A construction permit was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in 1960 to insurance agent William Greene for a new FM station, to be licensed to Los Altos and broadcasting at 97.7 mHz. Greene quickly turned over control to the Foothill Broadcasting Corporation, which would put the station on the air in the fall of 1960. Greene served as the station’s general manager and held a controlling interest.
Santa Clara County and the Peninsula were booming as what would come to be known as the Silicon Valley was taking shape. KPGM ownership told potential advertisers that the market offered one of the highest average incomes in the nation.
KPGM would soon join eleven other Bay Area FM stations in an “FM Month” campaign, hoping to convince listeners and advertisers that radio’s FM band was a viable place to do business.
KPGM billed itself as the “Good Music Station” for the Peninsula, following a trend among other FM broadcasters of the day to focus on easy-listening sounds while leaning into the perceived better audio quality of the FM signal.
The station mixed in such spoken-word content as The Foothill Theater of the Air and comedy albums by the likes of Bob Newhart.
In 1962, KPGM made news in a “loudspeaker battle”. The station had mounted speakers outside its studio on State Street in downtown Los Altos, initially to broadcast Christmas carols to the shopping district. When the station kept filling the streetscape with the sounds of its regular broadcasts after the holidays, a neighboring real estate agent decided to crank up her own speakers (it’s not recorded what she played), and the whole matter wound up before the Los Altos City Council. KPGM general manager William Greene threatened to sue the city if he felt a potential loudspeaker ordinance was too restrictive.
The 1963 installation of a more powerful transmitter and a taller tower on Black Mountain boosted the station’s coverage area.
The death of station founder William Greene in late 1966 led to a change in ownership. Greene left no will. KPGM was among the assets sold through the Santa Clara County public administrator’s office. A few months after Greene’s death, control of Foothill Broadcasting passed to James Christensen and Lawrence Gahagan, both of whom had been minority shareholders before Greene’s death. They were listed as co-general managers of KPGM. Late in 1967, the name of the ownership entity was changed from Foothill Broadcasting Corporation to Peninsula Broadcasting Corporation.
In December 1969, the Federal Communications Commission approved the station’s request to change call letters, swapping to KPEN–the call letters made famous by pioneering FM impresarios Jim Gabbert and Gary Gielow before their station became K-101.
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