KYA 1260, San Francisco
Hit Music Survey
Week Of October 18-25, 1974

KYA's lineup in the Fall of 1974 included Roger W. Morgan (6-9 a.m.), Bill Holley (9 a.m.-noon), Mark Taylor (noon-3 p.m.), Chris Cane (3-6 p.m.), Brian Roberts (6-10 p.m.), Dean Goss (10 p.m.-2 a.m.), Mighty Mitch (2-6 a.m.) and Michael Spears on weekends.

The front of this week's KYA 1260 music survey includes a cheerful welcome to Michael Spears, the station's new weekender. Funny, though: the photograph isn't of Michael Spears. Funnier yet: Michael Spears (a/k/a Hal Martin) is the name of the program director at 610/KFRC, which just happens to be KYA's chief Top 40 rival in The City...

A mere coincidence? What could possibly be going on here?

Closer inspection of the photo of KYA's alleged "Michael Spears" reveals that he looks a lot like a guy who calls himself Steve Jordan on the air. Is Jordan actually masquerading as "Spears" as part of some intra-station shenanigans?

A sampling of an aircheck of KYA's so-called "Spears" (available below on this page) from around the same time as the survey displayed here reveals an amazing similarity to the voice of the well-known Steve Jordan, which is nothing like that of Spears/Martin, who — in addition to being a legendary programmer — was also a star disk jockey at KLIF/Dallas, CKLW/Detroit and KGB/San Diego, among others. (He passed away on October 25, 2005, at the age of only 58 after battling cancer for five years.)

Leave it to none other than Steve Jordan himself to reveal the truth behind the baffling "Michael Spears" mystery, which he explained in a September 2007 email:

Just thought you might like to know the "Michael Spears" on the KYA airchecks is actually me..."Steve Jordan" ... yep, the same one on the other KYA stuff. The real Michael Spears was Program Director at our rival KFRC at the time, so when I returned from a brief absence in S.F. radio, we put me on the air using his name whenever he was on KFRC... that was radio then, you know.

SOURCE: Bay Area Radio Museum Collection.

RELATED EXHIBITS

• The Complete KYA Airchecks Collection (The Seventies)