This is the short version of the KCBS Engineering Department studio tour. From here you can look at the KCBS air studio, traffic studio, and newsroom.

A little background before we start our tour. KCBS is a 50,000 watt all news station operating on 740khz, full time. The station originally signed on the air in 1909 from Doc Herrolds College of Engineering and Wireless in San Jose, California. The station has been on the air since 1909 under different call letters (FN1909, KQW), making KCBS the oldest continuously operating broadcast station in the world. In 1949, CBS Radio Network purchased the station, then known as KQW, changed the call letters to KCBS and moved the station from 1010 on the dial to 740 and raised the power to 50,000 watts. If you would like more historical information on KCBS please check out the history page located in the 50 cent tour. There is a longer history, plus some links to other web sites containing information. We will also be adding historical photos of the early days of KCBS (if you have any that I could add to our collection, please let me know).

The studios and offices are located on the 32nd floor of Embarcadero One building in San Franciscos financial district. As you can imagine, being 32 stories up gives us a fine view of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The tour was originally designed to let other broadcast types get a look at our studios, but each page is broken up into non technical and technical sections. So if you are not in the broadcast biz you can get a explanation of what goes on in each studio and just ignore the section on equipment make and type. If after taking the short tour you find you want to see more, please check out the long tour. If you take the long tour you get to poke your nose into every studio on the floor plus a trip to the KCBS transmitter. As an added special bonus you can check out the engineering department and see what kind of people keep the station on the air (honest, not one of us has a pocket protector). There are pop-up E-Mail addresses on each page, so if you have any comments or questions about what you see here, let us know!

Also, KCBS is co-located with our FM station, Alice@97.3(KLLC), and if you would like, at the end of this tour you will find a link to take you to the Alice tour.

Enough idle chat, push the button below and let's go see the studios!

Updated 1/07/99