At age 60, he has just marked 35 years at KIRO, hosting
shows in every time slot, he says, except overnight. In those years, he's won
his share of journalism prizes and reported from the world's hot spots, whether
Ground Zero after Sept. 11 or the fall of communism in the Soviet Union.
Now, after management asked him, Ross is switching from the
midmorning show he co-hosted with Luke Burbank to begin work at 6 a.m.
Ross says that in his three-plus decades at KIRO, he's been
through plenty of format changes.
"They always happen. That's part of the job," he
says.
These days, with new technology to measure listenership,
it's a tumultuous industry.
"Instead of ratings going every three months, now they
come weekly, so we can track — at least we think we can track — what's working
and what's not working," says Ross. "Change comes more suddenly than
it did 20 years ago."
But, he says, the essence of radio still is the same:
"Trying to make a connection with listeners."
Ross's shift to early a.m. is KIRO's attempt to fix what it
acknowledges was a programming mistake.
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