The owners of Santa Rosa’s KVRE applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a new FM license in the early 1970s. The construction permit for KVRE-FM at 99.3 MHz was granted in November 1972 but the station didn’t begin broadcasting until late 1974.
KVRE-FM carried a simulcast of KVRE’s country programming. Less than a year after KVRE-FM’s launch, that was being modified to a “progressive country” sound that leaned into artists like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Asleep at the Wheel, and Commander Cody. The change soon drew the attention of Billboard magazine, which published a lengthy feature.
Shanna Santomiere, who had been holding down the 8 PM – 1 AM shift on-air since 1975, was named music director in mid-1976 and is credited with helping define the KVRE version of “progressive country”.
The station shifted to 101.7 FM in 1976. Why? It seemed FCC allocation tables for the Redwood Empire hadn’t left much room for neighboring Napa County. When an application was filed to build what would become KVYN in St. Helena, some back-and-forth discussions led to KVRE-FM moving to 101.7 while KVYN was installed at 99.3.
At the end of 1978, there was a change in ownership. KVRE’s Bill Colclough and Ed LaFrance, with their wives, had owned KVRE since 1965 before adding the FM station in the ’70s. The buyer was the creatively named Visionary Radio Euphonics, controlled by former Century Broadcasting executive John Detz Jr. Cindy Paulos, who would become morning host and program director, held an interest in the company.
Within months of the sale, Detz announced that the simulcasting wound end. KVRE-FM would continue with the progressive country approach while sister station KVRE would return to what Detz called “a more traditional” approach to country music.
KVRE-FM soon debuted a locally-produced show, North Coast Music, on which host Jack Ellis interviewed recording artists and played their music. A popular series of concerts for which listeners paid $1.01 for tickets drew top talent to Sonoma County. An album featuring songs from local artists, Sonoma Soundtrack, was produced and issued by the station.
Paulos departed the station in 1986, replaced briefly as morning host by Steve Jaxon (Scott Murray would later take over the slot). 1986 also saw Richard Gossett join the station to handle a Saturday night show focusing on new and rarely-heard music, mostly from Bay Area acts.
KVRE’s reputation as a last bastion of (relatively) freeform rock programming helped it maintain a loyal audience and attract former San Francisco talent like Gossett and Nancy Walton, formerly of KRQR. Bob Sala and Bill Bowker, who’d been recruited from KROQ in Los Angeles when Detz took over the station, were firmly ensconced in what would become lengthy Sonoma County radio careers.
And then it all ended. In early 1988, Detz sold KVRE and co-owned KWFN (formerly KQTE and before that, the AM version of KVRE) for more than $5 million. The buyer was an entity called Keffco, Inc., controlled by former radio consultant Jim Kefford, who had financial backing from the Australian firm Apulia PTY Ltd.
Within months, Kefford blew up the freeform programming, installing a more-focused rock format. The call letters were changed to KXFX and the station began calling itself K-FOX. Kefford explained the change to The Press Democrat: “The mainstay on FM is consistency. (With the old KVRE), each disc jockey just came in and picked their own records. We weren’t retaining any listeners except loyalists.”
It was the end of an era, with reaction among those loyalists perhaps encapsulated by a letter written to Guerneville’s The Paper. “KVRE is gone,” the letter began, “and it feels like someone drove a stake through ‘the heart and soul of Sonoma County’.”
