Potential Cumulus-Citadel Merger. Impact on San Francisco stations?

[LKellerIII]

LKeller was right about 103.7. I remember all those formats well. I think I may even have an air check of KSFX from March 8, 1980 with DJ Marcos Guiterrez (sp?) when the #1 song was Call Me by Blondie

Yes - "Your Marrrrrcccossssss" (Gutierrez) later worked at 107.7 KSOL when it was the number one (soul) music station in the mid 80s. I recall that Marcos also had a late Sunday night public service program on KPIX - about Latin American culture and issues. Marcos would speak in Spanish for a few minutes, then repeat the same information in English. It was a bit awkward.

Regarding Own Spann....when I went to SF in '78 to work at Gene Autry's KSFO....Spann was doing a local show on KGO mid morning.

When I went to channel 7 in '84 they built a studio(the size of a closet) next to the TV newsroom for the new ABC radio network's Owen Spann show. He did it from there for awhile before being moved to NY.
How long the show lasted I don't recall.

Jerry Gordon KNUU Las Vegas

I remember listening to Owen Spann's 9AM - Noon program on KGO-AM in the late 70s and early 80s. He was very articulate and had a lot of gravitas. His move to New York and the Talk Radio network gave Ronn Owens his chance to move into the morning slot at KGO-AM. Before that, Ronn had been on in the evening, after the Afternoon News, and (as I recall), a one hours Sports Talk program.

 

[landtuna]

Hope this wasn't Too Much Information, Landtuna...

And I just noticed this morning on another thread that The Band has a new PD. Gonna have to give it a listen.

You need a flowchart to follow all the twists and turns of this station! ;D

Some posters here are saying it has no live jocks. I don't know if that is true or not but I do remember in the '66-'68 time frame it was totally automated (at least for a time) and very, very few commercials.

 

[BossRadioDJ]

Cumulus offered $31 a share for Citadel's stock today. It sounds like they're serious. If it's a hostile takeover, it could take a long time (months, years) to accomplish, but this could make it very interesting...

 

[DavidKaye]

For some reason, I always thought KABC-790 Los Angeles was the flagship of the "ABC TALKRADIO" network? I recall many of KABC talk shows on KGO-FM 103.7 San Francisco & KGNR-1320 Sacramento. And I thought WABC-770 New York was merely an affiliate of that network back then? I maybe wrong. I don't recall any of WABC's talk shows on both KGO-FM and KGNR.

ABC Talk Radio consisted of two incarnations. The first used the KABC staff. I don't recall if it was union contracts or ratings but that was scrapped and the hosts were replaced by a totally different crew. Oddly enough they had a guy with an English accent to replace Michael Jackson and his South African accent. And they had a token liberal to replace Ira Fistell and a token rightwinger to replace Ray Briem, etc.

BUT does anybody remember ABC Love? Produced by George Yahraes, a VP at ABC, it was a hippie-era music and feature magazine running on ABC O&O FMs in the late 60s. Featured people from the Village Voice and various places going vignettes between the hippie songs. I loved it. Some years ago I contacted George and asked about old tapes. Apparently he hadn't saved any. Does anybody have airchecks of ABC Love?

 

[LKellerIII]

For some reason, I always thought KABC-790 Los Angeles was the flagship of the "ABC TALKRADIO" network?

BUT does anybody remember ABC Love? Produced by George Yahraes, a VP at ABC, it was a hippie-era music and feature magazine running on ABC O&O FMs in the late 60s. Featured people from the Village Voice and various places going vignettes between the hippie songs. I loved it. Some years ago I contacted George and asked about old tapes. Apparently he hadn't saved any. Does anybody have airchecks of ABC Love?

Oh, yes. I recall it well, though I don't have air checks. As a freshman at UCLA in 69-70 with my first ever FM radio, I discovered "underground" radio on KPPC-FM and KMET. The third choice in that general category was the Love format, which ran on KABC-FM, later KLOS. It was syndicated, of course, and the primary voice was "Brother John" (Rydgren), who had previously done some counter-culture oriented religious programming on KRLA, and possibly other stations nation wide. He had a deep mellifluous voice. Later, the format added Tony Pigg - possibly some others - can't remember.

I was more taken with real local underground radio on KPPC and KMET, but KABC-FM wasn't half bad either. I don't know what frequency ran it in San Francisco - 103.7, I would assume.

I recall that Rydgren was later a local DJ in LA, suffered a serious stroke at a fairly young age -had to learn to speak again - and came back to radio for awhile, before he passed away.

 

[LKellerIII]

One of the numerous internet links to Brother John Rydgren. This photo of him was circa 1958. The KRLA (and probably syndicated) radio show he did prior to the ABC FM "Love" format was called Silhouette:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elcaarchives/4974000673/

 

[Hit Bound]

Who's smoking what on this blog?? Move KNBR to the FM frequency...are you crazy?

The only station in the Cumulus group that needs immediate attention is KFOG. They've been without a PD since 4/09 when Dave Benson was thrown out the door by those morons from Atlanta! One of the great ground breaking rock stations in the country without a PD for over 20 months, and they have rating problems...DUH!!! Station being programmed by some old CHR hack for corporate.

 

[RadioJunkieMike]

I remember ABC Love too -- got my first FM radio for Xmas 1969 and quickly discovered NYC's WABC-FM, which ran the stuff. You could memorize the tapes after a while, so you'd know what songs were coming up as soon as you heard the top of the hour. The station began to add live jocks slowly -- Dave Herman, who had a long career in NY AOR was doing evenings in the summer of '70. They became WPLJ not long after and were so "free-form" they made rival WNEW-FM seem like Top 40 in comparison. Sadly, that freedom didn't last. And yes, Howard Smith, a music writer for the Village Voice (and later a filmmaker who won a Best Documentary Oscar for Marjoe) had a Sunday nite show -- I remember him premiering "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" because he was friendly with John & Yoko.

 

[DavidKaye]

I remember ABC Love too -- got my first FM radio for Xmas 1969 and quickly discovered NYC's WABC-FM, which ran the stuff. You could memorize the tapes after a while, so you'd know what songs were coming up as soon as you heard the top of the hour.

George told me that this was a problem with the board ops at the various station. The tapes weren't rotated enough. They'd send out plenty of tapes to the stations, but the newer ones just wouldn't get played.

We really didn't have that problem in SF, though of course there were some repeats. I'm not sure if he operated from SF or NY at the time (so I don't know how much control he had over KGO-FM and their ability to do the format properly).

George Yahraes was later manager of KGO-FM (KSFX) during the disco era and was instrumental in moving it out of the ABC building to Polk Street, which was then at the heart of SF's disco scene.

"Brother" John Rydgren took the "brother" part seriously. He was an ordained Lutheran minister, and had done some hip Jesus shows on LA radio about that time.

 

[mofocat]

The ABC-Love format: I didn't have a chance to hear any station that was doing it, but I do recall seeing full page (2 page?) national print ads for it in Newsweek, Time or some such general circ. periodicals. Featured was a tree, with roots firmly planted, trunk, divides, ever-more dividing branches, and twigs spreading out and upwards. The names of artists and/or groups were distributed in a manner depicting where they fit in a continuum of growth, cross pollination and evolution. The ABC O&O stations' calls, freqs, markets were named at bottom.
Anyone remember those ads? I'd love to have a copy of one of those. Wonder if they'd look as cool now as I thought they were then.
Peaceout, man V

 

[DavidKaye]

Anyone remember those ads? I'd love to have a copy of one of those. Wonder if they'd look as cool now as I thought they were then.
Peaceout, man V

I'd imagine a similar ad may have run in Broadcasting. Check David Eduardo's website and rummage around Broadcastings from that period.

I wonder if Newsweek archives are online...

 

[davideduardo]

I'd imagine a similar ad may have run in Broadcasting. Check David Eduardo's website and rummage around Broadcastings from that period.

Broadcasting through 1982 (from mid-30's) is now searchable so you can pick the decade to narrow it down and try some keywords (use "all keywords" and not "any keyword") like CBS Love and see what comes up.

If ads do not use real text (just graphics that can not be OCRed) you might not find anything... the search index is based on OCR readable copies of each page of each magazine (over 200 gb of files) and an index to bring them up on screen.

As I am adding 80's to the collection, there are periods when the index is down... the database and index are 1.6 gb and takes several hours to upload when updated.