San Jose’s KEEN hit the airwaves on June 21, 1947, operating out of studios at the DeAnza Hotel. It was a star-studded launch for a station that would become a South Bay mainstay at 1370 on the AM dial for the next five decades.
KEEN’s ownership entity, United Broadcasting, was made up of veteran broadcasters George D. Snell Jr. and B. Floyd Farr along with colorful San Francisco restaurateur George Mardikian. Snell was chief announcer at KPO in San Francisco. He hired Snell, with whom he’d formed a friendship at a Salt Lake City radio station. Mardikian befriended the two and supplied the cash to back their dream of owning a radio station.
At the start, the station operated at 1,000 watts of power. Eventually, the station was granted authority to boost that to 5,000 watts.
In its early years, KEEN broadcast a “full service” format with popular music, news, and sports. By the mid-50’s, KEEN had shifted to country-western music, which was its hallmark into the early 1990’s. KEEN shut off the country format in 1992 and the station was dark for several months before returning to the airwaves as KKSJ.
KEEN was named 2025 “Legendary Station” by the Bay Area Radio Museum and Hall of Fame.
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Biography of KEEN co-founder B. Floyd Farr
One of KEEN’S Founding Fathers Remembers