Jim Lange - Later Work

Later Work

He was introduced to Los Angeles local audiences on KMPC in 1970, in order to limit his commute while taping "The Dating Game". He returned to Gene Autry/Golden West station KSFO by 1971 and remained there till the station was sold in 1984. He then returned to KMPC, where he did mornings and afternoons (at different times) until the end of the decade.

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.