Frank Cope
“The Alarm Klok Klub”
KJBS Radio, San Francisco
1931
A 1931 photograph of Frank Cope from the pages of Broadcast Weekly magazine.
Mr. Cope, a native of Utah, had begun as the morning program host on San Francisco’s KJBS in March 1930, after helping to bring the pioneering Ogden, Utah, station KLO on the air in 1929. (KLO currently serves the Salt Lake City metro area.)
His morning program on KJBS was unique in that he played records, gave the time, temperature and weather forecast — many years before this became standard practice for morning radio disc jockeys.
Mr. Cope continued hosting “The Alarm Klok Klub” on KJBS until the station was sold to Argonaut Broadcasting in 1959 and became KFAX. The 29-year run of the program – interrupted only by a brief turn as manager of NBC’s West Coast network in the mid 1930s – staked him to the title as “The World’s Oldest Disc Jockey.”
Frank Cope was elected to the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2007. He passed away in April 1974 at the age of 72. His obituary from the San Francisco Examiner appears below.
SOURCE: Bay Area Radio Museum Collection.
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