This is not the KOIT that would become a Bay Area ratings powerhouse and be named a “Legendary Station” by the Bay Area Radio Museum of Hall of Fame. You can learn more about that KOIT here.
But this KOIT was actually heard first. It was known as KYA-FM until 1965, when owner Churchill Broadcasting changed the call letters. For the next couple of years, the station simulcasted what was heard on co-owned KYA, but that came to end with new Federal Communications Commission regulations in 1967. The new non-duplication rule limited station owners who held both AM and FM licenses in a market to simulcasting 50% of one station’s content on the other.
The rule led new owner Avco Broadcasting to create separate programming on KOIT, including a show called Tower of Hits. By 1968, automation had hit the radio industry and KOIT was carrying rock music via an automated format even as free-form competitors such as KMPX and later KSAN were breaking ground with rock formats that definitely were not automated.
In 1972, Avco announced it was changing the station’s call letters back to KYA-FM. leaving the KOIT call sign available for Bonneville International to affix to its newly-acquired property in 1983, the station previously known as KRON-FM.
