Beth Duncan is an award winning broadcast journalist and recording jazz vocalist. Of her 35-year career in radio she says, “I fell into the business; it turns out radio news was a perfect fit for me.” On her first live reporting assignment for Sacramento’s KRAK, Beth flew in a small plane searching for open gas stations during 1979’s oil embargo. “Let’s just say I should have taken Dramamine—but the show goes on.” While at KRAK, she won an AP Mark Twain award for news coverage.
Beth moved from KRAK to a stint as an award-winning anchor and reporter at KFBK, covering floods, earthquakes, and the infamous Dorthea Puente murder case. Her role quickly expanded to anchor, weekend talk show host, and ultimately managing editor. A personal highlight was a trip to Russia to cover a sister city exchange between Sacramento and Chisinau, Moldova, two months before the Soviet Union collapsed. During her time at KFBK, Beth won awards for investigative journalism, enterprise and feature reporting, and best use of sound.
Beth later served as Director of Operations for Metro Networks, providing news and traffic information to regional affiliates while continuing her on-air work as a morning news and traffic anchor at Salem Radio.
Even while in radio, Beth’s singing career has been a constant; she performs locally throughout the year and has recorded two CD’s. Beth won top honors in the Independent Music Awards for the title track off her most recent project, Comes The Fall, and her music is played across the country and around the world.
Beth and her husband, photojournalist Randy Pench, live in River Park. They met when he came to the Capital City for a job at the Sacramento Bee and moved into the apartment directly below hers.
