KRON-FM hit the FM airwaves in the years after World War 2, 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.
