KTZO Era
The station was then sold to FM radio pioneer James Gabbert (who previously owned popular FM music station K-101 (now under different ownership as "Star 101.3")), who signed it back on October 6, 1980, as KTZO (which stood for Television 20, the Z being construed as a numeral 2), with a dramatically upgraded general entertainment format, featuring off-network drama shows, sitcoms, old movies, rejected CBS and NBC shows preempted by KPIX and KRON, music videos, and religious shows. But unlike its independent competitors in that time, KTVU, KICU-TV and KBHK (now KBCW), a majority of KTZO's programming lineup at most consisted of low-budget television programs, which continued into its early years as KOFY. Most memorable were the station identification breaks featuring pets, usually dogs, of Bay Area viewers that would look on cue at a television screen showing the station's logo. In fact, these proved to be immensely popular -- so much so that KTZO/KOFY would often work together with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals by displaying pets that could be adopted, along with a phone number to call with the pet's name on screen.
Other popular programming during the early and mid 1980s included the TV-20 Dance Party (originally a "Top 40" music format featuring local high schools, hosted by Bay Area DJ Tony Kilbert; later a 1950s "retro" style show hosted by Gabbert), and a Sunday late-night movie program. The Sunday program included studio segments at the beginning and commercial breaks of the movie, hosted by Gabbert and set in the fictional "Sleazy Arms Hotel" bar. Viewers were invited to join Gabbert on the set and for a time, enjoy a sponsor's product (a malt liquor).
Famous quotes containing the word era:
“...I had grown up in a world that was dominated by immature age. Not by vigorous immaturity, but by immaturity that was old and tired and prudent, that loved ritual and rubric, and was utterly wanting in curiosity about the new and the strange. Its era has passed away, and the world it made has crumbled around us. Its finest creation, a code of manners, has been ridiculed and discarded.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)