Not sure when this was used for times, copy & affidavits but it looks a 1940s document. Can anyone offer some history of KSGN - Your Farm and Home Station. Format? If I had to guess, I'd think block programmed with 'Women's Programs in middays and likely 'serious' music at night. Country in PM Drive and an hour for 'Dinner Music'.
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Bakersfield Bakersfield AM from way back
- Thread starter b-turner
- Start date
I'd be interested too: Was this KSGN on 900khz, or maybe 1600khz? I think both of those were, at one time, assigned to Sanger.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
KSGN/900 began operation in September 1947, a 1000-watt daytimer licensed to Sanger CA. It changed call letters to KSJV (presumably meaning "San Joaquin Valley") in March 1951. It was purchased the following year by John Poole, who is probably best known for putting KBIC-TV/22 Los Angeles on the air at the end of 1953, and airing nothing but a test pattern until he sold the station ten years later.
Poole changed the calls to KBIF, and applied to move to 1150 adding nighttime directional service (which was denied). He sold 51% to a pair of local Fresno businessmen in 1957; two years later, one bought the other out.
Both Poole and the remaining local partner sold out in 1961 to Norwood Patterson, who is most famous for putting KICU-TV/43 on the air in December that same year, only to go dark in October 1968 after some questionable bookkeeping left the station insolvent. (His father was Sherwood Patterson, the original licensee of channel 32 in San Francisco ... the article on same at the UHF History site includes the KICU-TV details.)
It's still on the air, on 900kHz, same calls and daytime facilities, but now also has nighttime service with 500w-DA.
The Wikipedia page on KBIF has a little more information, including temporary ownership in 1950-51 before the sale to Poole was forced by the purchase of KNGS in nearby Hanford. I couldn't find any information on the station's programming prior to Patterson and there's nothing in Wikipedia about that either.
Poole changed the calls to KBIF, and applied to move to 1150 adding nighttime directional service (which was denied). He sold 51% to a pair of local Fresno businessmen in 1957; two years later, one bought the other out.
Both Poole and the remaining local partner sold out in 1961 to Norwood Patterson, who is most famous for putting KICU-TV/43 on the air in December that same year, only to go dark in October 1968 after some questionable bookkeeping left the station insolvent. (His father was Sherwood Patterson, the original licensee of channel 32 in San Francisco ... the article on same at the UHF History site includes the KICU-TV details.)
It's still on the air, on 900kHz, same calls and daytime facilities, but now also has nighttime service with 500w-DA.
The Wikipedia page on KBIF has a little more information, including temporary ownership in 1950-51 before the sale to Poole was forced by the purchase of KNGS in nearby Hanford. I couldn't find any information on the station's programming prior to Patterson and there's nothing in Wikipedia about that either.
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K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Regarding programming, I found nothing about the KSGN years, but as a daytimer there wouldn't have been any music on at night, serious or not. Other than that, a small market station competing against the Fresno stations would have likely been, as you suggest, block programmed in 1947.
I did finally find an ad for KBIF circa 1955. It appears to have been some type of traditional MOR format ("music you like and just enough news") and claimed to be #1 in the market according to some ratings service that I never heard of. I find it amusing that Poole billed a radio station as having "a new look".
Maybe the DJs and news reporters had their shirts starched!
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
You overreached for that one, my friend.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
BTW, Sanger is much closer to Fresno (12 miles) than from Bakersfield (104 miles), by a long shot.