KFI – Dave Garroway Show with guest: Steve Allen – First day on the air in L.A. – 1970 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Dave Garroway – from the earliest days of Television, he was a fixture and household name in American Pop Culture as founding host of The Today Show and guiding light from 1952 to 1961. Virtually nothing else during the time slot equalled the popularity of Today and Dave Garroway was, along with Walter Cronkite who presided over CBS News later in the evening, one of the most trusted people in the country. In addition, Dave Garroway hosted various programs, in addition to Today becoming one of the first hosts on the new NBC Radio service, Monitor which began broadcasting in 1955.
Dave Garroway left The Today Show in 1961 and eventually landed back in radio, hosting a program familiar to his former shows in the past. Dave Garroway At Large began late 1970 and originated at KFI in Los Angeles, where Garroway located for the next few years.
On this, his initial program, he is joined during this first hour by Steve Allen, himself a solid fixture on American television by way of his Tonight Show, also on NBC. Allen was no stranger to Los Angeles, having hosted several shows for KNX and CBS Radio in the 1940’s. When his tenure on The Tonight Show gave way to Jack Paar, Steve Allen moved back to Los Angeles and wound up doing a brief stint at KFI, hosting his own talk show.
Steve Allen and Garroway engage in talking about the ins and outs of life in L.A., with Dave Garroway being the comparative newcomer and Allen being the sage old-timer.
It gives you some idea of how talk radio was in the late 1960s and early 70s and it also gives you some idea of as where Los Angeles was as a cultural center in the grand scheme of things.
