The Bay Area’s 1550 AM frequency first came to life on March 17, 1947 bearing the call letters KSMO, a nod to the San Mateo Times, whose parent company Amphlett Printing Company had obtained the license. The 1,000 watt station featured studios in downtown San Mateo and a transmitter site on marshy land near the Bayshore Freeway in Belmont.
There would be many ownership, format, and call letter changes over the next two decades (a fairly detailed accounting by onetime station engineer David Wigfield can be found here) before owner Frank Atlass, now operating the station as KKHI, switched to a classical music format in the mid-1960’s.
KKHI, operated in simulcast with co-owned KKHI-FM, enjoyed a fair degree of success through the 70’s and 80’s before their sale to Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1994. Westinghouse switched the twinned stations to a news/talk format that never quite gained traction against established powerhouses KCBS and KGO, though the station managed to leap into the list of top-rated Bay Area stations by carrying the O.J. Simpson murder trial live and surrounding the live coverage with hours of daily analysis.
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