KOFY-FM succeeded KKCY at San Francisco’s 98.9 slot on the FM dial. It was not an easy journey.
In the summer of 1987, KKCY owner Olympic Broadcasting Co. announced it had received an unsolicited $11 million bid for the station from Pacific FM, Inc. The company was controlled by Jim Gabbert, the legendary Bay Area broadcaster whose holdings at the time included an AM station and a television station each bearing the call letters KOFY. Olympic president Ivan Braiker said his company had lost about $2 million since buying KKCY two years earlier. The station was known as “The City” and had developed a loyal following for its eclectic music mix.
It wasn’t long before opposition cropped up. A group calling itself “The Coalition To Save ‘The City'” filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission seeking to block the sale to Gabbert. It got ugly; one of the group’s leaders called Gabbert a “threatening manic-depressive knucklehead” while Gabbert was quoted as saying “these people…don’t know what they’re doing.”
The Coalition’s central arguments were that Gabbert’s plans to do away with the KKCY format would cause economic harm to local artists, clubs and record labels. It was essentially a demand that the FCC protect a given radio format, which went nowhere. The other claim was that Gabbert’s potential ownership of three stations in the market would violate existing cross-ownership limitations.
Gabbert had an out: the cross-ownership ban made an exception for owners who could prove that they needed multiple properties to offset losses at other stations. Gabbert claimed his TV station, on Channel 20, was a money-loser. The Coalition accused him of creative accounting. For a time, it looked as though the Coalition had pulled it off: in February 1988, the FCC rejected the deal on the basis of the one-to-a-market ownership rule.
The matter was still unsettled on January 4, 1988 when Olympic Broadcasting killed “The City” on its own. Out went the eclectic music mix (and most of the people who played it) and in came a middle-of-the-road format, along with new call letters: KHIT-FM.
At that point, opponents of the sale to Gabbert turned to a new tactic. They were aware that Gabbert’s deal with Olympic had a “drop-dead” date in April 1988. If the deal hadn’t gotten FCC approval by then, Gabbert risked losing $1 million being held in escrow.
A few weeks before that deadline, Gabbert secured FCC approval for the transfer. To do so, he’d agreed to settle a number of local objections–including making a pledge to return the station to a free-form format for at least three years. He placated some fans of The City by hiring veteran FM programmer Thom O’Hair to run the show.
In mid-May 1988, KOFY-FM hit the airwaves with a stable of disc jockeys familiar to Bay Area listeners. The roster included Norman Davis, Dan Carlisle, Nancy Walton, Billy Kiernan, and Bonnie Simmons, who would also serve as music director. It walsall wrapped under the marketing slogan “The Spirit of San Francisco”.
The good feelings lasted only a few weeks. In late June, Gabbert fired O’Hair, indicating that the two had very different views about what “eclectic programming” meant. Meetings began involving Gabbert and The Coalition To Save ‘The City’, with both sides telling the media that the goal was to find a mutually-acceptable program director.
The acrimony continued for months. A number of disc jockeys resigned. Another well-known Bay Area FM figure, Tony Kilbert, became program director in September, installing what he called an “alternative adult contemporary” format. By year’s end The Coalition To Save ‘The City’ filed a $2.5 million breach of contract lawsuit and Gabbert lost an arbitration hearing regarding dismissed program director O’Hair’s contract. The Coalition’s lawsuit would remain active long past Gabbert’s ownership of KOFY-FM: it was finally settled for $100,000 in the spring of 1991.
In June 1989, Gabbert thought he had a deal to sell KOFY-FM to Ragan Henry, the owner of Oakland’s KDIA, for $15 million. It fell through. Two months later, newspaper reports said Gabbert had another buyer: Viacom Broadcasting, a unit of entertainment giant Viacom International. The reported sale price for KOFY-FM and KOFY-AM: $19.5 million.
While that deal was pending, former KNBR host C.J. Bronson joined the KOFY-FM air staff.
Viacom would also buy Santa Cruz station KLRS, which broadcast at 99.1 FM, and change the San Francisco call letters from KOFY-FM to KDBK. On July 30, 1990, the twin stations launched as “Double 99”, airing a format called “Rock Adult Contemporary”.
