Gordon Greb was born in Fremont, sold newspapers door-to-door during the Depression, and had a brief career as a child actor on KTAB’s Rusty, The Boy Aviator.
Greb earned his BA at the University of California, Berkeley and his MA at the University of Minnesota.
In 1942, while studying at Cal, he and Dave Houser launched what is considered to be the first all-local news program on Bay Area radio. KROW’s Observing the News won the Billboard magazine award for best local radio news.
Greb volunteered for the U.S. Army in 1943. While training with the 102nd Infantry Division, Greb contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized for over three months. His unit was sent overseas without him, and Greb’s Stateside duty saw him edit the newspaper at Fort Dix, NJ and work at the base radio station.
After the war, Greb was involved in the launch of several Bay Area radio stations, including the region’s first independent FM station, Richmond’s KRCC (see left).
As a station manager, Greb found he was often asked by sponsors, “How many people are listening to your station?” Lacking a clear answer, he left radio for graduate studies in journalism and public opinion polling at the University of Minnesota. He would continue to blend broadcasting and academia for the rest of his career.
Greb landed at KSJO in the mid-1950s, making a name for himself with an exclusive series of reports about corruption in state government that resulted in the resignation of State Treasurer Gus Johnson.
San Jose State College became interested in Greb’s work. He started with part-time work at San Jose State in 1956 and joined the faculty full-time the next academic year.
At San Jose State, Greb founded the Radio-Television News Center and produced on-the-air news from there for the next twenty years.
In 1959 Greb published research in the Journal of Broadcasting proving that KCBS was the descendent of the world’s first broadcasting station, founded in 1909 by Charles Herrold. This brought CBS President Arthur Hull Hayes to San Jose State along with top stars from the network to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of broadcasting.
Gordon Greb died in 2016 at the age of 95.
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Gordon Greb Tells His Story (Video Interview)