KIQI Radio 1010
Transmitter Building
Oakland, California
Circa 1976
KIQI (1010 kHz.) was born in 1957 as KSAY, originally owned by Grant Wrathall, broadcasting a music and news format targeted toward the Bay Area’s black population. Early in 1974, the station was sold to James Gabbert and Gary Gielow (doing business as San Francisco Wireless Talking Machine, Inc.), who turned it into KIQI as the sister station to their KIOI, giving them a pair of stations known as “K-101” — doubly handy because of their respective dial positions: 1010 kHz. for the AM side, and 101.3 MHz. for the FM.
This building, adjacent to the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza, was constructed in the mid-1950s to house the station’s 10,000-watt transmitter. Standing nearby are three antenna towers that beam the station’s directional signal to its local audience. (Also nearby on the same marshy spit of land are the transmitters of KQKE/960 — formerly KROW and KABL — and KMKY/1310, which was formerly KDIA.
SOURCE: Photograph by David Ferrell Jackson from the Bay Area Radio Digest Collection.
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