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Radio Day By The Bay

michael hagerty said:
Are we sure this is the same Sue Hall? This Ben Fong-Torres piece from 2010 says it was KMEL 1984-88, K-101 1988-90, then back to KFRC (Ben got this wrong, it couldn't have been before '91 when 99.7 became KFRC-FM) to 2006 when the flip to Movin' happened. Then two years at the Wolf, back to KFRC for its rebirth on 106.9 and out along with everyone else when it began the simulcast of KCBS.



Her bio says essentially the same thing and I can't find anything anywhere online that puts her in KC or anywhere outside Northern California.
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Two quotes (fair use claimed) from the Kansas City Star, both from articles by the late Barry Garron.

July 2, 1985:

New hires for KCMO-FM include Mark McKay, formerly a disk jockey at KMEL-FM in San Francisco, and Lorrin Palagi, formerly a disk jocket at KDWB-FM of Minneapolis. ... Sue Hall, another KMEL-FM disk jockey, may work part-time at the station, Mr. Scott said. She is engaged to Summit's new program director, Gerry Cagle, who will be based in Kansas City.
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"Mr. Scott" was Craig Scott, the then-new general manager of KCMO-AM/FM. Summit bought the stations on July 1 of that year.

September 6, 1985:

Harry Nelson ... will take over the morning shift on rock station KBKC-FM. Jeff Casey, who has held the shift since the station switched to Top 40 music last month, will be on from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sue Hall, who had been on middays, will work only as a fill-in disk jockey. The announcement was made by Gerry Cagle, operations manager...."
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KBKC was what had been KCMO-FM, and which again is KCMO-FM. That station went through multiple formats in the 1980s, not helped by multiple ownership changes.
 
Mark Roberts said:
Two quotes (fair use claimed) from the Kansas City Star, both from articles by the late Barry Garron.

July 2, 1985:



"Mr. Scott" was Craig Scott, the then-new general manager of KCMO-AM/FM. Summit bought the stations on July 1 of that year.

September 6, 1985:



KBKC was what had been KCMO-FM, and which again is KCMO-FM. That station went through multiple formats in the 1980s, not helped by multiple ownership changes.
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Ooooookay.

I didn’t know Sue and Gerry were engaged.

Sue chooses not to include the time in KC in her bio. Nuff said.
 
Strictly to establish a timeline, Sue is shown in a picture as part of London and Engelman’s show on KMEL in the Billboard issue for the week ending February 22, 1986.

She was also in a KMEL London and Engelman story in Billboard in March of 1985, so it appears she left KMEL for KC and then went back to it.
 
michael hagerty said:
Sue chooses not to include the time in KC in her bio. Nuff said.
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As someone who had experience with a radio job that went pfffffft far away from home that also lasted only a few months, I totally understand why she would do that. Notice I don't talk much about Dutchess County, New York. Likely the same principle! (Except I had no place to go back to for quite some time.)
 
I remember seeing The Sturgeon (KFRC) in Fremont, CA parked on the street in front of a home back in the 80's.
Somebody from KFRC (an engineer, I think) lived in that area.
My wife & I lived over in Newark, CA. at the time, just a mile or two from KGO's towers, near the SF Bay. Luckily, I was in their null.

I also recall driving up to SF to go to work at KQED-TV and that morning The Sturgeon was parked over a "not complete yet " freeway overpass, right over Hwy 101 near SFO (airport). I'm sure they got permission!
And they were "ON THE AIR" live from it at the time.

KFRC (THE BIG 610) was GREAT, really making radio fun in their own way at the time. They sounded fantastic on AM at the time, they were well engineered.
 
One more KFRC story . . . one night / early morning about 2 AM in the early 80's driving home from SF I took The Bay Bridge to Oakland, then 880 (17 The Nimitz) south toward SJ.
I had KFRC on the car radio and on the bridge (the lower level going east) they were as strong as can be, even with all the iron work plus their xmtr site wasn't that far off near Berkeley.
Getting on 880 south KFRC was loud and sounding great (as always), playing RnR.

But around The Oakland Coliseum something happened to THE BIG 610's signal - it gradually took a dive more & more into the noise as I headed south, why???

By the time I got to around Fremont, they were in the noise . . . naturally the next day I called them!
Don't remember who I talked with in engineering, but they said they were at very low power, like 100 watts or less at the time I mentioned, there was work being done either on their tower are very near the tower . . . they said by about 5 AM the work was completed and back up to 5 kw they went.

So that was the reason.
 
alok said:
One more KFRC story . . . one night / early morning about 2 AM in the early 80's driving home from SF I took The Bay Bridge to Oakland, then 880 (17 The Nimitz) south toward SJ.
I had KFRC on the car radio and on the bridge (the lower level going east) they were as strong as can be, even with all the iron work plus their xmtr site wasn't that far off near Berkeley.
Getting on 880 south KFRC was loud and sounding great (as always), playing RnR.

But around The Oakland Coliseum something happened to THE BIG 610's signal - it gradually took a dive more & more into the noise as I headed south, why???

By the time I got to around Fremont, they were in the noise . . . naturally the next day I called them!
Don't remember who I talked with in engineering, but they said they were at very low power, like 100 watts or less at the time I mentioned, there was work being done either on their tower are very near the tower . . . they said by about 5 AM the work was completed and back up to 5 kw they went.

So that was the reason.
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A lot of stations would sign off for transmitter maintenance and repairs. Stations that didn't, like KFRC, got it done between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m.
 
michael hagerty said:
A lot of stations would sign off for transmitter maintenance and repairs. Stations that didn't, like KFRC, got it done between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m.
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Yes, Michael I am aware of that.

On the KFRC story, I forgot in my last post. I recall when I called the next day, they were surprised I heard them, as I said - they told me they were at really low power. Again, they had a nice engineering staff and always answered questions . . . plus as I mentioned before THEY SOUNDED GREAT on "good old AM" back then, really great!
 
alok said:
Yes, Michael I am aware of that.

On the KFRC story, I forgot in my last post. I recall when I called the next day, they were surprised I heard them, as I said - they told me they were at really low power. Again, they had a nice engineering staff and always answered questions . . . plus as I mentioned before THEY SOUNDED GREAT on "good old AM" back then, really great!
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KFRC's engineering department was second to none, with guys like Bob Kanner and Phil Lerza. When Kanner installed his own multi-band processing in late 1975, that was an absolute game-changer. The change from the day before it was in the rack to the day it was in the rack was breathtaking.
 
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