KFRC (610 AM)

Ruth Anderson, San Francisco's only female radio news reporter, at work in the KFRC studio in February 1943
This article is about KFRC, the callsign used on 610 AM in San Francisco from 1924 until 2005. For the station currently broadcasting on that frequency, see KEAR (AM).

KFRC (610 AM) was a radio station in San Francisco, California, United States, which made its first broadcast on Wednesday, September 24, 1924, from studios in the Hotel Whitcomb, at 1231 Market Street.[1] KFRC originally broadcast with 50 watts on the 270 meter wavelength (equal to about 1110 kHz), then moved to 660 kHz in April 1927. As part of nationwide frequency reallocations on November 11, 1928, KFRC was moved to 610 kHz, where the call letters remained until 2005.

In addition, KFRC had a co-owned FM sister station, known as KFRC-FM, which operated on 106.1 MHz in the 1970s, and later began simulcasting on 99.7 MHz in 1991, and its format continued on 99.7 FM for a time even after the AM station was sold. The KFRC call sign was moved to KFRC-FM 106.9 on May 17, 2007. The famous callsign letters were sequentially issued, as was common when KFRC signed on the air in 1924. They did not stand for "Francisco" or "Frisco", nor did they stand for "Known For Radio Clearness", though this was the slogan used when the station first signed on with 50 watts of power. Broadcasts had been heard over a much larger area than had been anticipated. Other slogans KFRC used in its early days were "Keep Forever Radiating Cheer", "Keep Freely Radiating Cheer", and "Far Reaching Channel".

  1. ^ Hotel Whitcomb, 1906 temporary City Hall - sfmuseum.org