In November 1962, NBC’s venerable San Francisco station switched call letters, from KNBC to KNBR. The company had decided to shift the KNBC calls to its Los Angeles television station and federal regulations forbade the use of the same call letters in two markets, even if the transmissions were in different parts of the broadcast spectrum.
At first, KNBR made no changes in programming and continued to simulcast on what was now known as KNBR-FM.
Calling itself “The Most Powerful Station in Northern California”, KNBR featured veteran stalwarts across the daily schedule: Doug Pledger in the morning, Evangeline Baker in middays, and Owen Spann in the afternoon.
Within two years, NBC felt the need to make some changes. In the summer of 1964, the company sent programming consultant Michael Joseph to San Francisco with orders to freshen KNBR’s sound. He spent months holed up in a hotel room, listening to Bay Area radio and studying demographic data. His conclusion: “The San Francisco world is getting to be a young one, more and more.”
For weeks in early 1965, newspaper ads and on-air announcements promised “something good” was going to happen to KNBR soon. In February 1965, Joseph’s changes took hold. Veteran Evangeline Baker’s midday show was gone (she would contribute a variety of one-minute features), the music shifted to what
were referred to as “pop standards”, and the overall pace of the station’s sound quickened. Listeners heard more than 80 weather forecasts a day along with tag lines like “Alive in ’65” and “Playmate 68”. The launch of the new KNBR included a Valentine’s Day weekend “Cavalcade of Stars”, in which the station blew out the venerable NBC weekend Monitor program and played 68 hours of pop hits, inviting listeners to dial in and proclaim their favorites.
Management would report 18,000 calls naming favorite songs–and 250 asking what happened to Monitor.
Al Hart, who would later become a morning fixture at KCBS, was briefly KNBR’s program director during this period.
In the summer of 1966, the station shifted Frank Dill to the morning show, replacing Pledger. For the next 31 years (about half of them with eventual sidekick Mike Cleary), Dill’s friendly, puckish style would define the KNBR sound.
Two key developments in the 1970s helped build the KNBR brand. Isabelle Lemon joined the station as manager of advertising and promotion in mid-1974. And in 1979, KNBR became the radio home of the San Francisco Giants, ending the team’s 20-year run on KSFO.
If Lemon had done nothing else, she’d be remembered for the memorable visual imagery she created: the KNBR 68 license plate logo. Personalized license plates had become available in California when the state switched to the yellow-on-blue plates in 1970, and by the mid-’70s, they were ubiquitous. The KNBR version showed up on billboards, bumper stickers, T-shirts and all manner of promotional items for many years.
Lemon also had a major influence on large-scale KNBR promotional efforts such as Giants FanFest, the Bridge to Bridge Run, the Bathtub Regatta, and a signature KNBR event: the Good Times Parade.
The parade grew out of an on-air bet between Dill and Cleary, who would often blend the last few minutes of Dill’s morning show with the first few minutes of Cleary’s midday shift (they would later be paired on the AM drive show). Dill bet Cleary couldn’t track him down while the morning man went on vacation. Cleary lost the wager, requiring him to put on a parade in Dill’s honor.
Having no experience in parade planning, Cleary cast about for a place willing to host such an event. Pleasanton City Councilman Bill Kinney came forward, and the March 23, 1974 event wound up drawing 4,000 people–as participants. The crowd of spectators lining Pleasanton’s Main Street was estimated at 50,000. The Good Times Parade became an annual event for years.
Along with Dill and Cleary, key members of KNBR’s on-air staff included Carter B. Smith, CJ Bronson, Ron Lyons, and Dave Niles. A strong news department featuring Gene D’Accardo and Bob Lazich rounded out a full-service radio station. In 1979, KNBR was awarded the Billboard magazine Adult Contemporary Station of The Year award.
By the early 1980s, KNBR was leaning harder into sports programming. Ken Dito’s Sportsphone 68 was an evening call-in show devoted to sports. The Golden State Warriors were first heard on KNBR in 1976, and but for a two-year switch to KCBS in the early 1980s, remained on the station until 2016.
1989 saw an ownership change. KNBR was the last radio station remaining in NBC’s portfolio, and in March 1989, Susquehanna Broadcasting Corporation acquired KNBR for $20 million.
By the early 1990s, sports-talk hosts such as Ralph Barbieri and Gary Radnich were filling more of the day. In the fall of 1990, KNBR began airing Rush Limbaugh’s nationally-syndicated program from 9 A.M. until noon on weekdays; the arrangement lasted until 2000.
When Cleary retired in 1994 and Dill left the airwaves in 1997 (on the station’s 75th anniversary), the transition to a station solely focused on sports was nearly complete. KNBR was then billing itself as “THE Sports Leader”.
In 1996, former Golden State Warriors player Tom Tolbert joined the on-air staff, paired with Barbieri for a program entitled The Razor and Mr. T. Tolbert would go on to work with a number of partners during a KNBR career that lasted until he was laid off by the station in 2024.
The station added San Francisco 49ers football to its sports play-by-play catalog in 2005.
When Cumulus Media paid Susquehanna Media $1.2 billion to acquire its radio assets in 2006, KNBR found itself part of a San Francisco cluster that included KSFO, KGO, KSAN “The Bone” and other properties.
On September 6, 2019 owner Cumulus Media began simulcasting KNBR’s programming on the 104.5 FM frequency previously known as KFOG. The FM call letters were charged to KNBR-FM.
