KFAX

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Now a 50,000 watt clear channel AM station in San Francisco, KFAX began life in the early 1930s as a tiny 50 watt station, KJBS, run entirely on Willard Storage automobile batteries, as an advertising gimmick for Julius Brunton & Sons Automotive, the local outlet for Willard Batteries. Ironically, S.E. Willard of the Cleveland-based Willard Storage Batteries Company founded WTAM in Cleveland, which KFAX shares on the 1100 kHz clear channel frequency.

Its first address was 1080 Bush Street, a building which remains an auto facility today. As KJBS, it was the first all-night radio station in the Bay Area, broadcasting music along with police calls in the days before police departments could afford their own radio transmitters.

In the 1940s in order to increase their power, KJBS was located to a clear channel, sharing time with a station in Cleveland. This required that KJBS go off the air at local sunset, but allowed it to come back on the air when Cleveland signed off at 1:00 a.m. in the East, 10:00 p.m. local time. By this time, KJBS had moved to 1470 Pine Street, a building incorporating a stand-alone vertical transmitting tower in front of the front entrance to the building.

In 1960, KJBS was sold to an investment group, its callsign changed to KFAX and its daytime power was increased to 50,000 watts. This required the station to operate one of the most unique schedules in the history of broadcasting. KFAX operated from a directional set of 4 towers in the suburban town of Hayward from 6:00 a.m until local sunset, then from the Pine Street 1,000 watt transmitter from 10:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. (when Cleveland's KYW - now WTAM - would come back on the air, at 6:00 a.m. Eastern time). During the summer, this meant that KFAX was off the air for only 1½ hours (8:30 sunset until 10:00 p.m.).

The KJBS callsign had been changed to KFAX ("facts") in 1960s when it changed formats from music, news, and sports, to become the nation's first all-news radio station. Unfortunately, this experiment did not work, and soon KFAX changed to a brokered religious/patriotic program format, where program producers bought 15-minute and half-hour blocks of time.

Later, KFAX was sold to Salem Communications, an operator of both religious and secular talk stations. KFAX runs programs such as Hank Hanegraaff and Jay Sekulow. KFAX is now known as "The Spirit of The Bay."