John Schneider's History of San Francisco Bay Area Radio

A HISTORY OF
RADIO BROADCASTING IN
THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

John Schneider Photo
John Schneider

San Francisco was a great radio city in the golden age of radio, rivaling New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in its importance as a radio programming center. Why, then, is there so little information available about those early years in the City by the Bay? The radio broadcasting history buff will find only scraps of information here and there.

This history was created to help fill the gap. It consists of materials taken from a manuscript I wrote in the 1970s, after two years of intensive research while I attended San Francisco State University in 1969-71. This material has never been published except for a few articles, because it was not commercially viable as a book. But now, thanks to the Internet, it can be made available to the public — not for profit, but for knowledge!

All articles on this site are copyrighted by John F. Schneider, 1999-2024. All Rights Reserved. Photos are presumed to be in the public domain unless otherwise indicated. Special thanks to the following people who have graciously contributed information, articles or photographs to this site: Fred Krock, Bill Ruck, Cecil Lynch, Rich Kolm, Bill Newbrough, Greg Oppenheimer, Richard Rodriguez and Steve Gore. Thanks also to Harry Larkin for his help with some of the photos.

Can you provide additional facts or photographs to help document Bay Area broadcasting? Your comments about and contributions to this site are welcome. I can be contacted at jfs@adams.net or mail to:

John Schneider
1662 Jersey Street
Quincy, IL 62301

Voices Out Of The Fog: Article Index

Histories of San Francisco Broadcasting

The San Francisco Radio Photo Archive

Over 170 photos of broadcasting in San Francisco.

Harrison Holliway (Photo)
Harrison Holliway

John Schneider worked briefly in San Francisco radio in the early 1970s. He is now the Latin American Sales Manager for Broadcast Electronics, Inc., in Quincy, Illinois. The Bay Area Radio Museum is grateful for John’s generous permission in allowing us to reprint his epic work on this website.

All articles copyright © 1999-2024 by John F. Schneider. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with the generous permission of the author.

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Gregor M.
Gregor M.
18 January 2022 3:06 PM

Hello,

The frontispiece of John Schneider’s 2012 book “Bay Area Radio” features a photograph of a radio dial with a clock in the middle surrounded by pushbuttons with the call signs of the various Bay Area radio stations of the time (the 1930s) imprinted on them. The buttons (starting from roughly the six o’clock position) are:

KROW
KRE
KJBS
KSFO
KPO
KQW
KGO
KFRC
KYA

and

“OFF” (“OFF” is at roughly the five o’clock position)

The photograph is captioned, “This is a typical radio dial from the late 1930s, with buttons for each of the San Francisco area’s radio stations.”

Can someone please tell me the make and model of this radio?

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