KFRC-FM was not the first station to occupy the 106.1 FM frequency assigned to San Francisco. That honor went to KGO-FM, which began broadcasting from Oakland on November 3, 1947. This made the American Broadcasting Company (ABC)-owned station the first network-owned FM station in the Bay Area.
ABC moved the station to a new frequency and a new transmitter site at San Francisco’s Sutro Mansion in January 1955. Once KGO-FM shifted to 103.7 on the dial, the 106.1 frequency went dormant.
In 1958, RKO Teleradio Pictures (later RKO General), the owner of KFRC since 1949, decided it was time to add an FM signal in the Bay Area. The Federal Communications Commission granted a construction permit and assigned RKO the former KGO-FM frequency, 106.1.
The new station mirrored the programming of long-established KFRC. You had to peer very closely at advertising for the two stations to even know there was a KFRC-FM.
Those ads accurately represent the FM station’s role as an afterthought. As KFRC began promoting its on-air lineup of Bill Hickock, Jimmy Lyon and Stan Bohrman in a 1962 campaign dubbed “Enjoy Yourself”, the FM frequency was barely legible in newspaper ads.
This wasn’t unusual for an FM station in the early 1960s. If it was co-owned with an AM station, it’s almost a certainty that the FM signal was simply a simulcast of what was being heard on the AM side.
This began to change in the wake of a mid-1964 decision by the FCC. The commission, hoping to give the lagging fortunes of FM radio a boost, limited holders of FM licenses in cities of more than 100,000 who also held AM licenses to simulcasting no more than 50 percent of their AM signal on the FM station.
That decision was resisted and delayed, but upon implementation on January 1, 1967, there was a different sound on many FM stations. In the case of KFRC-FM, RKO had chosen to go with a locally-produced automated format which San Francisco Chronicle columnist Dwight Newton reported “leans to album vocals, to Lawrence Welk and Sinatra Senior.”
By November 1968, even as KFRC was starting to cement its legacy as one of the industry’s Top 4o heavyweights, its all-but-forgotten sister station was being shunted to a new identity. KFRC-FM became KFMS.
But the story of this KFRC-FM (the call letters would later be found at 106.9 on the dial under different ownership) wasn’t over. KFMS begat KKEE before RKO General shifted back to the KFRC-FM call letters in 1973.
The rebirth of KFRC-FM seemed to be an extension of the light popular music format that had been heard on KKEE, a syndicated sound called the Bonneville Program Service.
The station wasn’t a major ratings-getter, but it did manage to finish 20th of 60 Bay Area radio stations in San Mateo Times columnist Bob Foster’s annual poll in early 1974. By then, the station was airing oldies and promoting weekly concerts and parties at the Orphanage nightclub in San Francisco. Many of these shows were broadcast live, including performances by the ’60s tribute band Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs.
Ken Thompson became the station’s general manager in late 1974, just in time for the station to be sued by a man named Ron Miller. Miller claimed KFRC-FM had backed out of a deal to promote a flagpole-sitting stunt in which Miller would perch atop a pole outside Mel’s Drive-In on South Van Ness Avenue. Miller demanded $400,000 in damages, saying his attempt to break into the Guinness Book of World Records was dashed by KFRC-FM management.
By late 1976, the process of selling KFRC and KFRC-FM (then being marketed as K106) was underway. RKO General was getting out of the radio business, and Century Broadcasting was preparing to enter the San Francisco market.
Rick Lee would be named as general manager, and Century’s national program director Bob Burch would oversee the end of the oldies and the launch of a memorable brand: KMEL (there would first be a feint toward a different set of call letters, KQUP, before KMEL hit the airwaves in July 1977).
The KFRC-FM call letters returned to Bay Area airwaves fourteen years later. When developer Peter Bedford’s Bedford Broadcasting Company bought KFRC and KXXX (99.7 FM), KXXX became KFRC-FM, airing an oldies format that mirrored that of KFRC.
There would be one more move for the KFRC-FM call letters. On May 17, 2007, CBS Radio (which had traded KFRC for religious broadcaster Family Stations’ KEAR 106.9 FM in 2005) revived the historic KFRC call letters and relaunched its station at 106.9 FM with a Classic Hits format, playing popular music from the 1960s through the 1980s.
In 2009, CBS Radio began to simulcast the all-news format of KCBS on the 106.9 FM frequency. Thought the branding refers to KCBS, the legal station identification is KFRC-FM.
