KFFG replaced “Hot 97.7” KHQT in 1995, after Susquehanna Radio Corp. paid $8.25 million to give its San Francisco station KFOG a chance to penetrate the San Jose market. The gambit was an immediate success: by the spring of 1996, the combined KFOG/KFFG ratings topped the San Francisco market.
Station ID’s on KFFG used a “dot” instead of the “point” used on KFOG, thus the well-known “104-point-5” became “97-dot-7”.
Cumulus Media acquired Susquehanna in 2006 and continued to operated KFFG as a satellite of KFOG.
That ended in 2019, when Cumulus announced the sale of a half-dozen stations, including KFFG, to the Educational Media Foundation for a total of $103.5 million. EMF, the operator of the K-Love and Air1 religious networks, changed the call letters to KJLV and installed Air1 programming. In 2023, the KJLV call letters were shifted to EMF’s Los Gatos station (95.3 FM) and the station became KWAI.
