Venerable KFI radio morning host Bill Handel will receive a Broadcast Legend Award from the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California, while longtime Southland broadcast reporters Michele Gile and Eric Spillman will be presented with Lifetime Achievement Awards, the organization announced Thursday.
All three will be honored during the RTNA’s annual Golden Mike Awards dinner March 30 at the Universal Hilton hotel.
In announcing the honors, RTNA cited Handel’s three decades with KFI, where he hosts the weekday morning “The Bill Handel Show,” along with the nationally syndicated “Handel on the Law” legal advice show, airing on more than 340 stations. Handel is a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Emmy and Golden Mike Award winner Gile has been a reporter for KCAL9 since 1990, “covering everything from wildfires, mudslides, to earthquakes in Orange County.” She worked in both Palm Springs and Santa Barbara before landing at KCAL.
Spillman was one of the original members of the KTLA Morning News team when it began in 1991, and he continues to serve as a reporter and anchor at the station, winning Emmy, Golden Mike and AP awards. RTNA officials said Spillman “has been on the front lines of virtually every major story in Southern California since the early 1990s.”
The Golden Mike Awards are presented annually by the RTNA, a nonprofit organization that represents broadcast news professionals across Southern California.