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KNEW (AM)
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KNEW (AM)
KNEW (960 AM) is an American radio station licensed to Oakland, California, and serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned by iHeartMedia and offers a hybrid sports and conservative talk format. Most of the programming comes from Fox Sports Radio and Premiere Networks. KNEW also carries Athletics baseball games. The station's studios are located in the SoMa district of San Francisco.
KNEW transmits 5,000 watts using a three-tower array directional antenna at all times. The transmitter is located in Oakland at the eastern end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. KNEW was previously heard on the HD Radio digital subchannel of 103.7 KOSF-HD2.
On July 8, 1925, the station signed on as KFWM. It was owned originally by the Oakland Educational Society. The Oakland Post-Enquirer wanted a radio station to compete with the Oakland Tribune's KLX. This station became KROW in June 1930, and used those call letters until 1959. It was a full-service station known for launching the career of comedian Phyllis Diller and for helping the career of "the world's greatest disc jockey" Don Sherwood, prior to his long career at KSFO.
In 1947, the station built a new transmitter on a 20-acre island leased from the Port of Oakland. The new transmitter was accompanied by an increase in power from 1,000 watts to 5,000 watts full-time.
This station is best known as the longtime home of KABL, the successor to KROW and one of the first beautiful music stations in the United States. It was owned by 1950s radio pioneer Gordon McLendon. According to longtime McLendon national program director, Don Keyes, in his book Gordon McLendon and Me, McLendon wanted to own a station in the San Francisco market, and 960 KROW seemed ideal because of its relatively low dial position and strong coverage of the San Francisco market.
McLendon had success with Top 40 stations and the original plan had been to launch a similar, youthful format on KROW. But after McLendon and his team visited the market and discovered there were already several Top 40 stations, they decided there was not room for another one. As a result, they looked to KIXL, a beautiful music station in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, market that was enjoying a fair amount of success despite being daytime-only. They decided to launch a similar format on KROW using KIXL's formula of quarter-hour blocks of familiar musical selections (three instrumentals, arranged by tempo, and one vocal) as a template. The new call sign was to be KABL, as in San Francisco's legendary cable cars.
In early May 1959, KROW began stunting with a continuous loop of a song called "Gila Monster", the theme song from a horror film that Gordon McLendon had co-produced that year. Based on this stunt, it was assumed by the general public — and by the competition — that KROW was to become a Top 40 station along the lines of McLendon's KLIF in Dallas, WAKY in Louisville or KILT in Houston. But McLendon took everyone by surprise by debuting KABL as a beautiful music station. KABL quickly captured a more mature listening audience that disliked rock and roll. KABL soon became the number one radio station in San Francisco, and would remain at or near the top of the ratings for years afterward.
As KABL, the station combined a mixture of easy listening string and orchestra music with light classics and an occasional Latin cocktail hour tune. KABL was known for presenting poetic vignettes about San Francisco life, a harp interlude between songs, and a cable car bell to announce the news.
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KNEW (AM)
KNEW (960 AM) is an American radio station licensed to Oakland, California, and serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned by iHeartMedia and offers a hybrid sports and conservative talk format. Most of the programming comes from Fox Sports Radio and Premiere Networks. KNEW also carries Athletics baseball games. The station's studios are located in the SoMa district of San Francisco.
KNEW transmits 5,000 watts using a three-tower array directional antenna at all times. The transmitter is located in Oakland at the eastern end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. KNEW was previously heard on the HD Radio digital subchannel of 103.7 KOSF-HD2.
On July 8, 1925, the station signed on as KFWM. It was owned originally by the Oakland Educational Society. The Oakland Post-Enquirer wanted a radio station to compete with the Oakland Tribune's KLX. This station became KROW in June 1930, and used those call letters until 1959. It was a full-service station known for launching the career of comedian Phyllis Diller and for helping the career of "the world's greatest disc jockey" Don Sherwood, prior to his long career at KSFO.
In 1947, the station built a new transmitter on a 20-acre island leased from the Port of Oakland. The new transmitter was accompanied by an increase in power from 1,000 watts to 5,000 watts full-time.
This station is best known as the longtime home of KABL, the successor to KROW and one of the first beautiful music stations in the United States. It was owned by 1950s radio pioneer Gordon McLendon. According to longtime McLendon national program director, Don Keyes, in his book Gordon McLendon and Me, McLendon wanted to own a station in the San Francisco market, and 960 KROW seemed ideal because of its relatively low dial position and strong coverage of the San Francisco market.
McLendon had success with Top 40 stations and the original plan had been to launch a similar, youthful format on KROW. But after McLendon and his team visited the market and discovered there were already several Top 40 stations, they decided there was not room for another one. As a result, they looked to KIXL, a beautiful music station in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, market that was enjoying a fair amount of success despite being daytime-only. They decided to launch a similar format on KROW using KIXL's formula of quarter-hour blocks of familiar musical selections (three instrumentals, arranged by tempo, and one vocal) as a template. The new call sign was to be KABL, as in San Francisco's legendary cable cars.
In early May 1959, KROW began stunting with a continuous loop of a song called "Gila Monster", the theme song from a horror film that Gordon McLendon had co-produced that year. Based on this stunt, it was assumed by the general public — and by the competition — that KROW was to become a Top 40 station along the lines of McLendon's KLIF in Dallas, WAKY in Louisville or KILT in Houston. But McLendon took everyone by surprise by debuting KABL as a beautiful music station. KABL quickly captured a more mature listening audience that disliked rock and roll. KABL soon became the number one radio station in San Francisco, and would remain at or near the top of the ratings for years afterward.
As KABL, the station combined a mixture of easy listening string and orchestra music with light classics and an occasional Latin cocktail hour tune. KABL was known for presenting poetic vignettes about San Francisco life, a harp interlude between songs, and a cable car bell to announce the news.