KABL-FM replaced KAFE at 98.1 on the dial after Gordon McLendon’s 1965 acquisition of the station. For most of the next quarter-century, the station mirrored the programing of KABL, an earlier McLendon acquisition.
By the time KAFE became KABL, it was transmitting a 100,000 watt signal from Sausalito’s Mt. Beacon. The city of license had been changed from Oakland to San Francisco, though under McLendon’s ownership, the broadcasts emanated from the modest KABL studios near the Bay Bridge toll plaza (Federal Communications Commission records identified the leased location as “Krow Island”; the site had first been used when sister station KABL was known as KROW).
In 1972, McLendon sold the KABL combo to conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr.’s Starr Broadcasting Group for $10.8 million. In 1978, the Starr group was acquired and merged into Roy Disney’s Shamrock Broadcasting Company, Inc.
The “beautiful music” format, mocked by some as “elevator music”, was successful for many years. But by the late 1980s, its appeal had faded. Faced with an aging audience of diminishing appeal to advertisers, the station began to phase out the lush instrumental music. On January 16, 1990 the transition was complete; the last of the instrumentals was gone, replaced by what program director Dave McKinsey called “soft hits and bright favorites”.
The “soft adult contemporary” version of KABL-FM found itself battling KOIT, which had made a similar format shift a few years earlier. Three years after dropping its “beautiful music”, KABL shifted again, installing a mainstream Adult Contemporary format and dumping 33-year station veteran Bill Moen from his morning slot. Rebranded as “B-98”, the KABL AM/FM combination replaced Moen with his on-air sidekick Trish Bell.
B-98 lasted a year. In early 1994, KABL-FM started calling itself “Big 98.1”. Another shift in the music mix meant the station was playing only hits from the ’70s. Then-program director Gerry McCracken told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We won’t play the Beatles because they were a ’60s group, but we will regularly play Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison.”
The KABL call letters left the FM band on January 2, 1995 as the station became KBBG.
RELATED EXHIBITS:
KABL AM and FM Coverage Map, 1978
