The 95.7 frequency in San Francisco saw its fair share of formats during its decade under Bonneville ownership. There was CHR “Z95.7”, Classic Rock “The Drive”, Country “The Bear”, and Variety Hits “95.7 Max-FM”. None of the formats ever saw great success, leaving the station as a perennial underperformer to sister AC KOIT and Classical KDFC.
In early 2007, Bonneville agreed to swap its San Francisco cluster to Entercom in exchange for stations in Cincinnati and Seattle. With Entercom taking over, on February 28th at 12:30pm 95.7 Max-FM came out of a stopset into a countdown to 7:50 the next morning.
“The Wolf” country brand has exploded across the country, however Entercom has seen the most success with the brand with recent launches in Seattle, Cincinnati (prior to swap to Bonneville), Greensboro, and Kansas City. Country, which once was very successful in the Bay Area on 910 KNEW and 94.9 KSAN, had failed in recent years at 93.3 KYCY and 95.7 during its “Bear” incarnation. To combat this, Entercom launched The Wolf with a plan to air commercial free for about a month (10,000 songs) and air over 1000 TV commercials in a 10 day span.
Aircheck recorded off webcast. If any one has an off-air version please contact us.
Chri Longstreet
Variety Hits was the best radio station in a long time…. 60’s, 70’s, 80’s – whatever you wanted. It was like someone played albums with the greatest hits and played them along with all the obscure gems you never could remember. This station will be sorely missed….