Jim Lange

Jim Lange (b. August 15 1933, Saint Paul, Minnesota) is a former American game show host and disc jockey. He was particularly well known to listeners in the San Francisco and Los Angeles radio markets with stints at several stations in both markets, racking up over 45 years on the air. Lange was also known to television viewers as an announcer and host of several game shows, including the long-running "The Dating Game".

Early career

Lange began his radio broadcasting career in the Twin Cities after winning an audition as a teenager. He graduated from St. Thomas Academy high school, before going to the University of Minnesota. After graduating from the University of Minnesota and serving in the Marines, Lange moved to San Francisco. After making his Bay Area broadcast debut as "The All-Night Mayor" on KGO, he moved to afternoons on KSFO in 1960.

Game shows, and career rise

His network television career began in San Francisco with "The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show" in 1962, where Lange was announcer and sidekick to Ford. Three years later, he would sign on to host "The Dating Game." While still on-air at KSFO, he commuted to Los Angeles to tape the TV program.

His other game shows include "$100,000 Name That Tune", "Bullseye", and "The All-New Newlywed Game", as well as short-lived shows including "The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime", "Spin-Off", "Triple Threat" and "Give-n-Take."

He appeared as himself in Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. In the 1980s, Gene Autry (who owned Golden West Broadcasting, including KSFO and Los Angeles' KMPC) recruited Lange to Los Angeles, where he broadcast at radio station KMPC.

Later work

In the early 1990s, he returned to full-time radio in the Bay Area, when he originally worked afternoons on 610/KFRC and eventually accepted an offer to broadcast weekday mornings on "Magic 61," by then owned by real estate magnate Peter Bedford (Bedford Broadcasting). Magic 61 was formatted as "American pop standards" (Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Harry Connick, Jr., Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, et al). During this period Jim also hosted promotional events for Magic 61, including Big Band Dances and a resurrection of his popular "Leo Birthday Party," which he'd initiated on KSFO years before.

The "Lange Gang" show on Magic 61 was produced by Steve "Dino" Donikian, whose background cackling laugh punctuated Lange's jokes, jibes and ad-libs. They would work together for much of the next decade.

After the sale of KFRC AM and FM (99.7) FM (the new owners decided to simulcast the FM "oldies" format on 610 AM), Jim and the show decamped for a run on KKSJ, San Jose.

In 1997, Lange became morning host of "The Lange Gang" on KABL in San Francisco. Lange retired in 2005 after KABL - by then owned by Clear Channel, went off the air.

He currently lives in Marin County, California, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, with his wife, Nancy Fleming, a former Miss America; she had been Lange's co-host on a local KGO-TV morning TV show in San Francisco decades previously in the 1970s.

Lange appeared in the critically-acclaimed movie Confessions of a Dangerous Mind as himself.

External links

*imdb name|id=0486148|name=Jim Lange
* [http://www.bayarearadio.org/audio/ksfo/ksfo_jim-lange_july-1-1971.shtml Bay Area Radio Museum]
* [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/07/PKGBFDU9L41.DTL San Francisco Chronicle]