KRPM was the personal project of Edward Meece, a World War II conscientious objector who’d played a significant role in the launch of Berkeley’s KPFA and served as the station’s chief engineer for several years.
By the mid-1950s, Meece and his family had moved to San Jose, where he worked for KSJO before finding work in the growing defense industry. While working at Sylvania and then Lockheed, Meece set up a business called The Audio House and secured a license for a new FM station in San Jose. KRPM went on the air in 1959 with its studios at downtown San Jose’s Hotel Sainte Claire. The transmitter and antenna were on the hotel’s roof.
Meece had an affinity for classical music and that’s the bulk of what KRPM carried. For a time, he operated a classical record store out of the station’s studio.
An effort to gain approval for a better transmitter location took years. Trade journal reports of Federal Communications Commission actions show a lengthy path toward the eventual creation of a new studio and transmitter site off Blackberry Hill Road, in the hills above Lexington Reservoir. That location, at 1800 feet above sea level, would give KRPM a much wider coverage area. The same location would host the transmitter of the new Los Gatos station, KLGS (later KTAO).
Meece operated KRPM while holding down full-time work. His son Eric would later remember the loss of income led Meece to conclude that the radio station alone couldn’t support his family. The sale of the station in 1970 to Contemporary Communications Corporation (Ron Cutler and Mel Gollub) for $300,000 included an arrangement with the new owners under which Meece would continue to serve as a consulting engineer for a number of years.
In August 1970, Contemporary Communications filed for permission to change the call letters to KOME. They were soon off and running with the album rock format that would turn KOME into a South Bay legend.
