Posted in the Athletic. I figure some here will get a kick outta this I haven't even finished the piece yet but it really is amazing the amount talent that ran through a small little sports station in San Diego.

Everyone knows Rome, but even people like Jeanne Zelasko & Michelle Tafoya ran through that place. Even that nerf (Brian Kilmeade) on Fox & Friends had a show on the station..

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From Baja to the Canadian Rockies: An Oral History of XTRA 690

Give John Lynch credit. His vision was bold and his commitment was unwavering.

Look at the current sports-talk radio landscape across the Southland. There are two stations in San Diego, 97.3 FM The Fan and XTRA Sports 1360. There’s KLAA-AM Angels Radio AM 830, which serves Orange County and Los Angeles. And in L.A., two stations, AM 570 LA Sports and 710 ESPN, battle for listeners.

Each station has its positives, but none commands the region like Lynch’s brainchild — XTRA Sports 690 — did in the 1990s.

Sparked by an awe-inspiring 77,000-watt signal, unique personalities and great timing, the San Diego-based “Mighty” 690 ruled the Southern California airwaves in a manner that hasn’t been matched since its demise.

“The right concept, the right talent and the right format at the right time,” Jim Rome, whose rise to sports-talk stardom started at XTRA Sports 690, told The Athletic. “I would argue, to this day, that’s as good a sports-talk radio station as you could listen to.”

More than 15 years have passed since XTRA Sports 690 last aired as a sports-talk station, but the memories still extend across Southern California — or from Baja to the Canadian Rockies, as the station’s tagline boasted.

“I do think it exists in the way people talk about sports,” said Lee Jenkins, the Los Angeles Clippers executive, former Sports Illustrated senior writer and former 690 intern. “I think it exists in the way people of our generation consume but, more than that, discuss sports with our friends. To me, it lives on in my friendships.

“It was truly the soundtrack of my childhood.”

In 1978, Ed Noble approached Lynch — the father of current San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch — with the concept of buying high-powered Mexican radio stations with strong signals that stretched across regions. Noble and Lynch formed Noble Broadcasting Group, which bought XTRA’s AM and FM stations, 690 and 91X.

Noble Broadcasting spent a year building up 91X, an alternative rock station, but 690 floundered as a golden-oldies station. Lynch noticed that WFAN in New York, which was a sports-talk station from noon on, experienced success. So in 1987, 690 secured the broadcast rights for Chargers games. With the Chargers serving as the foundation, Lynch went looking for a play-by-play man who also would host the station’s first-ever sports-talk show.

Lynch: I got hold of this guy who I used to listen to driving home at night. He was in Phoenix. Lee Hamilton. Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton.

Hamilton (host of Sportsnite): It might have taken us 15 minutes to get the deal done. I walked in the door and didn’t know anything about San Diego. I said, “Describe your station. What is it? What are these call letters? What does XTRA mean?” They said, “Well, we’re a Mexican-licensed radio station. Our towers are in Mexico, Rosarito Beach. We’re going to change the rock-and-roll station into news, talk and sports.” I said, “You’re in Mexico?” They said, “Well, our studios are going to be in San Diego, but yes, we’re a Mexican station.” I said, “I’m out. Misconception here. I don’t speak Spanish.” I thought they wanted me to do the NFL games in Spanish.

Lynch: We brought Lee in and he did a nighttime talk show and our first season of the Chargers, which I believe was ‘88. And it was still not doing well because it was a hybrid (of news and sports). We were one thing or the other, and not everything to everybody.

Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton called Chargers games from 1986 to 1997. (Rick Doyle / Getty Images)
Howard Freedman (program director of XTRA Sports 690): I’m going to say John, in the back of his mind, always wanted to go all sports. He loved the revenues, the revenue potential. He loved the fact he already had the Chargers. He already had Hacksaw. He looked at it as he already had the building blocks in place.

Hamilton: They staggered for nine months and then they finally decided, we’re going to flip this and we’re going to take this to all sports. The landscape was different. Nobody was doing it. The only sports talk in San Diego was Padre Talk, sandwiched around Padres baseball. In Los Angeles, the only sports talk was Dodger Talk at KABC, wrapped around their games. At that point, there was really nothing in Anaheim. We were the first ones in the front door.

Building a sports-talk radio station is easier said than done, but Lynch set his sights on Bud Furillo, known as “The Steamer.” Furillo had served as the sports editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and he was a radio personality as well.

Steve Hartman (co-host of The Loose Cannons): John knew if he was going to create a sports station, he was going to have to have L.A. And he wanted to have a known L.A. guy and that was Bud Furillo. I was just the sidekick. They wanted Bud Furillo. We did an audition show, which was a disaster. This was in the summer of 1990, but John Lynch wasn’t deterred. He was hellbent on getting Bud. As they got down to the finish line … I got called down to San Diego, and they dropped the bomb on me that they wanted to hire me and not Bud. Bud wanted more money than they were willing to give up.

Hartman officially became the second piece of the puzzle for 690. He was paired with Brad Cesmat, and their midday show was patterned after New York’s Mike and the Mad Dog, with Hartman being an L.A. guy and Cesmat representing San Diego. It debuted in fall 1990.

While the station was still in the early stages of programming, there was a radio host in Santa Barbara who spent years infatuated with 690.

Rome: I had to get to a major market, no matter where it was. I just had to get out of the minor leagues. I was willing to do whatever it took to get to a major market and take whatever job I could, and I wanted to get to 690. That was my primary goal. So I became kind of obsessed with 690. That’s all I thought about.

Rome wrote letters and sent his resume to nearly everyone at 690 — program directors, general sales managers, Hacksaw, anyone he thought had some influence. But he caught the attention of Hal Brown, the station’s news director, one year when he provided updates about raging fires in Santa Barbara to 690 and other stations.

This is when the seeds for The Jungle, Van Smack and The Clones were planted.

Rome: Hal Brown said, “There’s this guy in Santa Barbara who’s doing a really good job with these fires. We should bring this guy in as a news reporter.” Cesmat goes, “News reporter? He’s a freaking sports-talk show host, man. That’s his deal. He writes us letters all the time.”

Hal Brown hit me up once and said, “Listen, we’ve all gotten your letters. We’ve all gotten your resumes. You come down here, and you come try out. You can try out for a week. If you get the job, you can stay. If you don’t, you can leave us alone. We’ve had about enough.”

Freedman: I’m not sure Hal knew how big Jim was going to be.

Rome: I stay at the Easy 8 motel at 4891 Pacific Highway. … I sit in that motel, eat Oreos and drink Coors Light and wait till the next day, and I tried out. I didn’t hear for months, literally three months maybe, and Hal Brown calls me up one day and I’ll never forget it. He goes, “Hey, Rome, I’ve got something to tell you. … Welcome to the big leagues. Come on down.”

I get goosebumps even thinking about it. I did updates and a Saturday talk show from 12 to 4 p.m. That was my first taste of big time, sports-talk radio.

Freedman: I heard Rome and knew immediately, “He’s going to be a star.” I think John knew pretty early. A lot of people say it but didn’t believe it until it happened.

Jenkins: Rome started out doing weekends and you didn’t even know when he’d come on. … You put him on, and my dad would look at me like, “What is this and what are we listening to right now?” I felt this generational divide, where all the kids I knew, he became this cult hero. It felt like seeing a band in a tiny coffee shop, knowing that band is going to explode and they’re going to be playing stadiums soon.

Rome: For years, I had been thinking about what I would do if I ever got that show. So when I finally got that show, I just let it rip. I was going to talk shit. I was going to try to book the biggest interviews I could and do smart, tough interviews and do a different show with a lot of attitude and a lot of opinion.

Lynch: People thought he was crazy and couldn’t understand it. It was almost like it was a whole different audience at the time.

Freedman: John told me on more than a few occasions that he and his golf buddies who were out listening to Rome on like a Saturday, that they heard him in the car, they thought he was a smart-aleck punk. John could do anything he wanted, but I was not an ass-kisser. I said, “John, I don’t program the station to you and your friends. Jim’s audience is 18-to-34-year-old men. You guys are kind of out of the demo. Could I see some ID?”

Rome: I started to realize those who liked it, really, really liked it, and those who didn’t like it, really, really didn’t like it. But everybody was reacting. Here’s the real irony. I wasn’t saying shit to say shit. I literally meant everything I said and thought about everything I said before I said it. … For better or for worse, that was me. … So I was willing to live with whatever divide there may have been.

Jim Rome was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame last year. (Gary A. Vasquez / AP Photo)
Rome started a few months after Hartman and quickly moved from his “scrub show” on the weekends to a weekday night show where his profile continued to grow. Seven months after starting his show with Cesmat, Hartman got a call from his producer.

Hartman: Brad was out. I said, “Am I going to do a solo show?” They said, “No, we’re going to bring in Chet Forte.” … Chet, of course, had been the legendary producer/director of Monday Night Football.

Lynch: Chet had a gambling addiction and terrible problems. He was charged with tax evasion. But I listened to the guy and he’s one of the most interesting guys in the whole world. The fact was, Chet also played basketball (and was an All-American) at Columbia. He had this incredible breadth of knowledge of sports. I had to fly to Trenton, N.J., to go to court to tell a judge he’d be better off talking against the ills of gambling, opposed to throwing his ass in the can.

Hartman: We had a press conference with Chet and I’m sitting next to John Lynch, and John looks at me — “Make this work.”

Hamilton: You had Hartman — loud-mouthed West Coast guy, young guy — and Chet Forte — loud-mouth East Coast guy, old guy.

Hartman: I thought this was a disaster. Chet and I were screaming at each other. He would literally storm out of the studio, go down to Howard Freedman’s office and say, “I’m not taking one more day with this kid. Not one more day.”

Freedman: I used to call (The Coach) John Kentera. I’d call John all the time. Chet and Steve would do a break, they’d come out fighting and Steve would say, “I’m going to knock you into tomorrow, old man.” Chet would say, “You guys couldn’t carry my bags in television.” They would get into these F you contests. That happened a lot, and I called John all the time. It never got to where John had to actually fill in, but he came down a lot of times.

Listeners would eventually describe Hartman and Forte as “loose cannons,” and that’s how that show name was created. The Cannons, Rome and Hacksaw served as the constants the station could build around.

Hamilton: They stumbled around trying to find a morning show. One day in the newsroom, I put up this huge list of guys they had on the morning show, trying to find somebody, and we stopped counting at 16.

Hartman: The key move was in February of ‘92, when we brought Steve Mason in from Toledo, Ohio. … He was doing a goofy morning show. We had shows like the Butt Brothers (Bob and Dan). … So they brought in Mason, and Rome finally got his own show and that’s when we actually went to a full-sports format, which was early February ‘92.

Steve Mason (co-host of Mason and Ireland): I was just whacking the hell out of Noble Broadcast Group, just destroying their top-40 station in Toledo, which was called WMHE. I just think they wanted me out of Toledo and they gave me a shot at morning drive in San Diego, and it sounded good to me.

John Ireland (co-host of Mason and Ireland): For whatever reason, his morning show out here didn’t catch on. They weren’t happy with it so they moved him to the nights. I think they were trying to get him to quit.

Hartman: Lynch hated Mason’s show. Hated it.

Ireland (who had also been working as a fill-in at the station): Howard Freedman called me and goes, “Hey, there’s this guy at night, Steve Mason …” And I had never met Mason. They said, “He’s kind of mailing it in and we want to put you in there with him and see if you can go at him a little bit. See if he’ll respond.” Mason was writing a screenplay and had his head down, kind of buried in his computer, and I started asking him all these questions on air and he kind of livened up and we hit it off.

Freedman: I was like, “Oh, man, this is way better than what we have.” I think (Lynch) heard it too and agreed. It was a very, very quick decision that Mason and Ireland needed to be the night show.

Ireland: They came back to Mason and said, “This is the show we thought you were going to do in the morning. If we put you back in the morning, do you think you could do this kind of show? You can pick whoever you want to work with.” He said, “Well, I want to work with Ireland.” And that’s how we started.

Mason: What they were good at was sticking with the guys who were really good. Sticking with the guys who had a different sound. … Lynch and Freedman weren’t afraid of trying different stuff or letting somebody develop their own sound, style and personality.

XTRA Sports 690 hosts were popular enough to have their own sports cards. (Courtesy of Tom Jimenez)
Steve Garvey had a failed morning show at 690. So did the Butt Brothers as well as Berger and Prescott, who Lynch moved to the station from 91X. Those failed experiments opened the door for Mason and Ireland to move to the mornings in July 1994. Their show was followed by Rome and the Loose Cannons in the midday, Hacksaw in afternoon drive time and eventually Kentera, who became an institution in San Diego’s high school sports scene, at night. It was a strong lineup from top to bottom.

But earlier, in the fall of 1992, the station started to solidify itself.

Hartman: The L.A. Times had a big story about 710 vs. 690. This was when 710 launched in early ‘92, and by that time we were already established and we crushed them — 690’s ratings skyrocketed in the fall (ratings) book of ‘92. It was a combination of a lineup that had been there for a couple of years with the Loose Cannons, Rome and Hacksaw really being the anchor of it, and the Chargers’ success. That’s when you can honestly say 690 took root.

Jeanne Zelasko (Chargers Talk host and assistant program director at 690): We started doing it with the sports talk and everyone was comparing us to Los Angeles, and by the end of it, San Diego, John Lynch, Howard Freedman, all the kids made L.A. realize San Diego was doing it a better way.

Even though it was a regional station, 690 couldn’t have shifted to sports at a better time. The Chargers made their first playoff run in 10 years in 1992 and went to the Super Bowl in 1994. San Diego State’s Marshall Faulk was a Heisman Trophy candidate in 1992 and 1993. At the end of 1992, then-Padres owner Tom Werner ordered a fire sale, which stretched out to 1993 as the franchise traded Gary Sheffield, Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez and allowed Benito Santiago to walk as a free agent.

Jenkins: It’s a latent sports town, and I think 690 not only captured that but it produced it. It lent a real edge, an edgy brand to a town that is not known for discourse in any way. There was an intensity to 690 you couldn’t really find elsewhere in San Diego.

Jorge Arangure (then a XTRA 690 listener and now a New York Times metro editor): This was like our station. It was something that was our own. It was something San Diegans and San Diego sports fans can kind of congregate and listen, then talk about it.

When Lynch and Freedman set out to fill the lineup, they wanted a personality-driven station. That’s what gave 690 such a different sound for its time. Each show was different from the next. Mason and Ireland provided more “guy talk,” while the Loose Cannons debated. Rome’s show was centered around strong interviews, the Clones and takes that did or didn’t suck. Hacksaw was more of a meat-and-potatoes, straightforward information kind of host. There was something for everyone.

Zelasko: That’s a credit to Howard Freedman, who realized the sauce needed to taste a little different and to give people something different from time slot to time slot.

Arangure: You could go on a Monday, listen to every single one of those shows, and you would hear about the previous day’s Chargers game and it would feel different.

Of course, each show had its different style and various views on how it should go about things. And 690 fostered a competitive culture, which lent itself to an interesting dynamic between hosts.

Zelasko: Roy Firestone calls for Rome (to be on ESPN), and there isn’t a person on the air there who doesn’t think, “My call’s coming next.” Because people were confident and felt good about the product they were putting on the air.

Rome: We’re all there — let’s face it, we’re all competing. We’re all trying to do the best we can, and I learned early on people were coming for me. At the beginning, people kind of got a kick out of me. Then I started to do well, and they didn’t get such a kick out of me anymore.

Hartman: Rome would be coming into our morning show to promote his midday show and Chet goes, “What’s going on, Horshack?” This just absolutely burned Rome like there’s no freaking tomorrow. … The station got pissed off at Chet because he wouldn’t lay off of Rome. He was just hammering Rome.

Freedman: Lee had his ideas of how sports should be done, and he was right. But then there was this new crop of guys coming along like Rome, Mason and Ireland, and Brad Cesmat. Joe Tutino, an early producer with Rome, was really an important piece. … It was hard because they were always sniping at each other, which I kind of liked to a point. I tried to use it for good entertainment and good ratings, but at times, it really got carried away.

Hacksaw, self-described as “The Franchise,” built his show around “the best 15 minutes in sports radio” and the “high-speed sportswire.” Before the internet and social media, the best 15 minutes served as a go-to segment for information.

Hamilton: My philosophy, as I grew the thing, was if I could hit everybody’s hot button they’re going to come to the talk show every day, because I was the internet before the internet. I went to Phoenix and I told them, if I’m going to do this, I need this from the Associated Press. I called it the high-speed sports wire, but it was the sports wire every newspaper in the country would subscribe to. You might call it schtick. I call it substance. … Unbelievably expensive but I’d get it and I would get it on the air. You wouldn’t read it till the next morning in your newspaper, but I had it at 4:13 in the afternoon.

Zelasko: I don’t know if the station would have gone to the level it did without the consistency of Lee and what Lee meant to the community. Long after everybody else branched off, Lee was still there for quite some time doing his thing.

Hartman: When Rome was given the night show … Joe Tutino, who was the original producer for Rome, booked Burt Grossman, who was a defensive end for the Chargers, to be on their show after Hacksaw’s show. Apparently, Burt Grossman called the station to get an update, and Hacksaw answered the phone and said, “Why don’t you just tape something with me?” As Rome is getting ready for his show, he’s hearing Hacksaw: “Let’s go to the Newsmaker Hotline, Burt Grossman is joining us right now.” And Rome is like, “What the fuck?”

Rome: I got a kick out of him. He got a kick out of me. We talked a little shit. I think for the most part, it was pretty good-natured. But you’re right, there was a generational divide and we were coming at it from very different ways.

One of the more memorable days at the station was in 1994, the day after Rome was attacked by NFL quarterback Jim Everett on his ESPN2 talk show “Talk 2.”

Hamilton: I think Romey probably learned quite a lesson. You can have a shtick and be mouthy, but somebody’s going to get in your face and Jim Everett did. I think the standard joke in the newsroom down at XTRA was, “Maybe we should be Jim Everett fans now.”

Rome: I was totally accountable because I had a really bad night on TV. When everybody was having a heyday with that and the heat was coming down, John Lynch called my show. John Lynch had never done that before. He said, “Jim, I want you to know I do not like what I’m hearing on this station today. I don’t like what some of your peers are saying today. And I want you to know you have a job here, and you’re fine and I even think on some level that quarterback may have had a little something for you that night.” At that time, when the bullets are flying, and hell was breaking loose and you needed somebody to have your back, it was really a good thing the most important guy had my back. I never forgot that John Lynch made that call on air.

The L.A. Times had that famous article that I had on my mirror in my bathroom — “This might be the start of the fall of Rome” Is his career over?” If John Lynch did not have my back that day and pulls the plug, who knows if you and I are having this conversation right now. … I don’t want this to come off as bitter, because I did it and I’ll own it, but my guy Hacksaw was leading the charge up the hill with my head on a stick. That was a real good day for the radio station. Not for me. But for some of the other guys on the station. “My friends.”

Of everyone at XTRA Sports 690, Rome’s star shined the brightest. His show was nationally syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks in 1996, which spread his brand nationally. He has had television shows on Fox Sports Net and ESPN, and now his radio show is simulcast on CBS Sports Network.

Ireland: I was working TV at night, so I knew everything that happened before I went to sleep. I was going to bed at midnight and I had to be at work at 5 a.m. … I would get into work at 4:45 to go on at 5 a.m. I would say it’s four out of five days of the week, sometimes five out of five, that Rome was already in there working on his show at 5 o’clock in the morning. I knew back then he was going to take over the world.

Lynch: So many radio personalities try to fake it and fail to prepare. Rome used to spend two hours of prep for every hour on the air. … I used to hold up his preparation to radio personalities across the group. “If you want to make millions, as does Romey, prepare like Rome.”

Rome: I was at that point in my life, I was so locked in and so focused, and I didn’t really care about anything but the show. I wanted to do it the right way. … I felt if I took care of that show, the show would take care of me.

Hamilton: When he left, I thought a lot of us were bothered that he never said thank you to anybody.

Rome: I thanked the people who worked for me and with me, and put me in spots to succeed and supported me. I would definitely take issue with, “I left and didn’t say thank you.” I think that’s garbage. That’s absolutely not true. I think he’s confusing me not thanking him for me not thanking anybody.

Hamilton also claims that his show was supposed to be the one that got syndicated, but the two sides couldn’t figure out how to make it work with afternoon drive. So they went to Rome.

Rome: That is the first I’ve heard of that. And I have no idea whether or not that’s true. And on the record, I absolutely thanked many people there, but I guess I must not have thanked him.

Hartman: Hacksaw’s spin on just about everything is so distorted. Look, I don’t want to pile on Hacksaw. Hacksaw was the backbone of the station in the beginning. There’s no question. “I’m the franchise.” But unfortunately, there was something called the internet that made his Hacksaw Headlines irrelevant and he refused to recognize that.

Rome’s show started to grow beyond the station in 1996, but the year also brought some unfortunate change to the station. Hartman and Forte did their usual Friday show on May 17, 1996, and the next day, Forte died of a heart attack.

Hartman: In the last hour of the (last) show, we were supposed to have on the parents of David Robinson, the basketball player, who wrote a book called, “How to Raise An MVP.” … Anyway, they no-showed. We decided just to open up the phone line. We had a guy who called in and said, “Hey Chet, I just want to say, I really appreciate you and Steve, and I really appreciate your honesty about your gambling addiction and how you dealt with it. It’s really changed my mind.” Chet goes, “You know, I’ve never had more fun than these five years here on the station, doing talk radio. It’s been great.”

So you’re like, thanks, for the next caller. The next caller says, “That’s unbelievable. I pretty much was calling about the same thing.” This came out of the blue. We get back-to-back calls saying how much they appreciate Chet’s honesty and everything else, and the next morning he dies of a heart attack.

Obviously, it put us into a situation. Like, what do we do?

Lynch: That was a real loss for us.

Mason: Chet, for me, was like one of the most authentic radio personalities I’ve ever worked with. He was just who he was, all the time. He was the same on the air, the same off the air. There was no put-on. Chet was just Chet. I found him to be one of the most engaging guys I’ve ever listened to.

There were three candidates to replace Forte: former Chargers offensive lineman Dennis McKnight, former Raiders and Rams running back Greg Bell and Bill Werndl, who worked on Ourlads’ NFL draft guide and helped the station with some of its draft coverage.

Hartman: The reason I ultimately agreed to Billy was because he was an East Coast guy and people were used to that East Coast flavor. … Very early on, the critics were hammering Billy because he wasn’t Chet. I decided with Billy, I had to play the heavy. And people came to Billy’s defense, we turned the corner and obviously the show was very successful from that point.

This also was the year Noble Broadcast Group was bought by Jacor Communications, which was later gobbled up by Clear Channel, which eventually took over XTRA Sports 690. Over its short history, XTRA Sports 690 established itself as Southern California’s sports leader because, even though it was based in San Diego, it still took on a regional mindset. Raiders fans called in and went back and forth with Hacksaw. There was plenty of Lakers talk. It had been the flagship station for the L.A. Kings. The hosts also would hit the road for appearances in Orange County, which helped tighten the station’s grip there.

Freedman: The 77,000 watts gave us a really big swath of Southern California and Southern California sports fans.

Jeff Dotseth (who started working in San Diego radio in 1991): Radio engineers will tell you the difference from 50,000 watts to 77,000 watts is actually pretty small, but I think you have a hard time convincing the audience that. The audience hears 77,000 watts, and they know you’re the biggest, baddest dude on the block.

But in 1997, Clear Channel decided to launch XTRA 1150, an all-sports station, in Los Angeles. Mason and Ireland and Rome’s shows were simulcast on 690 and 1150.

Hartman: Jack Evans was the head guy. Oh, this guy was a beauty. Jack Evans pulls me in and he tells me, “Everyone in L.A. who was listening to 690 will no longer be listening to 690 — 690 will be San Diego and 1150 will be L.A.” I said, “Why would they stop listening to our other show?” He said, “Trust me, they will.” They didn’t.

Hamilton: It was a disaster. They used their station, it was AM 1150, and they didn’t have quality hosts and it was on a bad signal and we just killed them.

Hartman: Our show was crushing their L.A. shows. This is when they decided to flip Rome to be on tape delay in San Diego and live in L.A. in their desperate effort to get the numbers for 1150. We were just outraged at 690. “What the fuck is going on? You’re going to put Rome on his home, tape delay?” So I should have seen this coming. This was the way we operated from 1997 all the way up to the end in 2002.

Their contract was ending with the Dodgers. We all thought that was the end of 1150. At one point, Jack Evans had told Hacksaw and me and Billy, we needed to promote 1150. On our 690 station. We were like, “This would be like telling the Lakers they have to start selling Clippers tickets.”

Scott Kaplan arrived at XTRA Sports 690 in April 2001 to host the morning show with Billy Ray Smith Jr., a former Chargers linebacker. By then, 690 already owned a well-established national reputation.

Kaplan: From a sports-radio standpoint, you looked at XTRA 690 and said, you’re living in San Diego, you’re broadcasting to the entire region and you’re on one of the biggest, strongest, most powerful radio transmitters on the planet, without exaggeration.

Kaplan’s tenure at 690 was short-lived, though. On Halloween 2002, then-XTRA 690 program director Bill Pugh notified the staff that Clear Channel decided to merge 690 and 1150. Tony Bruno would take over in the mornings. Rome and Hacksaw were headed to the station as well.

Kaplan: I’m like, “I don’t understand. What do you mean it’s moving to L.A.?” He’s like, “Well, they’re firing everybody here. They’re moving whoever they’re taking to L.A., and they’re going to combine 1150 and 690.” I’m 32. I’m married three years. I’ve got two children already. I just bought my first house in September 2002, and in late October 2002, they tell me I’m fired. That shit did not sit well with me at all.

Hartman: He basically informs us 690 as it has been is dead. We’re creating a superstation, 690 and 1150. … That midday slot had not been decided. He was trying to convince the people to put Scott and BR there, but the L.A. people said, “Who the fuck are Scott and BR? We want the goddamn Loose Cannons.” But at the last second, Billy bailed out. Because at that point, Lynch, realizing 690 was gone, created the 1090 situation. Eventually, that’s what happened.

I convinced the people in L.A. to take Billy on. Then Billy blindsided all of us by bailing on me and agreed to a contract with 1090 even though he was already under contract with 690. It was such a major fuckup, it was unreal.

XTRA Sports 690, as most had known it in the 1990s, died on Jan. 6, 2003, when it merged with 1150. Hartman took over the midday slot and continued the Loose Cannons with former Laker Mychal Thompson and Vic “The Brick” Jacobs.

Hartman: For the first time ever, I had billboards up in San Diego. They were trying to convince everybody they were trying to hold onto the San Diego market. They couldn’t care less.

Lynch: It was the story of L.A. looking their nose down at San Diego forever, and it was the epitome. They steal our sports station. They steal our Chargers. They don’t think we’re big time, and screw L.A. That’s the way I felt about it. I was pissed. It was really a shame because it was enormously successful here.

Marty Caswell (then a XTRA 690 listener, now a producer for The Darren Smith Show on XTRA Sports 1360): I stopped listening. I hated it. I was done. That was part of San Diego. That was a San Diego production. That was ours.

Kaplan: Because it was so powerful and so overwhelming, it actually smothered the lesser station in the same family in L.A., and the only way to help 1150 was to destroy 690.

In 2005, Clear Channel moved the programming that was on 690 and 1150 to AM 570, which had a pretty strong signal that could be heard in San Diego. Now, 690 is a Mexican transmitter with Mexican programming.

Dotseth: That was the dumbest move in the history of not just San Diego radio. That is by far the worst move made that I can remember, having lived here since 1981, having worked in radio since 1991. There have been plenty of stupid things that happened in local radio. But the idea someone went and convinced management, “Hey, we no longer need the Mighty 690 signal” is by far the gold medal-winning, biggest idiotic move ever. … How they ever convinced anybody to do it is the greatest fleece of all time. It’s mind-numbing how dumb that move was. And I didn’t even work there.”

Rome’s show is still going strong. Mason and Ireland can still be heard every weekday afternoon on 710 ESPN. Hartman hosted a national show for Fox Sports Radio last decade and still hosts the Loose Cannons on XTRA Sports 1360 on weekday afternoons. Zelasko had an illustrious career with Fox Sports after her time with 690 and still works on Clippers broadcasts for Fox Sports West.

Much of the station’s former talent has branched off to bigger things, but what ultimately is XTRA Sports 690’s lasting legacy?

Steve Mason and John Ireland first partnered on the air in 1994, and they’re still working together. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Dotseth: Every day that passes, (690) becomes like Wilson the volleyball in “Cast Away,” and it goes a little further away.

Zelasko: (Lynch) never looked at San Diego as this small, sleepy beach town. It’s a great place to live, but he never limited what could go on at a radio station he owned in San Diego. He’s a competitive guy, and I think he saw it could be a pattern for other people to follow.

Caswell: That’s the template. I think in a way they set the standard for what sports radio should be. … That’s how it should be done. That was the way. … Everyone tried to duplicate them and everyone tried to be like them. But I don’t know if anyone ever succeeded.

Hartman: It will never be done again because, obviously, 1090 never was able to do it, that we created a single station to cover San Diego, Orange County and L.A. It can’t be duplicated.