Note: the KEAR call letters have been used on several Bay Area radio stations on differing frequencies at different times. This display deals with the station at 1550 AM between 1952 and 1956.
When the Amphlett Printing Company needed a new press for its newspaper The San Mateo Times in 1952, it came up with the cash by selling its radio station KSMO. Or so the story goes.
In any case, the buyer, a young Kentuckian named Stephen Cisler, immediately set about making some changes. First and foremost was the new call letters: KEAR. Cisler told The Peninsula Times Tribune that the call letters made sense “because we are featuring ear appeal with our good music programming.”
Cisler moved the station from a cramped facility near the train tracks on San Mateo’s South B Street to more spacious accommodations at the Laurel Towers on El Camino Real. He also attempted to deal with the station’s weak signal by applying for an increase in power–and by launching an FM simulcast.
To achieve that, Cisler acquired the defunct KGSF at 97.3 FM (formerly KWBR-FM) from Oakland’s Warner Brothers, operators of KWBR. He changed the call letters to KXKX and began offering several hours a day of simulcast programming.
Cisler’s early hires included station manager Ray Barnett, then 26 years old. Barnett would later serve as vice president and station manager at KCBS for many years.
KEAR faced the same problem many other stations airing so-called “good” music were facing: though they felt they were attracting a desirable audience, ratings services didn’t show big enough numbers to attract sufficient advertising revenue. In 1953, Cisler went directly to his listeners, offering 1,000 shares of stock at $50 per share.
The offering was an immediate sellout, with buyers being promised a 6% dividend payable out of station profits (if any). The Oakland Tribune reported the money was to be used to build out a new 10,000 watt transmitter, giving the station a broader signal.
The new, more powerful transmitter installed in 1954 didn’t solve Cisler’s economics problem. By August 1955, he announced KEAR was cutting 4 1/2 hours of broadcasting time from its daily schedule, going silent during “morning drive” and offering programming from 11 AM to midnight. Cisler blamed high labor costs for the change.
This was despite another direct appeal to listeners in the spring of 1955, during which the station raised a reported $40,100. One news account said the haul included a 15 cent contribution from a child in Palo Alto.
Cisler had successfully petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to change the station’s city of license from San Mateo to San Francisco, after establishing new studios in the basement of the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
But his battles with organized labor were ongoing. Both the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians (NABET) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) had asked the FCC to suspend the station’s license, arguing that Cisler was using KEAR’s airwaves in a personal vendetta against the unions.
Cisler had also been involved in a contentious attempt to secure a new UHF television license to serve the Salinas-Monterey market.
The financial string ran out in 1956. KEAR went off the air in May after the Internal Revenue Service placed padlocks on the transmitter site, having charged ownership with non-payment of federal taxes. Future San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto represented a group of investors who offered a rock-bottom $75,000 to acquire KEAR and assume its indebtedness.
Another report had the Midwest-based Bartell family offering to take over KEAR and keep Cisler on as a consultant. None of the above came to pass.
The AM station went off the air on September 24, 1956. By then, Cisler had a deal with Denver-based David Segal to allow his Mid-America Broadcasters to take over the station. Segal would change the call letters to KOBY and the format to Top-40 when the station resumed operations on October 8, 1956. As the San Francisco Examiner reported, it was “Presley instead of Prokofiev and Sinatra replacing Strauss.”
The FM call letters were changed from KXKX-FM to KEAR as Cisler maintained ownership of the FM station, and the classical music format continued. Studios and offices had moved from the Mark Hopkins to 1550 California Street.
RELATED EXHIBITS:
KSMO and Successor Stations on 1550 kHz
