Klos

In his 13 months as a KABC-TV Channel 7 sportscaster, Todd Donoho has become the man critics love to hate. He's been blasted for delivering his sportscasts while standing in front of a video screen, for beginning and ending his segments with a trivia question, for commentaries opening with "Take a hike," and for a manner that led one critic to write that Donoho, "comes on like a three-alarm fire and is about as enjoyable."

At 21, she was Maureen O'Connor Reilly, separated from her husband, a single mother with a year-old son. Having dropped out of a local college, where she had been an English major, she moved back home with her parents and started looking for a job. She answered an ad for a post in the billing department at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey "but it was filled. They said, 'Well, we have something open in traffic in the radio station.' I figured it was traffic reporting--'I can do that.'

In 1987, when the entire staff of rebel rocker KMET-FM was summarily dismissed, Joe Benson, a colleague at rival rock station KLOS-FM, extended the fired deejays a sentimental--and unusual--offer: to appear on his show and say goodby to their audience. Tuesday night, KLSX-FM's Jim Ladd, one of those fired KMET deejays, returned the favor: He played host during his KLSX-FM (97.1) show to fired KLOS deejays Benson and Bob Coburn.

Walt Disney Co. has been hit with a third racial discrimination lawsuit arising from a radio promotion called "Black Hoe." The move follows news that attorney Johnnie Cochran is representing two plaintiffs in the matter, which stems from the promotion on Disney-owned KLOS-FM in which black plastic gardening tools were distributed to listeners and advertisers as a double-entendre on the slang pronunciation of the word "whore."

Rita Wilde's first act as she ascended to the job of program director at KLOS-FM (95.5) was a tough one. She had to remove a popular deejay, a presence on the rock station's airwaves for 16 years. The unlucky jock: Rita Wilde.

A lawsuit filed Friday accuses Walt Disney Co.'s KLOS-FM radio station in Los Angeles of violating anti-discrimination and harassment laws last year through an on-air promotion that distributed "Black Hoes"--black plastic gardening tools--to listeners and advertisers. The suit brought by a worker at the station contends the company required employees, including African Americans, to pack and ship the promotional gifts despite staff protests that the campaign was racially offensive.

Walt Disney Co. was hit Thursday with a second racial-discrimination lawsuit stemming from its role in a radio promotion called "The Black Hoe." The move comes as the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Chicago-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and the Baltimore-based National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People joined a throng of civil rights groups in condemning Disney for allowing the promotion to be aired on "The Mark & Brian Show" on its KLOS-FM station.

Civil rights activists are expected to call today for a boycott of Walt Disney Co. unless the family entertainment giant publicly apologizes for its role in a radio promotion called "The Black Hoe. " The news conference, scheduled for this afternoon at the Los Angeles headquarters of the Congress for Racial Equality, comes on the heels of a lawsuit accusing Disney, subsidiary ABC Inc. and the management of its KLOS-FM radio station of violating anti-discrimination...

The Walt Disney Co. dodged a bullet this week when civil rights leader Jesse Jackson decided not to file a complaint against the family entertainment giant for its role in a radio promotion called "The Black Hoe."