Steffan Tubbs's Long Goodbye to KNUS and Denver Radio

"I'm calling it The Steffan Tubbs Farewell Tour."

The moniker is appropriate. The 54-year-old Tubbs, who hosts an afternoon talk show on 710 KNUS, has been a major figure in Denver radio since the 1990s. But in late August, he announced that he's leaving the program, and the medium, on November 3.

That this date was made public more than two months in advance qualifies as a rarity. After all, radio pros are more likely to be escorted from their station by security with their belongings in a box than to have an opportunity to bid listeners a leisurely adieu — and Tubbs is grateful. "I'm being given a gift," he says.

On the surface, the timing of his decision seems related to his latest film project, a thus-far-untitled look at the fentanyl crisis. But he stresses that the demands of the in-progress production, which he expects to debut in May 2024, weren't the determining factor — and indeed, he's completed and released eight prior documentaries, including the mega-controversial 2020 Denver in Decay, without hanging up his microphone.

"I think the biggest reason kind of came from my gut," he allows. "I've done a lot of great things, and I've covered a lot of great stories — and a lot of horrible stories, too. But there just comes a point where I wondered, 'Is there something else I could do in the final chapter of my working life?'

"I've thought about this for probably six months or so," he continues. "I've talked to my family and I've prayed on it a lot — and I think right now is the perfect time to do this all on my terms. The radio business can be cruel at times, but I've had an amazing career, and I didn't want to be the one to be told, 'Hey, buddy, this is your last show.' I wanted to go out on top and I feel like I'm on my A-game. But I think I've got ten or fifteen years to go, and I want to focus on other things and go out the way I want to go out."

Since making the announcement, Tubbs notes, "I've been thinking a lot about the early days," including his first broadcasting gig, "which really wasn't a job. I was a sophomore at San Diego High School, and we had a television station on campus. I'd always wanted to be in journalism and to be a storyteller, and the station reported the news on cable across San Diego County. I still remember my first story. It must have been 1984, and it was about National Smokeout Day," also known as The Great American Smokeout, an event encouraging tobacco addicts to kick the habit; it takes place this year on November 16.

The San Diego High TV station was shut down the following year, but Tubbs's appetite had been whetted. He majored in journalism at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, contributing to KCPR, Cal Poly's radio outlet — and while still a student, he was hired at KDDB-FM, a country station. "I was a secretary making, I think, $3.25 an hour," he recalls. "I would answer phones and get coffee for the general manager, who would literally call me from thirty feet away." But he was happy to pay his dues: "If you want to work at NASA, start by mopping the floors."

From there, Tubbs moved to KWWV, another station in San Luis Opispo, and landed his first big-time interview: "I got an hour and a half on the phone with Bob Hope." Then, in late 1992, he and his future wife, Kristen, who'd also just graduated from Cal Poly, set out on what he dubs a "Southwest road trip" to find radio-industry positions. Stops included Phoenix, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Colorado Springs and Denver, which was high on the list in part because Kristen's mother lived in Lakewood. While in town, Tubbs scored a sit-down at KOA with veteran broadcaster Jerry Bell, who was impressed but felt he needed more experience. "He said to give him a call in a couple of years," Tubbs recalls.

Steffan and Kristen ultimately both landed slots at KMPH in Fresno — he as a reporter and she as an assignment-desk editor whose charges included him. Over the next eighteen months, Tubbs covered a great many crimes, including "my first mass shooting and a lot of arson. At the time, I think Fresno was the arson capital of the country. It was like pre-Denver in Decay." He then gave KOA's Bell another call, and even though two years hadn't passed, a position was open in a mostly behind-the-scenes capacity on the 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. shift, and Bell chose to give the relative newbie a shot. Tubbs believes his initiative gave him a leg up: "Jerry said I was the first person he'd told to call in a couple of years who actually did it."

At KOA, Tubbs was able to learn under the likes of late host Gus Mircos and business specialist Keith Weinman, and he gradually earned more on-air moments. Then, he remembers, "my life changed on April 19, 1995 — the Oklahoma City bombing." He flew to the site of the tragedy within hours of the explosion and wound up tracking the Denver-based trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols for KOA. He also provided some reports on the court proceedings for ABC News, which led directly to his hiring in 1998 as a reporter for ABC in Los Angeles.

As an ABC correspondent, Tubbs jetted to hot news stories across the globe. "I did plane crashes, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes," he says. "I covered the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School. I did a month in Jerusalem at the Church of the Nativity standoff. And after 9/11, I flew out the following Sunday, when the air space was open again, and covered that, too."
Such assignments were certainly high-profile, but they began to take their toll. "I figure that from 1998 to 2004, I was on the road three or four months a year," Tubbs says. "I wasn't gone consistently, but we were starting to have a family" — his and Kristen's two sons were born during that period — "and I told my agent at the time that even though I loved ABC, I didn't want to miss my kids' first steps, or a birthday or an anniversary."

In an attempt to solve this problem, Tubbs accepted an offer from WNYW, a station affiliated with New York City's Fox outlet. But in 2005, he was being lured back to Denver. "We were coming to town to see the kids' grandmother, and I called Kris Olinger," then the head honcho at KOA, "to see if we could get some Rockies tickets. Kris said, 'We'll get you Rockies tickets, but would you be interested in coming back to host The Colorado Morning News?'" Turns out longtime CMN host Steve Kelley had just agreed to leap to Fox31, and Olinger needed someone of stature to take over the drive-time show.

According to Tubbs, "Kris probably asked me three times about the show — and when we finally came out for the game and to see family, we had lunch and she said, 'Hey, come on. We'd really love to have you.' [KOA executive] Lee Larson got involved, too, and they ended up matching my salary in New York. And that's how I got back to Denver."

Not quite: Before landing at Denver International Airport, Tubbs headed to Houston to cover the impact of Hurricane Katrina; he stopped by the Superdome in New Orleans, as well. Thus began a run that saw Tubbs serve as a KOA mainstay through the end of his marriage (he and Kristen split in 2010 but remain on good terms) until August 2017 — and the following February, he debuted at KNUS.

For Tubbs, the move from news to talk radio required a shift in his approach. "I wouldn't want to go back and listen to any of my shows from the first year," he concedes. "It was tough going from trying to be the best, most accurate, most down-the-middle newsman to, holy shit, needing to have an opinion — and if you don't have an opinion in talk radio, you definitely suck."

He appreciates the patience of KNUS managers such as Brian Taylor and Kelly Michaels, plus some timely coaching from then-KNUS morning host Peter Boyles. "Pete would give me the sage advice of, 'You've got to have a take.' He's on my Mount Rushmore of radio hosts, and I'm always and forever in his debt."

On KNUS, Tubbs revealed his conservative side, and his tough talk about conditions in his adopted hometown, particularly following the police response to social-justice protests in 2020, dominated Denver in Decay, which has been viewed online nearly 800,000 times; Tubbs believes additional screenings have brought total viewership to north of a million.

"That documentary kind of put me on the map as being one of the most hated media members by local politicians in Colorado in recent memory, and I embrace that," he emphasizes. "But with all the hate and praise, the one thing no one has ever said is that Denver in Decay is inaccurate. You can say all you want if you don't like the messaging, but you can't attack the accuracy or the credibility."

The fentanyl film will be less partisan, Tubbs maintains. He took on the topic in part because so many members of his sons' generation (his eldest will turn 23 this week, while the youngest is twenty) have been lost to the drug.

"This is no joke," he says. "It will kill Republicans, Democrats, independents, Blacks, whites, males, females. Right now, as we speak, I have in my phone contacts for close to two dozen family members and parents who've lost children to fentanyl. If, through the film, we can convince one family anywhere in the country to have a talk with their kids about fentanyl, then we'll be starting to win a battle that we are seemingly losing as a country as we speak."

In the meantime, Tubbs plans to take advantage of his lengthy off-ramp at KNUS to "bring on as guests as many people as I can to publicly thank, including people from KOA. Jerry Bell is going to come on, and so is my dear friend Mark Johnson, the voice of the Buffs. And I'm going to have people from [former principal] Frank DeAngelis from Columbine and John Castillo from the Highlands Ranch STEM School [Castillo's son Kendrick was killed in a 2019 attack] to the World War II veterans that I still have the privilege of calling friends."

Because Tubbs has been a longtime advocate for vets and has made several films paying tribute to service members, he's taken some good-natured ribbing about bowing out at KNUS just over a week prior to Veterans Day on November 11. He's planning to make up for this scheduling by celebrating the occasion early, "but for anyone to be mad about that is quite humbling, because they know I'm the guy who has supported veterans' issues for years," he points out. "If I get hit by a bus, I would like to be remembered as the guy who backed veterans and law enforcement and who tried to tackle the fentanyl issue and tell everybody about it."

When the fentanyl film is finished, Tubbs won't have a radio show to promote it — and walking away from the program will be difficult in plenty of other ways. "The last six years at KNUS have been the pinnacle of my broadcasting life," he says, "and I know I'm going to miss it the first time something big happens and I know I won't have three hours to talk about it on the radio. But I'm following my gut and following my heart."