KDFC San Francisco

Nearly 25 years ago I began a career in Broadcast Advertising sales at a company that represented Classical Radio Stations exclusively. We had a fine roster of major market stations, many that had been in the format since the dawn of FM radio. Shortly after I joined the company we added a new client station, KDFC San Francisco. The station owner was Ed Davis. After returning home from serving in World War II, Ed boarded a train a train and arrived in San Francisco. In 1948 he obtained the license for 102.1 FM and launched KDFC as San Francisco's Radio Concert Hall. By the time I met Ed in 1984 He was a wealthy man, but not from selling radio ads. He had made much more in Real Estate, including acreage atop the Mountain in Sausalito across the bay from San Francisco where he built a tower for his station and was later able to rent tower space to numerous other broadcasters. For those of you who are not broadcast engineers, FM radio relies on height to get the optimum coverage and Ed bought the highest ground before most people even owned an FM receiver. He saw the future before others. He was in the right place at the right time and more importantly knew he was in the right place at the right time. KDFC was the first station to broadcast in stereo. The first to have unattended overnight automation and in many more cases Ed was quick to innovate. Ed would have loved Flycast. To be able to listen to his great station as I am now, on an iPhone on a train between Philadelphia and Baltinore would brought him great joy. So Ed , thanks for your vision and passion for great music and quality broadcasting. By the way, 60 years later, that Mozart guy is still a star and I am thrilled to have KDFC on the Flycast.fm network.

Comments

[Bill Lueth]

Peter, thanks for the nice comments, and the bit of KDFC history.