Ron Hummel was considered to be among the top practitioners of the art of radio production and “imaging”. Hummel was 19 years old when he was hired to be Imaging Production Director at KFRC in 1972. At the time, he was the youngest person on the station’s staff.
Ron Hummel was born in Bethlehem, PA. After his family moved to the Bay Area, he graduated from Clayton Valley High School in Concord and attended Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill. He first appeared on the air at his high school station, KVHS, and held an on-air job and handled commercial production at Concord station KWUN while still in his teens.
While at KFRC, Hummel produced memorable content, including on-air promos for a contest in which the station gave away Mick Jagger’s car. He recorded and edited the last interview done with John Lennon, and produced numerous anniversary specials.
Hummel left KFRC in 1981 to run his own audio production company, Ron Hummel Productions Inc. from 1982 to 1995. During this time, he produced Countdown USA with Dave Sholin and a variety of other syndicated programs.
In 1996, he became Imaging Production Director for Clear Channel Radio/iHeart Media in San Francisco. This involved imaging and special event production for the company’s San Francisco cluster of stations. Hummel retired from that job in 2017.
He is a well-known collector and restorer of vintage microphones.