Soon after Richard Eaton’s United Broadcasting Company added the San Mateo-licensed property to its portfolio and re-christened it KVEZ, the station jettisoned its previous “Music Unlimited” format and began carrying foreign-language programming.
Eaton had made a name for himself in the radio industry by targeting ethnic audiences. His WOOK in Washington, D.C. was acknowledged as the first station to target Black listeners, beginning in 1947. He would also stations aimed at the Hispanic community in Miami and the Japanese community in Hawaii.
Program listings for KVEZ in the first years of Eaton’s ownership show broadcasts in Spanish and Portuguese. The station’s studios were moved to 600 South Amphlett Boulevard in San Mateo, just a few yards from the Bayshore Freeway.
The station entered the 1970s listed as a “Foreign Language” broadcaster in newspaper listings and was notable as one of the very few commercial FM stations in the Bay Area still broadcasting a monaural signal. Virtually every other FM had gone stereo.
By 1971, United Broadcasting was shifting KVEZ away from foreign-language programming. Newspaper advertisements show the station calling itself “Request Radio” and sponsoring events like a “Midnite Horror-Rama” at the Palo Alto Drive-In Theater.
Future KYA disc jockey Gary Mora was among those heard on KVEZ during this era, which included a quirky ad campaign proclaiming the station as broadcasting “87% Music”.
Broadcasting magazine noted in May 1972 that the station had shifted from Top 40 to “soft rock”.
That all changed on September 11, 1972. KVEZ became KSOL (recycling a set of call letters previously used by an AM station) and set out to do battle for “Soul Supremacy” against the same station that had vanquished the earlier KSOL: Oakland’s powerhouse KDIA.
