Larry Wood is an Oakland native whose interest in radio grew out of a family “tape exchange”. An uncle in Ohio sent each unit of the extended family an Ampex tape deck, which would be used to record messages to be sent to other households. By the age of five, Wood knew how to operate the machine.
As he grew up in Oakland, Wood remembers playing “disc jockey” with his friends. That led to an interest in the technology and electronics that made radio broadcasting possible. Before graduating from Oakland’s Skyline High School, Wood had taken an electronics course that required the students to build and wire a radio control room and studio. Also before receiving his high school diploma, Wood obtained a Federal Communications Commission 3rd Class Radiotelephone Operator Permit with broadcast endorsement.
Wood took classes at Laney College, Merritt College, and the College of San Mateo and immediately found work in radio. By the age of 18, he’d worked as a board operator and program host at San Francisco’s KPOO and an announcer with some engineering responsibilities at Fremont’s KFMR.
Through the 1970s and 1980s and into the early 1990s, Wood held engineering jobs at a lengthy list of notable Bay Area radio stations, including KDIA, KJAZ, KNEW, KOIT, and KSFO. From 1995 to 2000, he served as Assistant Chief Engineer for Clear Channel’s San Francisco station cluster.
In 2000, Wood became KQED-FM’s Chief Engineer, a title he held until his 2023 retirement.
A longtime member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE), Wood the CPBE (Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer) certification in 2010.
An avid collector of old telephones, Wood has hiked hundreds of miles of old telephone and power lines looking for glass insulators.