Meet the Personalities Podcast 004 Shannon Farren
Tom Smith and Shannon Farren
As a small market radio newscaster, Shannon Farren gets the plum assignment to cover the World Series… the only problem is she has no press credentials or ticket to get into the game. So how does she wind up reporting from the Giants owner’s luxury box? Find out in this episode of Meet the Personalities Podcast. That plus more about the co-host of the Gary and Shannon Show heard on KFI-AM 640 Monday through Friday from 10AM to 2PM.
Shannon Farren can be heard Monday through Friday on KFI-AM 640‘s the Gary and Shannon Show from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
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***Transcript***
Recording date – March 7, 2017
Shannon Farren: The difference is with radio, and I can’t stress this enough, the relationship between radio and the people on the radio and the listeners is so intimate. It is not a blog. It’s not something that you sit down and waste time at work reading or whatever.
Tom Smith: Meet the Personalities is brought to you by LA Radio Specialist. Learn more about working with the very personalities you hear from within these podcasts at LARadioSpecialist.com. LARadioSpecialist.com, impactful marketing programs driven by influential personalities and the power of sound.
Tom: Welcome to “Meet the Personalities,” the podcast where we sit down with radio personalities for a candid talk about their take on the business of radio. Today, my guest is the lovely Ms. Shannon Farren. Shannon is on the “Gary and Shannon Show” on KFI AM 640, right here in the Los Angeles market, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. till 2p.m. And Shannon, thank you so much for joining me.
Shannon: Thank you for the lovely adjective.
Tom: How have you made your way to KFI, and what was your career path from the beginning to now?
Shannon: Well, I started out in Market 198. And if you’re keeping score, that’s the…
Tom: Wow.
Shannon: … Chico-Oroville market. I was a student at Chico State…
Tom: One ninety-eight is barely, barely immediate [SP] market. I think they gotten like 250-something or so.
Shannon: I think we had 5,000 watt station; which was pretty damn good for that market. And I started interning there. During high school I worked in a deli up in the Bay Area, and I went to Chico State. And I’d come back on the weekends and some long vacations to work at the deli again. And one of the family friends of the family that owned the deli said, “Hey, do you need work up there at Chico?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Well, one of my friends still works at a radio station. I’ll give her your number,” or “Here’s her number,” I forget and I got in touch with her.
I started interning at “KPAY Newstalk1290.” And within a couple weeks, I was on the air doing overnight weather and I loved it. I mean, I would stay up…well, I was…who are we kidding? It was Chico State. I was up at 2:00 in the morning. But at 2:06, I would turn on the radio, and I’d be like, “It’s my weather report.”It was just such a kick, you know? And then I started working at the country station that was in the same building, 103.5 Hot Country KHSL.
I did some evenings there, some overnight work, loved it. But the only thing I didn’t like about that was you, kind of, had to be this sugary, FM personality, which isn’t always me, you know. I like to tell it like it is. And FM, you’ve always gotta upbeat and into it, and everything’s gotta be positive. And that’s great and I love FM personalities. It just wasn’t gonna be me every day. And I wanted to use my mind more. I wanted to flex that muscle.
Tom: Sure.
Shannon: So, I got into reporting. I was doing reporting for KPAY. And then I was graduating from school and I applied at KFBK in Sacramento, and I got a job there a couple months out of graduation.
Tom: That’s a big jump.
Shannon: Yeah, huge deal, but it was kind of a feeder station. There were a lot of reporters and anchors that went from KPAY to KFBK. But, anyway, yeah, nevertheless, it was a great, great break. And I was there for two and a half years, covered a lot of great stuff. You know, Scott Peterson and the war. When the war was beginning in Iraq and Afghanistan and the invasions, I remember my boss saying to me, “Go cover the World Series.” And it was the Giants and the Angels, and I said, “But I don’t have a credential.” And he said, “Make it happen.” That’s the kind of boss he was. He said, “Figure it out,” you know.
And I got in the car. I drove from Sacramento down to Pac Bell, and I just was like, “How the hell am I gonna do this?” And my boss is like, “Don’t screw this up. Figure it out.”