Bob Kittle, John Warren, Tim McClain and Gloria Penner on the ‘Editors Roundtable’ set.

KPBS remains my favorite radio station. Really. Gloria Penner is the sharpest “follow-up question” host in local broadcast media, a skill I admire despite being regularly nicked by her pointed queries. Yet leaving the Editors Roundtable after six years was the right thing to do.

On the face of it, Bob Kittle, editor of The San Diego Union-Tribune’s editorial page, John Warren, editor and publisher of San Diego Voice & Viewpoint, and I departed as a group rather than submit to a schedule that would have us together for only about a dozen shows each year. As the show has evolved since 1997, numerous editors have sat before the microphones; I was among the first. It was KPBS that winnowed that list to the three regulars and even built the show its own four pages on the kpbs.org Web site.

We are a good group. Kittle is naturally awash in the regional news flow, with movers, shakers and others trekking to the U-T’s Mission Valley offices to meet with the paper’s editorial team. He was able to share information and insight with Roundtable listeners that really can’t be gleaned elsewhere. Warren, aside from having a four-decade career that includes 12 years as a congressional staffer, publishes the heaviest by weight, and therefore most influential, minority newspaper in San Diego. I’ve deposited a journalist’s paycheck for 20 years, more than half as an editor with four different employers. We are a predictably well-informed bunch with a diversity of opinions.

The unpaid positions with KPBS required about two hours of time on Fridays and varying amounts of research each week starting generally on Wednesday afternoons when the show’s topics were determined. I often spent four hours preparing, calling sources during the day, reading the research Thursday night and searching the Internet for relevant breaking news Friday morning. That way I sounded smarter than I really am.

So the show got our best efforts. And it delivered results. The quality, and our professional relationships with Cox Communications, helped land KPBS a paid contract to produce about 35 shows each year for broadcast on Channel 4. The attention zoomed; television can do that. Time Warner Cable picked it up.

As the show grew more popular, critics came out. No surprise there. I don’t listen, much. I always figured this was a temporary gig and one day the boot would come. I just did my best.

For the last year, we’ve been in sometimes-tense discussion with the show’s third producer on a way to diversify beyond the practice of bringing in guest editors when one of us was away on vacation or business. Early last month we balked when station management presented a rotation that would have us together once every four shows with guest editors filling spots the other three weeks. Instead, we ended the session with an apparent compromise that had us collectively missing a combined 18 to 20 shows throughout the year. I e-mailed in seven Fridays I’d miss between Jan. 30 and Aug. 27 and promised more later.

But after the Jan. 23 show, we were individually informed KPBS brass already had settled on the hard schedule. So we walked. I’ll miss it and wish the station could be more flexible. And I’ll remain grateful for the times we had. But I get six hours of my week back. And on Thursday nights, study night, I think instead I’ll check out that “Survivor” show. It almost seems appropriate.