February 29 Radio History

In 1936...Fanny Brice brought her little girl character “Baby Snooks” to radio on “The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air” on CBS Radio. It was a role that would endear her to radio audiences for the next 15 years. Miss Brice was 44 at the time, and was known as America’s “Funny Girl” long before Barbra Streisand brought her even greater fame and notoriety nearly 30 years later.


In 1948...KPUG 1170 AM in Bellingham, WA, signed on the air from its original studios on Sunset Drive.


In 1966...This month marks the 50th anniversary of KFRC 610 AM flipping from MOR to Top 40.

KFRC - Circa mid '60s

In 1949, RKO-General acquired KFRC. Like most radio stations during the 1950s, KFRC lost ratings and share to television. In February 1966, KFRC flipped to a Top 40 rock and roll music format, and quickly became the dominant station in the region with that format through the 1970s, featuring the tight, carefully programmed sound developed by RKO General's national program director, Bill Drake, formerly of cross-town rival KYA, and program directors Tom Rounds and, later, Les Turpin.

It entered its second "golden era," which coincided with San Francisco’s Summer of Love, and featured legendary disc jockeys Mike Phillips, Ed Mitchell (Who later changed his name to Ed Hepp) , Bobby Dale, Jay Stevens, Sebastian Stone, K.O. Bayley (real name Bob Elliott), Dave Diamond, Charlie Van Dyke, Howard Clark, Dale Dorman, Mark Elliott, Frank Terry, Joe Conrad, Jim Carson, J.J. Johnson, and Bob Foster.



During the Drake era, KFRC was responsible for two memorable concerts.

The station presented several prominent acts at the “The Beach Boys Summer Spectacular” at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in June 1966. On June 10 and 11, 1967, KFRC organized and hosted the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival at the summit of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Occurring one week before the more famous Monterey Pop Festival, the well-attended event is regarded as the first rock festival in history.  For several years, KFRC had extended local newscasts on its AM station, under the leadership of news director Bob Safford; however, management decided to curtail news coverage, so Safford and other news staff moved to other news broadcast departments in San Francisco, including KCBS Radio and KGO-TV.





In 2012…Actor (The Monkees, Head, The Brady Bunch Movie)/ singer (Daydream Believer, A Little Bit Me A Little Bit You, Valleri) Davy Jones of the Monkees died after a heart attack at 66.