Original “Boss Jock” Gary Mack Passes
One of the last remaining DJs from the original “Boss Jock” staff on KHJ (930 AM) passed away recently. Gary Mack, born Gary McDowell, died at the age of 90 on April 14, 2026 following a brief illness.
If my memory is correct, his passing leaves only longtime overnight personality Johnny Williams as the sole remaining original boss jock.
Born March 9, 1936 in Cedar Falls, Iowa and growing up in Chicago, Illinois, Mack was the only child of parents Carroll and Lucile. He served in the United States Air Force from 1955 to 1959; his pre-Boss radio work included stations in Chicago, Miami, and Fresno among others.
The Fresno connection is what brought him to KHJ. Mack had worked with Bill Drake at KYNO before moving to the original KRLA (now KWVE, 1110 AM) here in Pasadena. I’ll let Mack tell the story of his hiring at KHJ in his own words, as stated in the book Los Angeles Radio People:
“Had we known it would be so famous, I guess we’d have kept better records. Maybe we should have buried a time capsule.
“In 1965, I was working at KRLA in Pasadena when Bill Drake called, and he wanted to get together. The prior year, I had been Bill’s Program Director at KYNO in Fresno.
“We met in Martonis, and while sitting at the bar, Bill told me he and Gene Chenault were going to be consulting RKO General’s KHJ – and he wondered whether or not I’d be interested in working there. He had me at ‘hello.’ I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just become the first Boss Jock.
“As the rest of the crew was hired – Robert W. Morgan, Roger Christian, The Real Don Steele, Dave Diamond, Sam Riddle and Johnny Williams – we set about the business of getting organized. Ron Jacobs was brought in as Program Director – the best I’ve ever met.
“At the time, Steve Allen, and his wife Jayne, hosted the morning show from a studio in their home. Robert Q. Lewis did the afternoon drive show. They were phased out, and we ‘no-name announcers’ were phased in. During our air shifts, we played a lot of Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, and tried to sound like mellow staff announcers. But as soon as our air shift ended, we headed to a production room, where the real work was – the new Boss Radio format was in rehearsal.
“It was grueling. Ron Jacobs and Bill Drake stood in the control room with an engineer, while the Boss Jocks practiced this new format. Every word and every nuance was critiqued on the fly. ‘More up! More energy! End up! Faster!’ I remember the distinct odor of flop sweat. But every day got better, and we made our mistakes off the air.”
Mack’s passing came just shy of Boss Radio KHJ’s 61st anniversary, and what he described above is among the reasons the station resonated so well with listeners, and still has fans today, even though it left the format in 1980.
Mack stayed at KHJ until 1967 and eventually found himself at KLAC (570 AM). He retired in 1997 to Orlando, Florida, and is survived by his four daughters, two granddaughters, one grandson, and three great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Sue.
The Fan
By now you probably already heard that Audacy will be breaking up the all-news simulcast and changing KNX-FM (97.1) to an all sports format. Beginning May 11th at 6 a.m. , tune to 97.1 FM for “in-depth coverage of the area’s professional and college teams, breaking news, and engaging sports conversation, tailor-made for the Southern California sports fan, including the market’s only all-live, local weekday sports lineup.”
I assume new call letters will be assigned, though nothing has been announced as of press time. News will continue on KNX (1070 AM), which has not had the AM call letters mentioned in its on-air marketing since the simulcast began in December of 2021.
Which got me thinking – after calling it only “KNX News-Radio 97.1” for the past five years, they should make light of it … “we were just kidding – we knew you listened to 1070 AM all along.” And in fact, my hunch is that the FM simulcast didn’t add that much to the overall ratings anyway, hence the change to a sports format that will probably never get above a 1.0 share of the audience. I guess we’ll know in July, when the first full month of ratings are released after the simulcast ends.
The new format will absolutely fail ratings-wise — all-sports rarely works anywhere, and has never worked in Los Angeles — but that doesn’t seem to be the goal. As explained to me by radio insiders, it’s a national move, not local. Sports betting is exploding, so sports stations sell a ton of advertising to the betting apps, even without big ratings.
There may be another angle as well. Rumor — and I stress that word strongly — on the street has Audacy wanting to jettison their expensive all-news stations. Is this a way to start selling off stations such as KNX here and KCBS in San Francisco?