By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Homecoming has been a long-time coming for Jason Lamb. The 1990 Great Bend High School graduate moved east to pursue a television journalism career shortly after graduation. But now he's back - sort of. Last month, Lamb was hired by KSN in Wichita to handle the noon news broadcast among other duties. Now Lamb is able to share the news with many friends and family in the western half of the state.
"To be back here is a lot of fun because this is the station I grew up watching," he said. "I grew up watching "NBC News with Tom Brokaw." He was my guy. I was watching "The Today Show" when 9/11 happened. I grew up with Tim McQuade doing the local news cut-ins from the studio in Great Bend on channel three. I loved the sports guys on KSN. So for me to come back to KSN and work here now, is kind of nostalgic. It feels like home."
While at GBHS, Lamb gained a taste for journalism while working for the high school paper, earning several awards along the way. After graduating, he attended Barton Community College and worked at KHOK for some hands-on experience.
"I always knew I wanted to be in the broadcasting end of it," said Lamb. "For me, working at KHOK was like an internship, even though it was a part-time job. That's kind of the way I approached it, and I loved it."
Back then, the KHOK studios were located on west 10th Street in Great Bend. And back then, not everything was digital. Casey Kasem's "Weekly Top 40" still required a little manpower.
"Back then we played CDs, so everything was on CD," Lamb said. "Casey's Top-40 would come in a box with (several) CDs. You just had to make sure you were playing the right ones in the right order. I learned a lot from Scott (Donovan), and Craig Watkins, and there were several other long-time DJs I picked stuff up from."
Being a college student and doubling as a DJ was also fun. In the 1990s, KHOK was still playing Top-40 hits. Except on Friday nights when the music turned to dance.
"We called it the Friday Night Hot Mix with Jammin' Jason Lamb," Lamb laughs. "I was Jammin' Jason Lamb there for a short couple years. I really loved doing that show."
After BCC, Lamb moved on to the University of Kansas. He worked at a radio station in Lawrence and a TV station in Topeka before interning at EPSN in the summer of 1994, otherwise known as the summer O.J. Simpson went on the run.
"I was in the programming department at ESPN so they would put us on to watch all the competition, to see how the other networks were covering the O.J. arraignment and the trial," Lamb recalled. "They wanted to know if NBC or CNN were going non-stop, or if they were taking commercial breaks and when they were taking the commercial breaks. They'd buy us lunch and sit us down in front of these four or five TVs and leave us in a room to watch the competition to log how they were handling it."
Upon graduating from KU in 1995, Lamb accepted his first job at WIBW in Topeka, then later took a job at KTKA, working as a sports reporter and weekend anchor at both stations. He was named sports director at KTKW before the station abruptly shut down and laid off the newsroom staff.
That was just before Lamb's 30th birthday, but after spending a few months unemployed, he took a position with WDAF Fox 4 in Kansas City, where he spent the next 16 years covering some of the biggest sports stories in the city's history. At Fox 4, Lamb worked alongside fellow GBHS graduates John Holt, David Stonebraker, and Derek Kenyon, another former KHOK employee.
Lamb covered the 2012 Major League Baseball All-Star game at Kauffman Stadium, and he saw both the 2014 and 2015 World Series runs. And he's seen the rise and continued rise of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
"I witnessed Patrick Mahomes being just a goofball in the locker room when Alex Smith was the starter, and nobody knew anything about Mahomes," said Lamb. "Nobody paid any attention to him, to all of a sudden taking over for Alex Smith and becoming an all-world quarterback. It was unbelievable."
After Fox 4, Lamb spent a brief period at KY3 in Springfield, Mo. He left there around Thanksgiving last year and did some freelance work prior to taking the KSN job in August. That freelance work brought him home for the first time in three decades as he did play-by-play for the KSHSAA Class 1A, Div. II State Basketball Championships in March.
"That's kind of when I thought, you know what, it'd be fun to work in Wichita someday because I enjoyed being back in Great Bend and seeing old friends," he said. "My first day on the air, I had messages from friends on 28th Street where I grew up. I got a message a few days later from my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Esfeld, wondering if that was really me. That part of it has been fun."
Lamb moves to Wichita with his wife, Amy, and a son, Jayce, and a mini Goldendoodle named Riggs.