his coffee.

“Jim never wanted to be the voice of authority. He wanted people to wake up in a good mood and get a laugh with their news,” said Berry. “If you had to get bad news, you wanted to get it from Jim Dunbar. He just had a reassuring way about him.”

While always local, his show twice made national news. The first was the Zodiac. At the appointed hour, a man called in to Dunbar’s KGO TV show, station, spoke a few words and hung up. This was repeated 54 times over two hours until a surrender location was settled upon. But the caller never showed up at the drop point or called again.

The second national story came in 1973. He was on the radio when a man came into the station with a gun and fired at Dunbar inside his studio. Bulletproof glass saved him and he stayed on the air to describe it. A KGO employee was killed before the gunman went outside and shot himself.

After his retirement, in 2000, Dunbar gave his alarm clock to his daughter and never got up again before 8:30 in the morning. For a few years he did what he called “graceful little audio essays” for KGO. Then he retired altogether. But that recognizable voice could still be heard at senior centers where he volunteered to discuss current issues for another 15 years.

He played tennis, played the clarinet and collected cars. His garage and driveway were once packed but, at the time of his death, he was down to his last Ford Model A.

Survivors include his wife, Beth, daughter Brooke of Foster City, and son James of New York City. Services are pending.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com. Instagram: sfchronicle_art