Classical KDFC Named BARHOF Legendary Station For 2024

The Bay Area Radio Museum and Hall of Fame is proud to announce that Classical KDFC has been named its Legendary Station for 2024.

Having celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2023, KDFC remains the popular voice of Classical music in the Bay Area and Northern California.

In conjunction with the Broadcast Legends, we will celebrate KDFC’s Legendary Station award with a special luncheon on Thursday, June 6, 2024, at the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco.

Make your reservation for the Classical KDFC Legendary Station Celebration!

KDFC went on the air on September 1, 1948, as one of the first FM stations in the Bay Area. More than 75 years later, it has retained its original format longer than any station in the Bay Area under one set of call letters.

It has served the community with Classical music for decades and has continued to do so long after the last competing Classical station left the market 25 years ago.

KDFC’s signal was broadcast out of its transmitter building on Mount Beacon above Sausalito on 102.1 FM from the outset until the station changed frequencies as a non-profit station in 2011. Now part of a network of ten affiliated signals up and down the coast known as “Classical California,” KDFC’s 90.3 FM signal continues to be broadcast from this same site.

In 1997, KDFC ownership changed hands, and as the only Classical station in the Bay Area it set out with a new purpose: to bring Classical music to the masses. In 1999 and again in 2000, KDFC tied as the number one music station atop the Arbitron ratings in the San Francisco market.

KDFC can boast the inclusion of many BARHOF inductees on its staff over the years:

• Current president and former morning show host and PD: Bill Lueth.
• Former market manager for Bonneville: Chuck Tweedle.
• Announcers: Dianne Nicolini, Hoyt Smith, John Evans, Dusti Rhodes.
• Marketing Director: Jude Heller.
• Engineers: Shingo Kamada, Erich Steinberg.

The station has won three NAB Marconi Awards for Best Classical Station, and was nominated in the overall category of Large Market Station of the Year. It also won the NAB Crystal Award for Community Service.

Mayor London Breed declared September 1, 2023, to be KDFC Day in San Francisco in honor of the 75th anniversary of KDFC’s first broadcast.

KDFC became a non-profit radio station in 2011 and remains a top ten radio station in the market (#6 in the most recent Holiday book). It is supported by over 25,000 members from Ukiah to Monterey.

KDFC has been the broadcast home of the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and countless other performing arts groups in the community for decades. It is a key hub for the arts ecosystem of the Bay Area. The station’s studios are now located in the Bowes Performing Arts Building in the heart of the San Francisco Opera, Symphony and Ballet arts community near City Hall.

The Bay Area Radio Museum & Hall of Fame (BARHOF) is a project of the California Historical Radio Society (CHRS). Each year, BARHOF bestows Legendary Station status upon a local radio station in recognition of its significant role in broadcasting in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Legendary Station is usually celebrated with a special event each June which is held in conjunction with Broadcast Legends.