KROW Radio, Oakland
Reception Verification Letter
December 23, 1937
Oakland’s KROW, which began its life as KFWM in 1925, later became KABL (1959) and KQKE (“The Quake,” 2004). This letter, signed on behalf of KROW president and general manager H.P. Drey by his secretary, confirms that listener Richard Wright successfully tuned in the station more than 1,800 miles away in Chicago. (Mr. Drey was also a part-owner of KROW’s licensee, the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, and had been a manager at Oakland’s KTAB, which later became San Francisco’s KSFO; KROW would be co-owned with KSFO from 1939 until 1944.)
KROW had been located on the second floor of downtown Oakland’s 19th & Broadway Radio Center Building for about a year at the time this “QSL” letter was issued. It would remain there through 1964, five years after the station became the property of the McLendon Pacific Corporation and was rebuilt into KABL.
Verification letters such as the one shown here were highly prized by distance listeners, known as “DXers,” in radio’s early days.
ORIGINAL SIZE: 8.5 inches x 11 inches.
SOURCE: Richard Wright Collection, Bay Area Radio Museum.
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