Tom Donahue conceived the idea the Jive 95 while
he was sitting around one night in the
late sixties with Raechel and some friends,
listening to a Doors album. He asked,
"Why isn't there a radio station that plays this
kind of music?"
A light bulb went on inside his head. The next day
he started calling FM stations in San Francisco and
when he found one that had recently had its
phone disconnected he told Raechel,
"This is it!"
The station was KMPX and before long, Tom and a crew of zany,
stoned-out radio freaks had taken over.
It was the first time any station featured long sets of music and
album tracks that weren't necessarily hits.
Disc Jockeys were encouraged to do weird and outrageous things on the air
They were given the freedom to play and say nearly anything they wanted to
and the idea caught on like free candy. Soon KMPX had the youth of San Francisco
tuned in and paying close attention. After a few months, the KMPX owners and
Tom disagreed over the format and when they tried to institute some
"controls" over program content, Tom and the staff went on strike.
The strike was resolved when Tom convinced Metromedia Broadcasting,
a multiple station owner headquartered in New York, to let him and
his crew of outcasts take over what had been classical station KEAR.
The new call letters were KSAN, once owned by an am station that catered tO
African-Americans, and for the next ten years, the lead station in a radio revolution that
changed the way America thought and lived.
"I recall on meeting Tom for the first time that it was much better than the first time I got laid." Howard Hesseman
John Wasserman's report on Tom's wake
Stories of Tom (audio not available at this time)
Alan Stone
Dusty Street
Dusty again
Stefan Ponek
Thom O'Hair