Station: 610 KFRC San Francisco, California, USA
Format: CHR
Featured Air Personalities: Dr. Don Rose (WQXI/WFIL/KFRC, Jayne Dornacker (Traffic) (KFRC/WNBC), Robert McCormick (News)
Contributor: Bob Gilmore
Date of Posting: 09.21.2017
Total Time: 1:18:14
Airchexx Entry: 1,514
By the way, this program came in 2nd to a documentary…
Curator’s Notes:
There are KFRC airchecks, and then there are 1st generation Bob Gilmore KFRC airchecks! The backstory to that is, so often, the airchecks that people hear elsewhere are 3rd or more generation copies down from the original recording. Here, we have an original that became the possession of our contributor, who digitized this in three parts. Listen to the audio quality. This is fantastic! The only way this could sound better.. well, it couldn’t. This was very obviously recorded from a widebanded AM receiver (and don’t forget that in 1982, AM had a bandwidth of 13 khz as opposed to today, where AM stations are limited to just 9 khz wide. This greatly affects how AM stations sound compared to decades ago when stations sounded as they do here).
Dr. Donald D. Rose is in great form this day. He’s very happy and upbeat. The 49ers just secured their first Super Bowl appearance, and it’s their first championship in 50 years.
This aircheck spends an enormous time with the morning show elements. Aside from Rose’s one liners, there are three complete newscasts from Robert McCormick and plenty of traffic reports from Jayne Dornacker. Truly, this recording tells you everything you might want to know about San Francisco and the world in the last week of January, 1979. And you get to hear some of what KFRC was playing for music, which in true Top 40 form, is a bit of Funk, Rock, Soul, old Motown and Soft Rock. At this point in its evolution, KFRC was every bit as good (in fact, better) a CHR station as any of the area FM stations and this recording proves it. Most definitely worth the hour and eighteen minutes of your time.
Full commercial breaks left in for historical context.
Jayne Dornacker died October 1986 in a WNBC Traffic Helicopter Crash.
Yes, sadly. There are recordings floating around. The crash happened while she was on the air with an open mic. Joey Reynolds was the jock, who didn’t know exactly what to make of it at first. Saddest recording outside of 9/11 I ever remember hearing