George D. Snell Jr. was one of the founders of San Jose’s KEEN. He served as the station’s first program director and remained a part of the station’s ownership and management team until his death.
Snell was born in rural Idaho in 1909. Attending Salt Lake City’s West High School, he was bitten by the radio bug. He learned Morse code and in 1925, passed a Federal Radio Commission examination to earn an amateur radio operating license with the call 6AKM.
Snell joined the staff of Salt Lake City’s pioneering radio station KDYL in 1927, eventually serving in roles from script writer to announcer to program director.
In 1945, Snell’s former KDYL colleague Floyd Farr hired him to write and produce The Standard Hour and The Standard School Broadcast, produced at San Francisco’s KPO for the NBC Network. It was at KPO that Snell and Farr would meet restaurateur George Mardikian. The three men successfully applied for a new AM license located in San Jose, and KEEN went on the air on June 21, 1947. Snell continued to write scripts for The Standard Hour for a time after launching KEEN.
The partners’ United Broadcasting Company would go own to operate several radio stations in California and Hawaii, including KEEN-FM, later to become KBAY.
Snell was also an author and respected literary critic. He published three novels in the 1930s: The Great Adam (1934), Root, Hog and Die (1936), and And If Man Triumph (1938).
George Snell died in 1991 at the age of 82.