“I was pretty surprised.” Bret Saunders speaks on shocking ouster from KBCO after 28 years

It’s 9 a.m. on June 25, and Bret Saunders should be hosting the morning program on KBCO, at 97.3 FM, as he has for more than 28 years.

Instead, he’s talking with Westword about the news delivered to him fewer than 24 hours earlier: He’d been laid off as part of the latest cost-cutting move by media behemoth iHeart, the station’s owner.

“I found out after my show was over yesterday,” he notes. “I was pretty surprised.”

So were thousands upon thousands of Saunders’ fans — and not in a good way. Most of the responses he’s seen from listeners thus far have been laudatory, and he acknowledges that “some of the comments made me cry, which is not the easiest thing to do. I feel very moved and touched.”

But there was anger, too, prompting this request from Saunders: “Please don’t turn your ire toward people who are on the air. They’re doing what they can do, and I would hate to hear about anybody verbally attacking people I worked with, of whom I’m very fond.”

The bloodletting at iHeart is hardly unique in the broadcasting industry. Earlier this month, for instance, Altitude dumped its Denver Nuggets TV team of Chris Marlowe and Scott Hastings (although Hastings retained his gig on Altitude Radio). But iHeart’s reported campaign to slash $50 million from its payroll is particularly aggressive, and Saunders wasn’t the only high-profile local victim. Also disappeared was longtime Denver multi-media personality Denise Plante, who’s most recently been handling microphone duties at iHeart’s country-music purveyor, The Bull.

Plante declined Westword‘s interview request at this time, but she wrote on LinkedIn that “after 8 amazing years, my journey with 106.7 The Bull and iHeartMedia has come to an end. If you’ve listened to me on the radio, watched me on TV, stopped me at the grocery store, waved at a parade, shared a laugh at an event, or simply welcomed me into your life, thank you. Colorado has been my home for nearly 30 years, and the connection I’ve had with listeners is something I’ll treasure forever.”

Saunders is focusing on gratitude, too. He highlights the Westword Best of Denver awards he won as the metro area’s top DJ in 1994 and 1995 “when I was making six bucks an hour” at KTCL, the outlet where he plied his trade prior to taking over the morning-drive slot on KBCO.

He credits bosses at the latter with giving him “the opportunity to find my real self, my real voice,” which led to his attempt “not to sound like a radio guy. There’s an old adage that a lot of people who get into radio spend their first year trying to sound like a radio personality and the next 20 years trying not to sound like a radio personality. And I think that was the case with me.”

Another key element of Saunders’ style is humor.

“I’m influenced by comedians, even though I’m not a comedian. Timing is really important, and the way you can convey a thought. All of it is really exciting,” he says. But underlying his wit is an authenticity that can’t be faked. “Over the years,” he adds, “I’ve learned how to be as honest as I could be.”

The longtime DJ has a love of music and the search for fresh sounds. “I think it’s really important to be inquisitive and open to the world. There are a lot of guys my age who sort of like the music they’re most comfortable with and the things that sort of fire off in their brain: good times and great oldies,” he says. “But to me, music is a spiritual quest to find the light in our lives. I don’t want to get too hippie on you — I’m more of a jazz guy and an R&B guy and a Japanese punk-rock guy — but one of the most important things in our lives, I think, is the illumination artists can bring.”

For Saunders, this spirit is exemplified by KBCO’s Studio C sessions, which were live sets by performers of every stripe, from around the world. “There was a band I remember that I asked they bring in back at the turn of the millennium: Huun-Huur-Tu, a group of eastern European Mongolian throat singers. But we also brought in people like Randy Newman or somebody brand new. In the last couple of years, Noah Kahan came in; he was relatively unknown then, and now he’s playing two nights at the baseball park.”

Studio C’s annual CD sales benefit local charities such as the Food Bank of the Rockies and the Boulder County AIDS Project. But Saunders has boosted plenty of other philanthropic efforts as well. “I’ve loved the ability to emcee so many events,” he says. “And having a son on the spectrum, I’ve been very involved with the autism community.”

Such efforts help explain why Saunders is KBCO in the minds of many folks who still tune into the radio during their a.m. commute. So what is the station now? “I don’t know,” he concedes, “but I want it to do well, because there are people in the sales department and management and on the air who I care about.”

Competing with AI-powered DJs?

The axing of stars such as Saunders and Plante comes at a precarious time for the medium.

I was in Phoenix earlier this year and happened upon 94.9 The Zone, which launched in January as the nation’s first all-artificial-intelligence radio station. The music mix was actually pretty good — it’s overseen by Dennis Constantine, KBCO’s original program director and the morning-show host who preceded Saunders — but the announcements from “Kevin, your AI DJ,” suggested the faux-friendly, robo-tone delivery of your cellphone’s GPS.

Saunders isn’t ready to predict that the remaining humans working in radio will soon be replaced with bots. As of now, he believes that “people still want to have stories told to them,” he says.

“They want that human connection. AI could be a phenomenon that takes over the world, but it could also be the pet rock,” he adds. “It’s a toy, and people get excited with toys until they get bored with them. And there seems to be a kind of thing around the country where people are becoming more open to communicating with each other. I hope that’s happening, because we’re all so segregated now.”

This optimism underscores his nascent ideas for what’s next in his own career.

“Since I was a child, I wanted to be a broadcaster,” he says, “and I’ve been a broadcaster since I was 14 at my high school radio station. So I have no intention of retiring or leaving broadcasting. We’ll see how that pans out…but I would love to stay here in Colorado. Hopefully, I’ll be able to say something clever to you over the airwaves or the internet once again.”

KBCO program director Keb “Nerf” Freedman declined to comment on Saunders’ exit.