landtuna said:
Lkeller said:
Let the "KGO-FM" speculation begin. 104.5 & 97.7, just 104.5, or 107.7?
Back in the 60's KGO-FM used to be 103.7? Why did they get rid of it (or did it just rename itself)?
Back then it played Rock.
103.7 was a bunch of different things. Sometime in the early 70s, ABC changed the call letters to KSFX, and of course, they rounded to 104. I wasn't living here yet, but I remember the oval rainbow logo, so I assume it was the Bay Area version of
Rock N' Stereo - like KLOS in LA, which was a highly formatted and hit intensive version of album rock. Later, it went mainstream Top 40 for awhile and even used the
Musicradio slogan like WABC.
Over the decade it became soul-funk oriented - KSFX became very popular with the dance crowd, and I remember hearing the station blasting out of most of the saloons and stores in the Castro District. So it was natural to ride the disco craze, and it officially became
"Disco 104." When disco died, KSFX became album rock again for awhile, then went back to KGO-FM in the early 80s for ABC's syndicated talk radio format out of New York and LA. The flagship of that format was WABC, which had finally given up Top 40.
As strong as KGO-AM was at the time, the FM talk format was a flop, so after a couple of years (mid 80s?), ABC sold the station to the company that ran KLOK 1170 AM out of San Jose, and it became KLOK-FM, with the ridiculous
"Yes/No Radio" format. Supposedly, listeners could call in and vote 'yes' or 'no' on the various songs on the play list. It was basically lite-rock. I guess ABC wanted to make some quick cash off their low rated frequency, and assumed wrongly that the future was on the AM band.
In 1987 (the only actual year I remember because the Bay Area Radio Museum has an air check), that owner sold it to the company that turned 103.7 into
Smooth Jazz KKSF. Some years later, Clear Channel hoovered it up along with other Bay Area stations, but kept the Smooth Jazz format until the recent switch back to classic rock as
The Band.
Hope this wasn't Too Much Information, Landtuna...