Draft:Dana Jang

Dana Jang is a radio producer and DJ from the San Francisco Bay Area. He was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2021

Early life

Dana Jang was born in San Francisco in 1948 to first-generation Chinese immigrant parents. Though his paternal grandparents had been naturalized citizens after an especially arduous year-long processing at Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, Jang’s father was born in Canton. His mother, Etta, and father James Jang met in San Francisco where Etta was born.

In Jang’s early childhood the family followed his father’s employment and moved from San Francisco to Freeport, Texas, and then again to Los Angeles and finally Whittier, California. When purchasing their home in Whittier, Jang’s father asked a Jewish friend to purchase the home in his name, as the realtors would not sell to Asian Americans. His mother subsequently told neighbors they were only renting the home.

Jang has a younger brother, Jon, a jazz musician, and sister, Deeana, a public policy advocate and Policy Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Jang’s father worked as a chemical engineer for Fluor Corp, a company that built refineries.

Death of Dr. James Joseph Jang and the creation of the FAA

On June 30, 1956, Jang’s father, chemical engineer at Fluor Corp. Dr. James Joseph Jang was aboard TWA flight L-1049 from Los Angeles to Kansas City when it collided with a United Airlines flight over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 passengers and crew. This incident led to the creation of the Federal Aviation Agency in 1958. Although air travel had more than doubled in the years since the end of WWII, little had been done to manage air traffic or prevent collisions, and commercial pilots including those aboard the doomed TWA and United Airlines flights were flying using sight. A memorial to the 128 who died aboard both flights exists at the site of the crash. Dr. Jang was 39 years old.

Dana Jang later penned a testimonial about his father and his family’s life after the tragic accident, saying “It was a fateful day, a few weeks after school ended for the summer and a few weeks before my eighth birthday, that my world changed. Sitting in the living room of my next-door neighbor's house, watching television with my neighbor's son, Lee, I heard my father's name on the afternoon news in conjunction with an airplane crash. I remember being in denial that my father would emerge alive out of the wreckage. The next day with my mother in complete devastation, my father's brother from Wasco arrived in Whittier. My uncle, Roland, took me aside and told me my father had perished in the plane crash.”

Youth and adolescence

After the death of his father, Jang’s mother, Etta, who was pregnant with his younger sister at the time of the accident, became a single parent.

Jang became interested in radio while living in Southern California and following the Giants and Dodgers baseball teams, which had both recently moved from New York to San Francisco and Los Angeles respectively. Though Jang loved the sport and played baseball himself, he gravitated towards the voice of radio personality and sportscaster Vin Scully, who painted a verbal picture of baseball games in the moment.

Jang’s mother was immediately supportive of his hobbies and endeavors and bought him his first tape recorder. Jang was interested not only in the verbal communication, but the sound effects used to create what he refers to as “theater of the mind.” He began collecting transistor radios and his mother also purchased a HAM radio for him.

Education and Early Career

The Jang family then moved back to the Bay Area, settling in Palo Alto, where Jang graduated from Cubberley Senior High School. Jang then attempted to follow in his father’s footsteps by studying science with the goal of becoming an engineer, before switching majors transferring from Foothill Junior College to Santa Clara University’s School of Business. While at Santa Clara University, Jang volunteered at the school’s radio station, KSU, DJing music and taking requests. In his Junior year, Jang became the radio program director.

Jang went to San Jose State University to obtain a Master’s degree in Business Administration and became involved with the school’s radio station, KSDS. He was hired to DJ at Foothill College.

After being hired for an on-air shift at KPSR, a radio project of Pinewood Private Schools, Jang founded KKUP, a non-commercial community radio station based in Cupertino, CA, in May 1972. KKUP was one of first educational radio stations not affiliated with an educational institution or religious organization. Jang served as first General Manager was a long-term Board Member. In 2022, KKUP celebrated 50 years of broadcasting.

Career/Achievements:

Jang then served as DJ at KREP in Santa Clara, CA, and then got his first full-time on-air job with KSJO in San Jose. He then became the Public Affairs Directoat KSJO for the following two years.

Throughout a decades-long career in radio, Jang served as air talent for KSCU, Santa Clara; KFJC, Los Altos Hills, KSJS, San Jose; KPSR, Los Altos; KREP, Santa Clara; KSJO, San Jose; KOME, San Jose; KITS, San Francisco; KUFX, San Jose; KBAY, San Jose; and KKUP, in Cupertino.

Jang served as Operations Manager KSJO/KHTT in San Jose from 1985 to 1986. Jang was Music Director at KOME, and the Program Director for Bay Area radio stations KSJO, KBAY, KUFX, and KEZR, staying at each station for a decade or more, managing many future Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame inductees.

Jang’s public affairs and consumer reporting programming on KSJO was so popular that when it was pulled from broadcast, a group known as the Committee for Open Media protested the station in order to get the show back on the air.

Jang Performed as on-air talent in the Bay Area for over 4 decades in a variety of formats from Top 40 to Progressive Rock to Active Rock to Alternative to Adult Contemporary to Classic Rock. An early adopter of Grunge, Jang’s music programming transformed KSJO into one of the first alternative rock stations in the country.

Awards and Honors

Dana Jang was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in the Specialty category in 2021.