Former KSFO program director Allan Newman stands between Kennedy press secretary Pierre Salinger and Phyllis Diller at a KSFO softball game in the early ’60s.

Ben Fong-Torres’s Sunday Radio Waves article in the Chron highlighted Newman, now 81, who kept the reins on a lineup led by Don Sherwood and, at one point in 1963, including Jim Lange, Jack Carney, Del Courtney, Al “Jazzbeaux” Collins and Herb Kennedy, along with Aaron Edwards, Carter B. Smith, and solid news, traffic and sports. Back then, KSFO broadcast the Giants and 49ers.

How big was Sherwood? “He had a go-to-hell attitude,” Newman said. “There was nothing like Sherwood and Herb Caen. They were the voices of the city.”

Sherwood apparently engineered Newman’s departure from KSFO, which wasn’t entirely bad: “After I left, my whole life changed,” Newman said. “It was scary at first, but it was the best thing that ever happened. It was a big story around town. The Examiner did a story, and this photographer leaned into me and said, ‘Don’t forget: One door closes, another one opens.’ “