I've got a file of Carter B. Smith on KABL, Walnut Creek from June 29 of 2005. Ben Fong-Torres wrote a piece in the Chronicle about the demise of the station---in it, he says the last day was July 26 of that year.
For many of its listeners, that means life without big-band music and standards, a day...
www.sfgate.com
I can't find an exact date for the station's launch, but it happened after KABL (960) flipped formats---and that was September 28, 2004.
Thanks, Mike. I did some radio archeology today and believe I have it figured out - not a precise date, but pretty close. Sources include newspaper clippings*, posts to the Usenet ba.broadcast newsgroup, and references in Radio & Records.
There was a "trimulcast" of KSJO (92.3), KXJO (92.7), and KFJO (92.1) as a result of various acquisitions, probably starting in 1998. It was in place when I moved to San Francisco in January 1999.
Clear Channel acquired AMFM in 2000 and had to spin off some properties as a result. Most went to an outfit called Chase Radio Partners which was structured to be independently owned, yet contracted with Clear Channel to run the stations. KXJO went to Spanish Broadcasting Systems, which maintained a "network operating agreement" with Clear Channel. KFJO went to Chase.
SBS allowed its agreement with Clear Channel to expire and changed KXJO to KPTI, "The Party", on May 11, 2002, with offices and studios in downtown Oakland. KFJO continued to simulcast KSJO after that date. This is noted in a couple of Radio & Records articles on Clear Channel's San Francisco operations, plus ratings summaries in R&R.
Enter Air America. An agreement for KVTO (1400, Berkeley) to be the Bay Area affiliate fell through in 2004. Clear Channel management saw an opportunity. A Chronicle ad on September 23, 2004 teased a change on "960 AM" on September 28. A Chronicle article on September 25 by Dan Fost, the paper's media writer at the time, reported KABL would become an Air America affiliate with the call letters KQKE, "The Quake". The KABL adult-standards format would move to KFJO and to a station in the Monterey Bay area. Clear Channel's management stated that they hoped to build a network of stations around the KABL format. That may have been deflection, or wishful thinking, because it never happened.
The FCC call-letter history for 92.1 indicates that the call letters for the station were changed to KABL-FM on October 1, 2004. The call-letter history for 960 indicates that the calls were changed from KABL to KQKE on October 4, 2004. The
Oakland Tribune published an ad for KABL-FM on September 30.
There were a few days in which the stations simulcasted. I remarked upon the simulcast in a ba.broadcast post on September 30, noting the simulcast was going on the preceding week. After the format change, 960 quit broadcasting in stereo. It was the last Bay Area station to broadcast in AM stereo until KVON in Napa started doing so a few years ago.
The recording that I have is clearly of a simulcast. The audio ducks momentarily to say "KFJO Walnut Creek" just before a "960 AM" ID at the top of the hour. So it could have been between September 23 and September 28. More likely, I didn't make the recording until the newspaper article appeared on September 25, which was a Saturday. I may have made the recording that same day. I'm going to declare it so.
It may also exist on a cassette somewhere in my collection of shoeboxes of tapes, but that's another project for another time.
*Footnote: I have quite a collection of newspaper clippings and webpage printouts on Bay Area radio and TV, particularly from the early 2000s. Those will need to find a home someday but that's also a project for the future.
