Warren Olney was the host and executive producer of To the Point and To the Point’s Climate Change Update. They were podcasts based on 50 years of experience as a journalist in print, commercial TV and public broadcasting. He also formerly hosted both the local focused Which Way, LA? and the nationally syndicated To the Point on 89.9 KCRW Santa Monica.
Olney and his programs have been honored with nearly 40 national, regional and local awards for broadcast excellence. In 2012, Olney received the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California for his broad achievements in television news, as well as his storied career over 20 years on public radio, both locally and nationally. He has been awarded the Golden Mike Award for "Best Public Affairs Program," and WWLA was honored with the Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California Journalism Award for Best Talk/Public Affairs Show. Olney was named Best Radio Journalist of the Year at the 2001 Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California Journalism Awards.
WWLA was also named as Best Talk/Public Affairs Show during the same awards ceremony. He is the only person to have been twice named "Broadcast Journalist of the Year" — for his work in both radio and television — by the Society of Professional Journalists, Los Angeles. He is the recipient of Emmy Awards for reporting and anchoring, and Golden Mikes for investigative reporting.
Concurrent with his hosting duties on Which Way, LA?, from June 1999 to September 2000, he served as co-anchor of KCET-TV's Life & Times Tonight, a nightly public affairs show. Olney was a television news reporter and anchor from 1966 to 1991, working in Washington, DC, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. Throughout his career, he covered local, state, and national politics, including presidential primaries, nominating conventions and inaugurals, and superpower summit meetings in Washington and Geneva. His special projects and investigations have focused on crime, science, the environment, among other subjects. Overseas assignments took him to Europe, Asia, and Central America.
He also served as a print reporter for the Sacramento Bee (California) and the Newport News Daily Press (Virginia). Olney's interviews, book reviews, articles, and columns have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, Los Angeles magazine, and California Journal, among other publications. He frequently speaks on politics, the media, the evolving character of Southern California, and other subjects, and is often called on to moderate public panels on numerous topics. At the University of Southern California, Olney developed and taught "Broadcast Journalism," a laboratory course for graduate and undergraduate students, from 1976-1982.
As an actor, Olney has appeared in numerous feature films, including Crimson Tide, The Fisher King, and Higher Learning, as well as other feature and television productions. Olney received his BA in English, magna cum laude, from Amherst College (Massachusetts) and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has four children and five grandchildren. He is married to Marsha Temple, a former attorney at law, now Executive Director of the Integrated Recovery Network, a nonprofit helping the homeless mentally ill to find housing, treatment and jobs.
Warren Olney on KCRW
More from KCRW
Trump steals the spotlight back from Harris at Black journalists' conference
PoliticsDemocrats called Trump “weird” due to his remarks at the NABJ conference. U.S. policy is changing in the Middle East, and Chicago is preparing for a migrant surge.
When the Baby Groupies descended on the Sunset Strip
ArtsIn 1973, fourteen-year old Valley girl Lori Lightning found herself as one of the teenage rulers of the Hollywood music scene.
Was civility the winner of the VP debate?
PoliticsCan civility influence voters in the Trump era? Has Biden’s policy in the Middle East backfired? Plus, the United States hits a bleak milestone on executions.
Condo owners are ‘counting pennies’ as home insurance soars
Housing & DevelopmentInsurance hikes aren’t just affecting homes at high risk of fire. Homeowners in urban areas share the brunt of climate change too. Condos are hit especially hard.
Richard Silverstein: Israel, ‘The far right extremist state that I can no longer identify with’
PoliticsIsrael and its lobby today try to conflate the state with Jews around the world, that it speaks for Jews and encompasses the entire diaspora.
Breaking's 1984 LA Olympics debut: The untold story before Paris
SportsHow Lionel Richie and a Soul Train dancer helped take break dancing from the streets of LA to the Olympic stage, 40 years before becoming an official Olympic sport in Paris.
US legislators harden stance on China, Brazil bans Musk’s X
PoliticsThe U.S. continues to take a firm stance on China. When does censorship go too far? Plus, California’s gas inventory may hurt its neighboring state, Nevada.
Juan Cole: The antidote to Israeli propaganda
PoliticsGaza today symbolizes nothing but death, destruction and oppression.
The rise and fall of the GTOs, the first girl group of Groupies
ArtsVenice Beach teen Dee Dee Keel was desperate to find out what was happening behind the scenes, in the clubs and hotel rooms of Hollywood: so she tracked an intriguing local rocker, Jim…