Yes, agree. He was a big radio personality, that came through the speakers, and I've heard from a few others that he was a decent guy, not full of himself. Too bad he went straight, but he deserves a life, and the disintegrating state of radio seems to have made that increasingly difficult in the last couple of decades.
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That was not my first station visit... I drove my mom crazy stopping at stations where ever we were from about age 11 or 12 onward. On that trip to SF, I visited all the stations in the city, even the 1100 daytimer that had just increased power... as well as KCBS, KSFO, KGO and 1010 KSAN which I believe was country at the time.
But of all of them, KYA stood out as they were the nicest. It rivaled my visit a year later to WLS, where they let me sit in the lobby all day and get autorgraphs from the jocks as they arrived for work or went off shift. WLS had been my favorite "listen to" station in that era, and I was thrilled to meet my hero, Dick Biondi.
IIRC 1010 was KSAY. KSAN was on 1450, which is the now present KEST.
KSAY 1010 lasted until 1974 when James Gabbert bought the station and changed the calls to KIQI to go along with his FM station, KIOI aka K101.
Yep. And KFRC beat them onto "Layla" and was still getting mileage out of "Tumbling Dice".
For a WABC guy, Breen really bought into the Q thing, even licensing "The Last Contest".
REELRADIO has had Julian's memo on KYA format basics posted for about 15 years. Absent an aircheck from his time there, it's probably the best snapshot of what was going on at the station:
https://reelradio.com/jb/kya_format_basics122071.pdf
Julian Breen was an excellent programmer---but he did a 180 on KYA's programming philosophy, air sound and connection to the market at a critical moment. And looking at the date on the memo, the October-November 1971 book hadn't been released yet. So he did this before KYA had fallen a full point behind KFRC.
Still, KYA was in by no means bad shape.
Overall:
1. KABL 9.5
2. KFRC 9.3
3. KGO 8.5
4 KYA 8.3
5. KSFO 5.5
6. KCBS 5.3
7. KLIV 4.8
8. KDIA 4.5
9. KLOK 3.8
10. KSAN 1.3
...and KYA tied with KFRC in morning driver and within a point of KFRC in every other daypart except 7-midnight, where it was a 2-point spread. KFRC and KYA finished #1 and #2 in afternoon drive and 7-mid.
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Agreeing with David, John Mack Flanagan. The guy made a human connection like nobody I've heard on the air apart from Dr. Don.
Beyond that---and going outside Top 40 radio for some---Tom Donohue, Don Sherwood, Gene Nelson, Frank Dill, and I'd argue that Bill Lee began to acquire that "legend" title during his run at KFRC.
The problem with San Francisco---apart from KSFO, KYA before Julian Breen, KSAN and some examples at KFRC, was that jocks didn't stay---if they were good in San Francisco, New York, Chicago or L.A. wanted them---and as big and great as SF is---those markets pay more.
As Bobby Ocean said on his last KFRC show before going to KHJ "I love you and will miss you----but you should SEE my new contract!"
They stayed in those studios until the 1983 deal with Golden West and Bonneville.
I never think of him as a west coast guy. Must have been a huge culture shock for him, especially at that time. Meanwhile, Tom Donohue is playing Tower of Power, Santana, and Grateful Dead at KSAN. FM was becoming the hot new thing.
A few years later, another Philly boy, Walt Sabo started KYUU, the first Hot AC.
True too I remember this one how some names that are good in San Francisco are overshadowed by their achievements once they go to the top 3 markets or go on the national level in the past. Note this might not be as relevant as it was in the past given the current media landscape such as voice tracking shows from one location but market to other places.
Bill Lee that one later became big in New York for WCBS-FM.
Mancow Muller
In a way, Mancow Muller needs no introduction. From his early days in Kansas City to the notoriety he generated at KYLD/San Francisco and later in Chicago, Muller has turned the word, "outspoken," into an understatement - at times running afoul of the FCC. Nevertheless, he continues on in...
Mancow is another one he used to be on KYLD San Francisco in the 1990's until
his crew made a stunt on the Bay Bridge and he left for Chicago where he became the Chicago equivalent of Howard Stern in the later part of that decade.
I think Walter may be misremembering how that all actually went.
Mike's first book as PD of KYUU (fall '77) was a 1.4, not a 4.4. From there, the trend was 1.7-1.1-1.6-2.1-2.8-3.0 (which was July/August of 1979, after stealing Big Tom Parker from KFRC). And even at that point, KYUU was losing to KFRC in both 18-34 and 25-49 (the R&R breakouts of that time weren't showing 18-49).
Mike finally got that 4.4 in the October/November '79 Arbitron...two years after his first book. And there, KYUU did beat KFRC in both 18-34 and 25-54 (R&R replaced 25-49 with that).
KYUU's trend after that was 4.0-3.6-3.7-2.9-3.2-4.0-2.6-2.5. And that covers the first four years of KYUU.
Mike got his promotion to head of programming for the NBC FM's in 1980 (replacing Al Brady Law and then Walt as both moved up the corporate ladder) and left by the end of that year (around the time of the 2.5), advertising his services in a full page ad in R&R, with endorsements from Al and Walt and NBC as a client:
https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Business/Music/Archive-RandR-IDX/IDX/80s/81/RR-1981-12-11-OCR-Page-0025.pdf#search="mike phillips"
Two months later, KIOI hired him as PD, and he'd be back at KYUU in the mid-80s, when they finally took KFRC down for good.
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And son of a gun, all I had to do was look---there's a scoped aircheck of KYA from the same week as the survey I posted:
https://bayarearadio.org/audio/kya/1972/KYA_John-Hardy_June-20-1972.mp3
https://bayarearadio.org/audio/kya/1972/KYA_John-Hardy_June-20-1972.mp3
I wish I could find it---it may be in the posts the board lost years ago, but John participated here back in the 2000s.
In one of those posts, John told the story of his departure from KFRC. Basically, he did let ego get to him once and lived to regret it. In 1979, he and everyone else at KFRC was making $37,000 a year, apart from Dr. Don Rose, who reportedly was at $300,000.
John went to Les Garland (the PD) and demanded a raise. Les told him he was right, that he was an important part of the station's success, went to the GM and came back with an offer of $60,000 a year (that's $246,000 adjusted for inflation). John told Les that was an insult. Les went back to the GM, they both went to RKO and they came back to John with an offer for $90,000 a year ($369k adjusted).
John told them to stick it and walked out. No radio gig. He went to work for the Dale Carnegie ("How To Win Friends And Influence People") organization---an irony that wasn't lost on him later on.
Things got worse. John says Carnegie reneged on the agreement and never paid him. John worked for KCBS-FM and its successor KRQR, but was little more than a time and temp album jock--at one point relegated to overnights. He got back to afternoon drive and CHR at KWSS in Gilroy/San Jose, and that got him back into SF, at KIOI, KSFO/KYA-FM and even at KFRC in its oldies incarnation---but that was when the industry was playing corporate musical chairs with talent. This is a pretty good summation:
KFRC's John Mack Flanagan: The BARD Interview (Summer 1992) | Bay
Eventually, John took a gig as a security guard/greeter at Embarcadero Plaza---the same building where he'd worked at KCBS-FM and KRQR.
In the late 2000s, he got lured back to KFRC's re-birth on 106.9 with a Sunday Beatles show---and got let go with everyone else when the station flipped to a simulcast of KCBS a few months later.
I corresponded with John for a bit from there until his death in 2018. A good guy who deserved a lot better from the business he loved.
I was friends with JD, who worked at Young Country, and later at the rebirth of KFRC. He was over the moon about getting to say those call letters, and very broken up when the station flipped to news. JD: "SEE YA!"
Here is a KXTV segment from the late 1990's when they compared the KROY and KXOA rivalries in Sacramento to KFRC The Big 610 in the Bay Area over top 40 from the 1960's-1970's.
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Dan Adams did several really good TV stories about radio in his career.
Thanks for posting this, Y2K. It has one of my favorite Dr. Don Rose jokes---the Pacifica Police Department men's room burglary.
I seen this happen on the TV side too for example especially for local news in the past when I seen old airchecks on YouTube. TV News anchor that is either a rising star or good in Sacramento end up a bigger name in the top 10 TV markets prior to being nationwide for the same reasons.
Tony McEwing, Susan Hirasuna, Kaity Tong, Ellen Lleyva, David Ono, Pete Wilson and Gary Radnich, Kim Khazei are some of the talent had short stints as TV anchors in Sacramento. But these names later became legends once they left Sacramento and became big names in the top 10 TV Markets like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles are some of them.
The money in TV news isn't what it used to be, but it was exponentially bigger in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago than it was in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston.
And those markets paid significantly better than anything outside the top ten. Even though Phoenix is #11, the money's not that much different there than it is in Sacramento (#20) or San Diego (#27).
AH but the cost of living is so much better in Phoenix.
True too some of those things used to be the case at one point. Today especially in radio there are CHR and AC talent either voice tracking for a national audience or multiple markets at the same time.
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In this case Carolyn McArdle is assigned by Iheart to do shows for Sacramento and San Francisco Iheart outlets under the Breeze brand. Yes it's true at one point Radio used to be like that too when one is paid to do shows like higher pay in the top 3 cities and it was a big deal in that era.
I seen some recent stories where a talent would be considered local in one and voice tracked in other parts of the country. Then again this time around it's who is the top person on their respective apps like Audacy and Iheart.
Than San Diego, yeah. Than Sacramento, no.
We lived in the foothills (Cameron Park) in 88-89. At that time Sacto was a bit more expensive than CP but both were far more expensive than Phoenix where we had lived prior to '88. CP began exploding right after we returned to AZ and I felt most of Sacto was a dump. For the state capital of CA I thought Sacto was a dumpy little border town. Schools sucked. Traffic sucked. Taxes sucked. Prop 13 would have been great had we lived there long enough but it didn't outweigh the negatives. The house we moved into from Sacto in '93 was approximately the same as the one we had in CP. The CA house was about $40K when we moved out which was about $30K more than the Phoenix house. Gas, food, property taxes and utilities were all higher in CA than AZ.
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