KEXC
KEXC is a non-commercial radio station serving the San Francisco Bay Area, licensed to Alameda, California, United States. It is owned by the non-profit entity Friends of KEXP, an affiliate of the University of Washington, and broadcasts an AAA format specializing in indie music programmed by its disc jockeys as "KEXP Bay Area", a near-total simulcast of Seattle's KEXP-FM. The station's transmitter is located on Sutro Tower.
The station began broadcasting as KJAZ on August 1, 1959. It was founded by Pat Henry as an all-jazz station and broadcast from studios first in Berkeley and later in Alameda. The small, independent outlet was the only all-jazz station in the Bay Area. A challenge to its broadcast license, begun in 1974, led to a designation for hearing in 1978. To avoid the hearing, Henry attempted a distress sale to the San Francisco–based Mabuhay Corporation; the deal fell through, and it was later revealed that Mabuhay was a front for pro-Ferdinand Marcos interests in the United States. In 1981, the station was sold to Oakland mayor Lionel Wilson and Alameda real estate developer Ron Cowan, who became sole owner in 1983. The station briefly prospered and became profitable in the late 1980s, but as non-commercial competition in the form of KCSM grew in popularity and the economy worsened, Cowan became unable to continue investing in the station.
Despite an effort by listeners that raised more than $1 million in pursuit of keeping KJAZ a jazz station, Cowan sold it to Z-Spanish Radio Network. After 35 years of jazz, the station switched to Z-Spanish's satellite-programmed "La Z" Spanish-language hit radio format and was renamed to KZSF on August 1, 1994. This continued for four years until Z-Spanish sold the station to Jacor, which renamed the station KXJO and used both it and KFJO in Walnut Creek to simulcast San Jose rock station KSJO as the "92-Rock Network". Radio industry consolidation led to two sales of the station in 2000 and the purchase of KXJO by Spanish Broadcasting System. In 2002 SBS relaunched the station as dance music–focused KPTI "92.7 The Party", its only English-language radio station in the continental U.S. The station was quickly divested in 2004 to Three Point Media, which used a briefly popular and controversial hip-hop format known as KBTB "Power 92.7" to boost ratings and revenue before selling the station to Flying Bear Media. Under Flying Bear, the station became KNGY "Energy 92.7", a dance music station catering to the Bay Area's gay community.
After Flying Bear Media was faced with financial difficulties, its lender, Wells Fargo, sold the station to Ed Stolz in 2009. The Energy format was discontinued and replaced by mainstream contemporary hits as KREV, branded "92.7 Rev FM". A copyright royalty lawsuit that Stolz lost in 2018 spiraled into court-appointed receivership in 2020; for nine months, the receiver contracted with Christian broadcaster VCY America to provide programming for KREV and other Stolz-owned stations and arranged a sale to VCY America. This was scrapped in early 2022 after a bankruptcy court ordered possession and control of the station returned to Stolz; the station was off the air for much of 2022 before returning with dance and, later, hip-hop music. Ultimately, Stolz was unable to formulate a reorganization plan, and a bankruptcy auction of his stations was set. Friends of KEXP, the owner of Seattle station KEXP-FM, won the auction for KREV and launched a near-complete simulcast of its programming in the Bay Area as KEXC on March 19, 2024.
KJAZ: Jazz music
Pat Henry ownership
The Federal Communications Commission granted a construction permit to Patrick Henry and Dave Larsen on December 10, 1958, for a new radio station to be built on 92.7 MHz in Alameda. Henry was a jazz DJ on Oakland radio station KROW and a recognized leader in the Bay Area jazz community. Larsen, a Minnesota native, was the program manager of KNOB, a jazz radio station in Los Angeles.Broadcasting from studios and a transmitter site on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley as well as secondary studios in Alameda's South Shore Shopping Center, KJAZ debuted on August 1, 1959. The first song played was a Miles Davis recording of an arrangement by Gil Evans. The station initially broadcast for 15 hours a day, from 9 a.m. to midnight. Announcers heard on the station at launch included S. I. Hayakawa, a semanticist and jazz fan. Larsen sold his interest in KJAZ to Henry in 1960 and joined the staff of San Francisco station KBAY-FM, helping to found a second San Francisco-area jazz outlet, the short-lived KHIP-FM, later that year. The station focused on newer jazz recordings, in part because Henry felt the quality of older recordings was ill-suited for the "high-fidelity" FM band.
In November 1962, KJAZ moved its transmitter to the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, its antenna on top of the tallest apartment building on the hill. The new facility increased the station's coverage in most areas, though it was lost in some fringe areas such as Monterey. The station was turning a profit by 1965, when it relocated its studios to Webster Street in Alameda and began stereo broadcasting. In the Alameda studios, the station would sometimes have to reduce its volume in order to not disturb patients of a nearby dentist's office. By 1972, other stations offered specialty jazz programming, but KJAZ was the Bay Area's only full-time jazz outlet. With its own telephone lines connecting its Alameda studios to San Francisco, it aired live such events as the last performance of the Modern Jazz Quartet and concerts featuring such names as Stanley Turrentine, Morgana King, Horace Silver, and Milt Jackson. As the years progressed, Henry became more vocal about expressing his music taste through the station. He was known to call from his home when the station played a song he felt did not belong.
License challenge
In 1974, the Committee for Open Media —a group created by a philosophy professor at San Jose State University—filed petitions against the broadcast license renewals of KJAZ and seven other California broadcast stations. While COM believed that KJAZ was not adequately serving community needs, some jazz fans believed that the station's devotion to a music form otherwise scarcely heard on the Bay Area dial countered its lack of public affairs content. In the Berkeley Daily Gazette, for instance, Gordon Laddue highlighted the station's unique programming and noted its full-day tribute to Duke Ellington upon his death earlier that year. At the same time that the COM petition was pending, Henry was trying to counter an increasing reputation by the station for playing "conservative" jazz; he noted that most of the recordings KJAZ aired were from 1968 or later and ascribed the reputation to its extensive specialty programming.The FCC awarded KJAZ a renewal of its license in 1976, but COM petitioned for FCC reconsideration and a reversal in federal appeals court. The FCC then asked for the case to be remanded to it in order to resolve factual conflicts that it believed required a hearing. COM, seeking to foreclose on that possibility, proposed the transfer of KJAZ to a non-profit corporation that would be Black-controlled; this became a moot point when the proceeding was remanded by the court, setting in motion the designation of a hearing. Believing that Henry wanted to sell after the matter was settled, a group known as the San Francisco Bay Area Jazz Foundation formed; notable members included Clint Eastwood and Orrin Keepnews. In early 1978, the FCC held off acting on a staff recommendation that the license be designated for hearing after receiving reports that COM had offered $1 million to buy the station, which would have been seen as an abuse of commission processes; when it vacated its earlier renewal in October 1978, this was designated as an issue in the hearing process. The KJAZ hearing was particularly unusual because of the station's reputation and the fact that, by 1978, Henry was seen to have improved the station and particularly its public affairs programming in response to criticism; George Ross of the Oakland Tribune accused the stakeholders of "loving KJAZ and all that jazz... loving it perhaps to death".
File:Dexter Gordon & Ernie Andrews.jpg|right|thumb|alt=Refer to caption|Jazz musicians Ernie Andrews and Dexter Gordon in the KJAZ studio in 1980
In early 1979, Henry reached a deal to sell KJAZ in a distress sale to the Mabuhay Corporation for $1.675 million—substantially below market value, as required under the distress sale provisions, which provided for transactions to minority-controlled groups to end hearing matters before the FCC. Mabuhay's controlling owner was San Francisco doctor Leonilo Malabed, a Filipino American who also had bank and newspaper interests; the transaction would have made KJAZ the first Filipino American–owned station in the continental U.S. Mabuhay pledged to keep the jazz format. While the Mabuhay deal was pending, workers who had previously attempted to unionize KJAZ went on strike in August after Henry fired two employees, with the workers citing "poverty-level wages and stone-age benefits". Henry and family members began operating the station in lieu of the striking workers. COM also opposed the Mabuhay transfer at below market value, with Malabed claiming he was not the "right minority" in its eyes.
Largely unheralded at the time, Mabuhay and Malabed had extensive ties to Ferdinand Marcos, a dictator who ruled the Philippines. COM objected to the sale, relying on reporting by Alex Esclamado, an opponent of Marcos and the publisher of the anti-Marcos newspaper The Philippine News. Reporting by Esclamado indicated that Mabuhay was a front group for pro-Marcos interests. He cited Mabuhay's connections to the Philippine Bank of California, which had been funded by the Marcos government, as well as Malabed's use of consulate license plates and publication of a pro-Marcos newspaper. The deal fell apart in October 1979, according to Malabed, because it had been advised that the sellers possibly lacked clear title to the business; Henry's attorney, Roger Metzler, noted that the deal had hit a deadline without a final FCC ruling. When Marcos was deposed in February 1986, he fled to the United States, where officials seized documents that implicated the use of Mabuhay as a funnel for donations to pro-Marcos politicians in the U.S. Mabuhay also provided funding for attempts coordinated by the Philippine government to crush dissident, including the 1981 murders of Seattle cannery workers Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, who were leading an anti-Marcos effort with their union.