Descended from legendary Oakland stations KLS and KWBR, KDIA would build a legend of its own. The station billed itself as “Lucky 13 Boss Soul Radio” and was a major cultural force, particularly within the Black community, in the 1960s and ’70s.
KDIA came into being after the death of one of the two Warner brothers in 1955. Stafford Warner had been the guiding spirit of the partnership that had operated KWBR and its predecessor KLS for more than thirty years. His brother Eugene initially took control of the station, then made plans to sell it, eventually placing KWBR in trust pending its sale to Sonderling Broadcasting Corporation for $550,000.
Sonderling was headed by German immigrant Egmont Sonderling, who realized there was money to be made targeting urban audiences with so-called “soul” music. Sonderling already owned WDIA in Memphis, and when the company acquired KWBR, it was rechristened KDIA in 1959.
Sonderling embarked on numerous improvements to KDIA’s physical plant, most notably abandoning the aging Radio Village studio and transmitter facility in downtown Oakland and moving to a new site adjacent to the Bay Bridge toll plaza. The move was accompanied by a five-fold increase in KDIA’s power, to 5,000 watts.
Through the ’60s and ’70s, KDIA directed its full programming effort toward the emerging Black audience, keeping holdover personalities Don Barksdale and Bill Doubleday on staff and adding high-caliber talent over the years that included George Oxford (previously a competitor at KSAN), John Hardy, Belva Davis (later known for her groundbreaking work on television), “Rosko” (air name of William Roscoe Mercer), Roland Porter, Bob White, Bill Hall, Johnny Morris and Bob Jones. The station leveraged its dial position into its identity as “KDIA Lucky 13.”
By the late 1970s, KDIA was losing its luster, faced with numerous challenges including the emergence of FM radio. The station was sold by Sonderling to Viacom International in 1980. KDIA continued with an Urban Contemporary music format under Viacom until 1983, when the station was sold again (along with WDIA) to Ragan Henry. In 1984, KDIA changed hands once more, becoming the property of Adam Clayton Powell III, who made the ill-advised decision to go all-news, changing the call letters to KFYI.
After KFYI’s very brief life, the 1310 AM frequency was dark for a few months before Ragan Henry, who’d reassumed ownership, relaunched KDIA in October 1985. For several years, KDIA tried to recapture its past glory, playing “Hits ‘n’ Oldies” aimed at the audience which had grown up with the station. Henry defaulted on a loan from Aetna in 1992, and the station was sold for $1.6 million dollars in November of that year to a group of investors led by California State Assembly speaker (and future San Francisco mayor) Willie Brown and then-Oakland mayor Elihu Harris, providing Black ownership for a station that had long been a fixture in the Black community.
Brown and Harris moved KDIA to new studios at 384 Embarcadero West near Oakland’s Jack London Square; it remained there after being sold yet again in June 1995 to James Gabbert, who had previously owned San Francisco’s landmark K-101 and its AM counterpart and, at the time, owned KOFY in San Mateo. Having paid $3 million dollars for KDIA, Gabbert instituted several improvements, switching the station to AM Stereo and boosting its power to 20,000 watts – all the better to hear its “Urban Oldies” music format.
But by 1997, Gabbert acknowledged he was running a money-losing station and engineered a deal to sell it to ABC for $6.25 million dollars. “I’m tired and wanted out,” Gabbert told the Oakland Tribune. “I’ve been in broadcasting since 1957.”
Even before the deal closed, KDIA began airing the “Radio Disney” syndicated format aimed at children and families. The station’s call letters were changed to KMKY on January 20, 1998.
