Humbly billing itself as “America’s Most Glamorous Radio Station”, KHUM began broadcasting from poolside studios at Santa Rosa’s El Rancho Hotel on December 3, 1961. The fledgling 500-watt station at the top end of the AM dial had already survived an interagency kerfuffle between the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, the result of which was an FCC demand that the station shorten its transmitter tower near the Santa Rosa airport by 58 feet.
The call letters were available because the Eureka station that originally held them had switched to KINS. The licensee was Bay Area Electronic, Inc.
It was quite an opening night. Majority shareholder John Egan, the president of securities firm First California Co., would tell the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that the estimated 1,000 people who turned out to celebrate the inaugural broadcast knocked back more than 200 quarts of liquor and devoured every bit of the available food.
Victor “Kurly” Kopp and William Macey were listed as staff announcers while Southern California radio veteran Ralph Warren headed the news department. Programming was described as music that would have “general audience appeal”.
KHUM advertising pointed to the 1960s sense of optimism in Sonoma County: “The Station Designed for Listening, In the City Designed for Living”. Air talent included Tom Van Amburg, a North Bay native who would go on to noted career as an ABC Television executive (Tom’s brother Fred gained fame, using only his last name, as a KGO-TV news anchor in San Francisco).
KHUM advertised regularly in local newspapers, sometimes listing itself with periods added to its call letters (K.H.U.M.).
In 1964, KHUM’s ownership shifted. Frances “Didi” De Golia, a member of the women’s aviation group known as The Ninety-Nines, paid Egan $90,000 to assume control. De Golia was known for a Saturday morning aviation program called Cleared for Take-Off. Just a year later, Di Golia accepted one dollar to transfer control of licensee Bay Area Electronic Inc. to Henry Guzik, who worked for a Los Angeles-based radio representation firm. FCC records indicate Guzik also agreed to invest another $20,000 in the company.
The station was clearly struggling to stay afloat, as evidenced by the fact that KHUM allowed in-town rival KSRO to carry the Mutual Broadcast Network feed of the February 1967 heavyweight boxing title fight between Ernie Terrell and Cassius Clay.
Its demise was announced in a Press Democrat article in May 1967. The paper noted that the station, which had gone dark, had vacated its El Rancho Hotel location months earlier for what was described as a “small structure at Los Robles Lodge”. The report indicated equipment had been removed and rent had been left unpaid.
The newspaper also reported “efforts to gain a statement from anyone associated with the station were unsuccessful.”
