Mornings with Madden with author Stan Bunger and Doug Sovern

Join author and radio host Stan Bunger in conversation with Doug Sovern on Bunger’s new book Mornings with Madden, an intimate and freewheeling portrait of John Madden through the NFL legend's own words.

John Madden is synonymous with football. He was the television face and voice of the nation’s most popular sport, the namesake of its best-selling sports video game, and the man with the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach. ​Despite his international fame, there was a side of Madden known only to those who listened to morning radio broadcasts in the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s where Madden grew up, lived, and died. It's where for decades he found joy in a daily chat with his hometown radio station: a chance to unwind, tell stories, and impart his own brand of wit and wisdom. In Mornings With Madden, Stan Bunger—the man most often on the other side of the mic—illuminates this larger-than-life figure, drawing upon memories of more than fifteen years of daily broadcasts, backed up by thousands of recordings of those conversations.

About the Speakers

His voice well-known to millions of California radio listeners, Stan Bunger’s career spanned more than 40 years of ratings success and industry awards. Bunger is best known for anchoring the KCBS Morning Newswatch, the highest-rated program on the all-news powerhouse station in San Francisco. His career included stops at small-town stations in Northern California, time on legendary Dallas station KRLD, and several years as cohost and senior producer of the nationally-distributed technology television program “Next Step."

Doug Sovern is an award-winning radio journalist, author of fiction, and musician and songwriter. He was the Political Reporter at KCBS Radio in San Francisco, where he’s been a reporter/anchor since 1990. Winner of more than 250 journalism awards, he began his career at The New York Times and has also worked for Associated Press Radio and San Francisco radio stations K-101 and KGO. He is also a writer of fiction, has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes, and is writing his first conventional novel All Great And Precious Things, to be released in 2026.

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