KNEW (960 AM) is an American radio station licensed to Oakland, California, and serving the San Francisco Bay Area.

As a result, they looked to KIXL, a beautiful music station in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, market that was enjoying a fair amount of success despite being daytime-only.

They decided to launch a similar format on KROW using KIXL's formula of quarter-hour blocks of familiar musical selections (three instrumentals, arranged by tempo, and one vocal) as a template.

Based on this stunt, it was assumed by the general public — and by the competition — that KROW was to become a Top 40 station along the lines of McLendon's KLIF in Dallas, WAKY in Louisville or KILT in Houston.

As KABL, the station combined a mixture of easy listening string and orchestra music with light classics and an occasional Latin cocktail hour tune.

KABL was known for presenting poetic vignettes about San Francisco life, a harp interlude between songs, and a cable car bell to announce the news.

In 2000, KABL briefly switched to a 1960s-1970s soft rock format, but went back to older music after complaints from their regular audience.

In fact, later-years KABL tended to go back and forth on including greater amounts of more "modern" softer pop-rock material then not identified with "traditional" adult standards - Peter & Gordon and Dusty Springfield from the 1960s, even Kenny Rogers and Air Supply from the turn of the 1980s.

The station carried a mix of Dial Global programs, such as Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller and Thom Hartmann, and other distributors.

One weekend show, Shake!, aired on Sunday nights and was targeted toward the Bay Area's gay and lesbian community.

In 2006, KQKE introduced a local morning show featuring political satirist Will Durst and former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown.

John Scott was hired as AM operations manager for both KQKE and KNEW in 2007, and introduced new shows and elements into the programming mix.

However, Paul "Lobster" Wells holds the distinction of working for both "Quake" stations, as he served as producer and on-air contributor for KQKE's former morning show.

On August 13, 2007, Clear Channel changed the KQKE call sign to KKGN, with a repositioning as "Green 960" and initially with programming focused on environmental issues.

[11] While still predominantly progressive talk for most of the day, KNEW also carried the decidedly conservative Glenn Beck Program during morning drive as well as The Dave Ramsey Show in middays.

[18] The "A's Cast" service, which started the 2020 season on TuneIn and was the originally-intended outlet for A's broadcasts in the Bay Area, moved to iHeartRadio as part of the deal.