Robert Williams says that while he was KZAP's Program Director by the mid seventies creative talent and
risk taking were proven to be successful for both radio and artists. He talks about growing up on Bay Area
radio before moving to Sacramento. Williams credits KMPX and KSAN programmer Tom Donahue as the architect of freeform radio, which
inspired other stations to play album cuts. Williams says that his association with Donahue is how he
was able to hear tapes of artists such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane
before the records came out. They became friends and once Donahue even let him do a show on KSAN.
Williams says that record labels favored stations with ratings but as KZAP's stature grew, labels started
to pay closer attention. His first time on KZAP happened because everyone else at the station wanted to
go to a Grateful Dead show. KZAP was like a fun house, run similar to a college station, where jocks experimented
with music, adding echo to artists like Moody Blues. Throughout the seventies the station based programming
surprises more on rarities than rotations. Williams says at one point some KZAPers lived in a commune
house not far from the station. Read more about The Legend of KZAP at Playlist Research.
