KOIT 96.5 FM San Francisco, CA

KOIT’s lengthy run among the Bay Area’s top-rated radio stations began many decades after the station’s birth. The station that would become KOIT-FM was launched in the years after World War II, when the owners of the San Francisco Chronicle decided to add another broadcast property to their portfolio (they were already operating KRON-TV).

On July 1, 1947, KRON-FM went on the air, broadcasting on the 96.5 MHz frequency. The station was a part-time operation, confined to the afternoon and evening hours. FM radio was still in its infancy; in May of 1947, only four Bay Area stations were heard on the FM band.

KRON-FM was firmly ensconced at Fifth and Mission Streets in San Francisco. Studios were on the second floor of the Chronicle building; the original transmitter and antenna were on the roof.

KRON-FM carried what was known in the era as “fine music” or “good music”: mostly classical and definitely not jazz, country, or the emerging sound of rock and roll.

The station kept to a part-time schedule–on weekdays only–until Chronicle management announced the station was going off the air on December 31, 1954.

Three years later, a change of heart at Fifth and Mission put KRON-FM back in business. The Federal Communications Commission granted a construction permit for a “new” station–on the same frequency and with the same call letters–in 1957. Intermittent test broadcasts began in late 1958 and General Manager Harold See announced in January 1959 that the station would return to regular broadcasts on February 16, 1959.

The format included  classical and semi-classical music, Broadway musicals, and complete operas, interspersed with frequent newscasts. The broadcast schedule was limited to 42 hours a week: from 5 PM to midnight every day but Sunday. According to news reports at the time, the sole program host was Burt Case.

KRON-FM may have been unique: a commercially-licensed station that carried no commercials! Chronicle management operated the station as a public service. 

That era ended in the summer of 1976, when the station was sold to Bay Area Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of Utah’s Bonneville International Corporation. The call letters were changed to KOIT and the format was described as “Foreground Beautiful Music”, featuring artists such as Tony Bennett, Percy Faith, Ferrante and Teicher, and Mantovani. Unsurprisingly given its new ownership (Bonneville International is wholly-owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was heard regularly.

Through the remainder of the ’70s and into the ’80s, KOIT continued to play what some called “elevator music”: light, mostly instrumental music. 

In 1983, Bonneville purchased KYA (1260 AM) from King Broadcasting, changing its call letters to KOIT. This meant a legal change of call letters for the FM station to KOIT-FM.

In 1985, KOIT-FM switched away from the instrumentals and started programming what it called “Light Rock”, composed of songs from the ’50s through the ’80s. The station has never strayed far from that formula, presenting an Adult Contemporary format that by 2025 was being marketed as “Today’s Hits & Yesterday’s Favorites”.

2003 was the year KOIT-FM declared itself “The Bay Area’s official Christmas music station”, ditching its regular music mix a week before Thanksgiving Day for a steady diet of Christmas songs. The stunt became an annual fixture, spiking the station’s ratings during the holiday season. 

KOIT-FM would wind up in the hands of Entercom Communications as part of a three-market swap between Bonneville and Entercom. Entercom started to operate KOIT-FM in 2007 and assumed ownership in 2008.

Ten years later, KOIT-FM bounced back to Bonneville’s ownership when Entercom merged with CBS Radio. That move necessitated a divestiture of properties in some markets to meet FCC ownership limits. Bonneville became the licensee of KOIT-FM again in September 2018.