SAN FRANCISCO Market Profile, July 1959

[Huff]

Fascinating write-up on the San Francisco radio market from July, 1959:
Click here and go to page 50:
http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive BC/BC 1959/BC 1959 07 20.pdf

(If you haven't checked out David Gleason's radio history website, you're missing out on a treasure trove of info!)

 

[BossRadioDJ]

Thanks for posting that, Domingo, and another tip of the pith helmet (and no, I wasn't lithping) to Mr. Eduardo for getting all those amazing scans done and posted. Do you have a staff of thousands helping you out?

 

[LKellerIII]

Mr. Gleason has some amazing exhibits. As to this SF market profile - I only had time to skim it (will read it more thoroughly later), but a few of interesting items:

* KOBY still lead KYA in the ratings for Top 40 listeners.

* KFRC had just introduced a hit format described as a "variant" of Top 40. It would be interesting to know how long that format lasted, and why the station went back to MOR music until the switch to the Drake format in 1966.

* They referred to the 'elevator' music format as "Good Music," not "Beautiful..."

* The two stations catering to the "Negro audience" merited one whole sentence...for both combined.

 

[DavidKaye]

Fascinating write-up on the San Francisco radio market from July, 1959:
Click here and go to page 50:
http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive BC/BC 1959/BC 1959 07 20.pdf

(If you haven't checked out David Gleason's radio history website, you're missing out on a treasure trove of info!)

KABL's beautiful music outdrew all the Top 40 stations combined among students at Cal, and Broadcasting predicted that it may mean the end of rock and roll -- in 1959!.

 

[radioguy39nj]

KEWB was a brand-new top 40 station in the Summer of 1959. KGO had recently flipped from an experiment with top 40, which IIRC was called Kay-GO. They were trying to find their way and ultimately they did with a talk format. KYA was getting into top 40 as well. KOBY was the top 40 leader at this time, having introduced rock 'n' roll radio to San Francisco in 1956. KEWB and KYA would squeeze out KOBY a year later.

KSFO was the sports and MOR music station in the Bay Area with the baseball Giants, who had just moved there in 1958, the 49ers and Cal football. That programming lineup reminds me of WNEW-AM. Having the Giants helped KSFO bolster their ratings since the team didn't allow TV broadcasts.

The title of the article is strange LONGHAIR VS SHORT. This is 1959 we're talking about, well before Haight-Ashbury or Berkley! Also strange is KGO GM Jack Stahle's description of San Francisco as "more conservative than other parts of the country and what works there won't work here." No one today thinks of San Francisco as conservative!

Very interesting!

 

[davideduardo]

Thanks for posting that, Domingo, and another tip of the pith helmet (and no, I wasn't lithping) to Mr. Eduardo for getting all those amazing scans done and posted. Do you have a staff of thousands helping you out?

It's the old "me, myself and I" that I think you know of, too.

It takes too much time, costs too much money, and is a lot of fun.

A lot of the first things I did before several scanner upgrades is being redone, and I'm also OCRing the magazines so they can be searched. When I get comments like your and Domingo's, it's all worthwhile!

 

[LKellerIII]

The title of the article is strange LONGHAIR VS SHORT. This is 1959 we're talking about, well before Haight-Ashbury or Berkley! Also strange is KGO GM Jack Stahle's description of San Francisco as "more conservative than other parts of the country and what works there won't work here." No one today thinks of San Francisco as conservative!

Very interesting!

If I'm correctly remembering ancient slang from my childhood, I believe that before the hippie-era, "longhairs" referred to cultured people who like traditional art and listened to classical music. The article opened with a mention of KOBY's switch a couple of years previous from classical music to Top 40, and how outraged many listeners were by it.

That triggered another memory from my feeble brain-pan, circa 1969 - we hippies referred proudly to ourselves as "freaks," and all the other folks as "straights" - and we didn't mean heterosexual, just people who had short hair and weren't groovy like us...so in those days, you could be a gay straight...assuming you had short hair and preferred Sinatra or show tunes to rock.

 

[Madmansam]

The title of the article is strange LONGHAIR VS SHORT. This is 1959 we're talking about, well before Haight-Ashbury or Berkley! Also strange is KGO GM Jack Stahle's description of San Francisco as "more conservative than other parts of the country and what works there won't work here." No one today thinks of San Francisco as conservative!

Very interesting!

If I'm correctly remembering ancient slang from my childhood, I believe that before the hippie-era, "longhairs" referred to cultured people who like traditional art and listened to classical music. The article opened with a mention of KOBY's switch a couple of years previous from classical music to Top 40, and how outraged many listeners were by it.

That triggered another memory from my feeble brain-pan, circa 1969 - we hippies referred proudly to ourselves as "freaks," and all the other folks as "straights" - and we didn't mean heterosexual, just people who had short hair and weren't groovy like us...so in those days, you could be a gay straight...assuming you had short hair and preferred Sinatra or show tunes to rock.

My parents used to refer to Classical Music as "Longhair Music". Never figured it out why?

 

[DavidKaye]

My parents used to refer to Classical Music as "Longhair Music". Never figured it out why?

Look at paintings of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and their brethren and they all have long hair. In the 1950s the military cropped style was all the rage.

 

[BossRadioDJ]

It's the old "me, myself and I" that I think you know of, too.

It takes too much time, costs too much money, and is a lot of fun.

I'm with you 110% on all counts!

 

[michael hagerty]

* KFRC had just introduced a hit format described as a "variant" of Top 40. It would be interesting to know how long that format lasted, and why the station went back to MOR music until the switch to the Drake format in 1966.

* They referred to the 'elevator' music format as "Good Music," not "Beautiful..."

Llew:

The key word is "variant". I'm betting it was KFRC's "Action Radio". I've only heard the jingles (included in Bobby Ocean's KFRC retrospective), but they would certainly fit a Top 40-ish format. From the looks of back issues of Billboard, it would appear KFRC was back into a more traditional Personality MOR/Jazz format by 1961.

Some "Good Music" stations used the phrase "Beautiful Music" in their promotion, but the phrase wasn't used as a format description until the late 60s...sort of the way "Smooth Jazz" became a format description after stations had been using it as a positioner for years.

 

[michael hagerty]

Just got around to reading the 1959 article....Homer Odom, GM of KABL then, was the owner and GM of KSLY, San Luis Obispo when I worked there 15 years later.

And Jack Thayer, GM of KFRC in 1959, was the GM at WNBC who hired Don Imus in 1971.

 

[radioguy39nj]

And Jack Thayer, GM of KFRC in 1959, was the GM at WNBC who hired Don Imus in 1971.

In 1979, Jack Thayer brought back WNEW-AMs traditional sound from the 1940s and 50s. Disco was fading and many stations were dusting off their collections of Big Band and Pop Standards. The retro era WNEW was a fine station with Ted Brown, William B Williams, Bob Jones and others.

On WNEW's last day as a music station in 1992, the story made national news. Baby Boomers may have viewed WNEW as Mom and Dad's station, but it was one of the greatest music stations in radio history. Remembering my parents and WNEW are one and the same!