Megan Holiday is the Afternoon Host on Alternative 106.7 KROQ in Los Angeles and Live 105 KITS in San Francisco. She’s also the Midday Host on ALT 94.7 KKDO in Sacramento. There’s a reason she feels so at home at two of the biggest and most legendary Alternative stations in the country. She’s originally from SoCal and went to college in The Bay Area.
“My first taste of radio happened when I attended Live 105’s BFD summer show,” she explains. “And that’s where I met Menace, as you know ‘The Woody Show’ started at Live 105.”
“Menace wanted me to come and intern for the show, but I had to finish up my final year of school. He planted a seed in my brain that radio could actually be a career, so I moved to San Diego after college and did an internship at 91X. It was such a blast, and I caught the ‘radio bug.’”
Holiday later moved back to the Bay Area to go to graduate school, where Menace reached out to her again and wanted her to help out on the night show at Live 105. “I literally dropped my bags at my apartment and started doing nights with Menace,” she says. “I worked my way up from nights to Middays and eventually ‘Megan & Menace in the Morning.’ Unfortunately, I self-sabotaged and lost everything because of my drug addiction.”
“About a year later I moved back to SoCal to go to rehab and get my life together. Sixty days into my sobriety I reached out to Lisa Worden at KROQ, and she had me come in for a meeting with her and Kevin Weatherly. I laid my cards on the table and told them my story and that I wanted to get back into radio more than anything in the world. They took a chance on me, and I will forever be grateful. They gave me back my career, and side note, I just celebrated nine years sober. Working at KROQ was always the dream. It’s been quite a wild ride!”
It’s not lost on Holiday that she works on two of the most legendary stations in the business. “It means everything to me!” she says. “I am so grateful to all of those who have come before me in the afternoon time slots at both stations like Jed The Fish, Stryker, No Name and Jared The DJ. I observed the way they did their shows; they mentored me, and I learned so much from them.”
“At KROQ I took notes from the badass women like Kat Corbett, Nicole Alvarez and Tami Heide. All of these people have helped shape what I do on the radio today. I mean Kevin & Bean are literally in the Radio Hall of Fame and they accepted me with open arms. I got to fill in a few times on the show and it was surreal. And Klein & Ally are two of the funniest, kind and entertaining people I have ever met, and I truly think we have one of the best morning shows in the market now on KROQ. The history, the rock folklore and the talent from these radio stations is something out of a movie.”
LA and San Francisco are two very different cities. I asked Holiday how she manages to balance the content between both markets. “I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, which is about an hour east of LA, so I spent most of my life hanging out and going to shows in LA, the OC and San Diego,” she explains. “I moved to The Bay for college and then to work at Live 105, so I lived in various cities up there and of course lived in San Francisco for a long time.
“The Bay had a profound effect on me, and I hope to move back one day. The community, the culture, The Golden State Warriors! I thrived and lived it up in both places, so it just comes naturally to toggle between both. I visit The Bay as often as I can and I love that I live in SoCal, my family is here and KROQ is here!”
With her history in both cities, Holiday is entrenched in the community. “I feel like my job is to serve the listeners. Keep them informed about all the cool stuff they can win, the concerts that are happening, local stories, and also sharing personal things about my life,” she says.
“I’m invested, and I try to be encouraging and give them hope because we all could use a boost of confidence in life. I just want them to know I’m there for them and that I care. I also like to have a silly goose time, and I want to make them laugh. I don’t take myself too seriously.”
It’s all fun and games for Holiday, except when the natural disasters hit. All three markets she’s on air in are often plagued by wildfires. That’s when things get serious. “I think the main thing is to just be real about what’s happening, being raw and honest. Pretending like it isn’t happening and just doing a ‘normal’ show is tone deaf and I can’t fake the funk.”
“With the fires I was giving out information about how to get help from organizations, where people could go to get food, supplies, places to take their pets and how to volunteer. I wanted to comfort people and just keep them informed. I told them about my experience getting evacuated and encouraged them to call if they wanted to talk or share about a resource that I could pump up on the air.”
Holiday has made a lot of great memories over the years. “I remember working my first BFD at Live 105 in 2010 and we hooked up listeners with the chance to play ping pong with Deftones before their set,” she explains. “Deftones are my favorite band ever, so I was just as excited, if not more, as the listeners were.”
“Also, flying to Ireland and doing a live broadcast at the Jameson Distillery was amazing even though it was all a blur, haha. And interviewing Gwen Stefani last year was unreal and definitely a bucket list moment, she’s always been a huge inspiration.”
Holiday has also faced some major challenges over the years. “During the pandemic there were a lot of layoffs, and I was tracking six markets, doing interviews, Instagram lives and commercials.” She says. “I was working ten-hour days sometimes and it put me into one of the worst depressions of my life. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do a good job so relating to markets where I haven’t lived was tough, but I got through it.”
“Another challenge is that radio is a bit of a boy’s club and as a woman it seems like you have to work three times as hard to get any acknowledgment, so I just let my work speak for itself. If I feel proud of what I’m doing and the listeners are feeling me, that’s all that really matters at the end of the day. Leaders in radio should make their people feel appreciated and supported.”
For those unaware, in 2021, after 35 years of Alternative Rock, Audacy flipped Live 105 in San Francisco to Adult Hits “Dave FM,” a move that no one in the industry understood. That lasted less than two years, and somewhere in between that, the station was re-branded as Alt 105.3, another move no one in the industry understood. The station officially returned to its original brand “Live 105” on June 5, 2023.
I asked Holiday about the response from listeners. “The audience is so beyond stoked!” she says. “Live 105 is such an iconic station and it is my home, where everything started for me. I was the person to do the last live break on the radio when it flipped to ‘Dave.’”
“Then when it flipped to ‘ALT1053,’ I was on the air again, but it wasn’t the same. Then I was the first and only on-air personality for a while when Live 105 relaunched, so I feel like I never left in a way. So, this relaunch is just so rad, and I love my YAY AREA listeners so much.”
The Los Angeles radio market is a bit of a different beast. When it comes to ratings and being local, there is a HUGE difference between the lifestyles of those living in LA, Orange County, and the Inland Empire. Anyone in programming or on air in that market has to consider this in order to be successful.
“I do my best to highlight different local stories whether it’s LA, the OC or the IE,” says Holiday. “But I think what binds us all together is our love of SoCal and our love of music.”
The big question on everyone’s mind in the business is what kind of impact AI will have on the industry. “I haven’t personally done any experimenting with AI aside from asking ChatGPT if aliens exist like Tom Delonge says,” admits Holiday.
“I think it would be a grave mistake for radio to go in that direction. People respond to energy and authenticity not just what a voice sounds like or crappy AI jokes. To replace personalities with AI would take away the heart and pulse of radio.”
“As humans, we are looking for someone else we can relate to, someone we can actually meet in real life, so we don’t feel alone, and I don’t think something called artificial intelligence can provide that. AI can make songs, but I want to go out and actually watch a band live and meet them, ya know. AI can be used in other ways to make programming easier, but everything in radio needs human touch.”
“The listeners and I go through the same life experiences; mental health challenges, seeing and experiencing the chaos of the world, we have a blast at the same concerts. We got through the pandemic together, we got through the passing of Chester Bennington and Taylor Hawkins together, we got through the wildfires together. The main thing is I want them to know I have their back and they’re never alone. AI can’t do that.”
“I always try to throw out words of encouragement to them because life is hard and maybe they don’t get that anywhere else in their life. When I do that, I get a lot of listener response back, thanking me for what I said. I want to be a voice of comfort; I want them to feel like they get to hang with a good friend every afternoon. I want them to rock out, get lost in the music and have fun with me.”
Follow Megan Holiday on IG & Twitter/X @meganholiday and her nonprofit, Life Of The Party on IG @lifeofthepartyorg.
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Charese Fruge’ is an award-winning Content, Broadcast, and Marketing executive with over 20 years of experience in markets like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, San Diego, and Las Vegas. As the owner of MC Media, she works with radio brands and individual talent, especially young women, helping them grow their brands and negotiate on their own behalf. She is also a Voice Actor and Voice Over Talent as well as a Freelance Writer for International Broadcast Outlets. Find her at @MCMediaOnline or www.mcmediaonline.com.
