When owner Richard Eaton’s United Broadcasting Company shifted from a “Request Radio” popular-music format to R&B/soul music and changed the call letters to KSOL on September 11, 1972, it set the stage for another Bay Area soul showdown. A previous KSOL, on the AM band, had tossed in the towel after a half-dozen years butting heads with Oakland’s KDIA.
But that KSOL had been saddled with a wimpy signal and this KSOL came to the battlefield with better coverage and the higher fidelity audio of FM. San Mateo Times columnist Bob Foster reported, “It will be the first [Bay Area] FM station to devote itself exclusively to soul. A spokesman at the station said that the D.J.’s would be black and that the programming would be authentic soul type music.”
Evidence that the station was developing the sort of “street cred” that is rocket fuel for popular-music stations might be found in a 1977 San Francisco Chronicle “Question Man” column. When asked, “What job would you like to have?”, one respondent said, “I want to be a disc jockey for a…station like KSOL. That’s the station the brothers and sisters listen to.” The potential listener base had grown too, because KSOL’s 1975 transmitter move to San Bruno Mountain improved its coverage area.
The radio ratings were affirming this: KSOL had made a name for itself. By 1979, Arbitron surveys showed KSOL ahead of rival KDIA in weekly “cume” (the total number of individual listeners), ranking sixth in the nation among stations labeled “Black/Pop Rhythms”.
A bizarre October 1979 episode perhaps served as further evidence that KSOL had become a cultural force. A hostage-taking gunman, claiming to be with a terrorist organization, called in to KSOL to demand $4 million be distributed to needy children. Though he fired numerous shots from a Market Street high-rise, the incident ended without serious injury.
A mid-1979 San Francisco Examiner article noted that KSOL had tapped into the disco craze, further boosting its popularity.
Entering the 1980s, KSOL was routinely among the top ten rated Bay Area stations, often in the top five.
Way behind the scenes, there was some drama. United Broadcasting Company owner Richard Eaton died in 1981, leaving behind a $50 million estate that could charitably be called “complicated”. One attorney who tried to help family members untangle a series of restrictions said, “Richard Eaton was apparently the kind of guy that set things up in documents so that his ghost could laugh from the grave while he watched his beneficiaries scramble.”
The station’s license was transferred to the trust department of Suburban Bank in Bethesda, MD, where United Broadcasting was based.
While the lawyers and accountants scrambled, KSOL kept laying down the beat. The Spring 1982 Arbitron ratings showed KSOL in a virtual tie with KCBS for second place in the 12+ audience, and as the market leader in the 12-17 and 18-49 demographics. By then, KDIA had faded down the ratings charts. A major challenge for KSOL emerged in 1984: KMEL caught fire after adopting a CHR (“contemporary hit radio, or Top 40) format.
The ’80s ended with KMEL having eclipsed KSOL as the hottest station among younger listeners. A reported 1989 deal to sell the station fell through, and the license remained under the control of Richard Eaton’s estate. As the ’90s began, a staff shakeup swept out most of the on-air staff. KSOL had slipped to tenth in the ratings race. In 1991, a new three-person morning show debuted. “Engelman, Gunn and The Foxx” featured Ron Engelman, Mark Gunn and Kelly Foxx and moved the station in an edgier direction.
That edge got even edgier in February 1992. KSOL played Tone Loc’s version of the song “Wild Thing” for 24 consecutive hours to unveil its new branding: Wild 107. The KSOL call letters were heard only during legal ID’s. And a new morning team came aboard: Mancow and Double D were imported from Salinas station KDON.
Erich “Mancow” Muller wasted little time in grabbing attention for Wild 107. A long list of stunts included spending a weekend encased in ice, riding a bull–backwards–at the Grand National Rodeo and Stock Show, and enticing couples to enter a first-to-get-pregnant contest.
Wild 107 was on a roll again. Within a year, KSOL was nipping at KMEL’s heels for supremacy among younger listeners.
And then came “The Haircut”. On May 26, 1993 Muller arranged a stunt that involved blocking all five lanes of the Bay Bridge so another member of the morning team, Chuy Gomez, could get a haircut. Muller said it was his way of reacting to an incident in which President Bill Clinton had reportedly slowed air traffic in Los Angeles by having Air Force One held while his stylist worked on the presidential coiffure (it was later determined that there had in fact been no effect on other flights).
To say the stunt flopped would be an understatement. KSOL general manager Scott Fey suspended “Mancow” for a week, the station was hit with a multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuit, and Muller was hit with criminal charges that led to a fine and probation. Four years later–under new ownership and with new call letters–the station settled a lawsuit by paying $1.5 million, partly by covering tolls for morning commuters on the Bay Bridge.
A few weeks after Muller’s stunt, and nearly twelve years after Richard Eaton’s death, KSOL finally had new ownership. A group called the KSOL Limited Partnership paid $13.5 million to the Eaton estate to buy a station that, at the time of the deal, had climbed back into first place in the ratings among Bay Area FM stations. The partnership listed Arthur Velasquez, who owned Mexican food giant Azteca Foods and controlled a Spanish-language station in Chicago, as general partner. Two veterans of Beasley Broadcast Group, Allen Shaw and William Weller held a controlling interest. The three would re-christen their company Crescent Communications, Inc.
In April 1994, Crescent bought two more Bay Area signals, paying Viacom Broadcasting $16 million to acquire KSRY (“Star 99”) and Santa Cruz-licensed KSRI. The company then moved the KSOL call letters to KSRY’s 98.9 frequency, and changed the calls on 107.7 to KYLD, as the station stuck to its “Wild 107” branding and format.
As for the new KSOL, Crescent went with a soul-leaning adult contemporary format. Scott Fey stayed on as general manager, saying “KSOL at its pinnacle was a fabulously successful station, and we’re bring back the old KSOL.”
It didn’t last long. Just about two years later, Crescent Communications cashed in on a consolidation wave sweeping the radio industry as the 1996 Telecommunications Act loosened caps on station ownership. Crescent sold KSOL and its Santa Cruz station KYLZ (the former KSRI) to multi-station owner Tichenor Media System. Family patriarch McHenry Tichenor would die later that year at 98, having played a key role in the spread of Tejano music into multiple radio markets.
On August 16 1996, the “SOL” in KSOL’s call letters acquired a new meaning. The new contemporary Spanish-language music format billed itself as Estereo Sol…Sol de la Bahia (Sun of the Bay).
A year later, Tichenor Media System’s merger with Heftel Broadcasting formed the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, the largest Hispanic radio group in the nation. HBC merged with Univision in a 2003 deal worth $3.5 billion.
As of 2026, KSOL’s Regional Mexican format is marketed as Que Buena and is simulcast on KSQL (99.1 FM) in Santa Cruz, the same station Crescent Communications bought in the 1994 deal that shifted KSOL to 98.9 on the dial.
Note: between January 2003 and September 2004, the KSOL call letters were shifted to 105.7, KEMR/San Jose (now KVVF), before returning to the 98.9 San Mateo-licensed frequency.
