KKIS-FM launched on January 5, 1987 and immediately made headlines. Gone were the previous call letters (KINQ) and in was a Bay Area radio legend: Dr. Don Rose.
Rose’s historic run at KFRC had ended ignominiously a few months earlier when he was relieved of duty without the chance to bids listeners farewell. KFRC’s Top 40 glory days were over, the station was moving to a mix of pop and big-band music from an earlier era, and a well-paid star like Dr. Don was excess baggage.
Still only 53 years old and with son Jay Rosenberg filling the role of chief engineer at KINQ, Rose saw a chance for a radio rebirth. He worked out a deal to take over the morning shift, become vice president of programming, and invest in the station in a deal that would reportedly give him up to 30% equity within five years. “This is exciting,” Rose told the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Ben Fong-Torres. “I’m like an octopus at a milking contest.”
The call letter change made obvious what had been going on for several years: Pittsburg-licensed AM station KKIS and the Walnut Creek FM station had been simulcasting a contemporary music format out of studios in Walnut Creek.
Rose’s morning show had the same feel of the broadcast that helped KFRC win four Billboard “Station of the Year” honors during his tenure.
And then, nine months later, it was over. Rose had approached KKIS majority partners Jim and Harry Chabin with an offer to buy the stations outright. They declined, and Rose sold his shares to them and left the station with what he said was “deep regret”. Rose would shift back to a San Francisco powerhouse, K-101, for a brief run before a heart attack ended his career.
Program director Bobby Cole would cycle through numerous morning hosts after Rose’s departure; many of them were San Francisco radio and TV personalities looking for a temporary gig before their next break. Names like Pat Finn, Stephen Capen, Wayne Shannon, and Jeff McNeal were heard on KKIS and KKIS-FM. Rebecca Corral, a young KRON-TV reporter who’d been laid off, found radio work at KKIS before launching a lengthy career at KCBS.
Whatever offer the Chabins had rejected from Dr. Don Rose, they cashed in nicely a year and a half later. At the end of 1988, they sold the two KKIS properties to Diamond Broadcasting, which was co-owned by Washington media broker Thomas P. Gammon and Louisiana private investor Ronald H. Strother, for a reported $4,477,000. Gammon had assembled a portfolio of ten stations around the country, borrowing money to do so. The debt came due in 1992, when BayBank Boston sued, asking that the stations be placed in receivership. The bank said Gammon was behind on payments on a $3 million loan.
In late 1992, KKIS was turned over to Randolph E. George, a court-appointed receiver. George was affiliated with Media Venture Partnership, which brokered the sale of radio stations and, through its affiliate Media Venture Management, Inc., handled court-appointed receiverships for financially troubled radio stations being sold off to satisfy debts owed to the stations’ creditors. George would later be convicted of two felony counts of willful filing of false tax returns covering this era.
KKIS-FM would be sold out of receivership in mid-1993 to Amador Bustos, who a year earlier had launched Z-Spanish Network, a privately held company, with an initial $150,000 investment. Bustos’ idea: serve the growing Spanish-speaking audience in major metro areas by scooping up less-expensive stations on the fringes of those metros. KKIS-FM fit the bill. With the newly-installed Spanish La Z network programming, the call letters were shifted to KZWC.
