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1980
Nielsen Ratings indicate that the KQED weekly audience has topped
1 million homes for the first time in station history. Cosmos
with Carl Sagan, the highest-rated science series ever to air on
PBS, premieres, as does Mystery! KQED holds the first public
TV general merchandise auction to bring in a million dollars. The
installation of the nation's first full-time, full-service satellite
radio network in June establishes San Francisco as a national communications
center. Closed-captioning comes to KQED.
1981
KQED's airing of The Tempest marks the first live national
telecast for the San Francisco Ballet.
1982 Nature premieres on October 10 with Flight of the Condor, a three-part program. Great Performances presents the American
premiere of the very popular drama Brideshead Revisited.
American Playhouse premieres.
1983
The Nightly Business Report debuts. KQED tapes a 90-minute
docudrama called The People Versus Dan White.
1984 Fine Tuning debuts as the program guide for KQED and is positioned
to be separate from Focus magazine. Masterpiece Theatre:
The Jewel in the Crown debuts as a 14-week series.
1985
Local cable systems no longer must carry local television stations.
KQED kicks off a campaign to keep KQED and KQEC on local systems.
West Coast Weekend premieres on KQED 88.5FM.
1986
Traffic reporting comes to KQED 88.5FM. Eight KQED television programs
win Emmy Awards in 1986. KQED's Steve Talbot, Bill Swan, and Jim
Raeside take their cameras to Lusaka, Zambia, where they speak with
exiled African National Congress leaders. The account of their trip,
South Africa Under Siege, airs nationally on April 1.
1987
KQED 88.5FM unveils a stronger format to bring more of what they
do so well-news and information-to listeners. Switching from a mixed
format of classical music and news, KQED is now the only FM station
providing extensive daily information and analysis. Dr. Milton Chen
starts as the new director of Instructional Television at KQED.
KQED, in association with El Teatro Campesino, produces Corridos,
written and directed by Luis Valdez and featuring Linda Ronstadt
and SF Ballet star Evelyn Cisneros. The special, dramatizing traditional
Mexican American folk ballads, wins a 1987 George Foster Peabody
Award.
1988 The Singing Detective premieres on KQED. The six-part story
about a hospitalized mystery writer draws more viewers than any
series shown on KQED since The Jewel in the Crown premiered
in 1984. Take Charge!-a new national series produced by KQED's
Marjorie Poore and Jules Power-addresses 13 situations in which
money management (or lack of it) has had a personal impact on individual
lives. The American Experience premieres.
1989
KQED 88.5FM becomes an around-the-clock, in-depth news and public
affairs broadcasting station on July 1. Within two hours of the
October 17 earthquake the radio station is back on the air, providing
emergency communications in the critical hours and days that follow.
The KQED hero was chief engineer Fred Krock, who drove to the transmitter
atop Mt. San Bruno and worked for 48 hours nonstop. He rigged a
system that allowed local field reporters to broadcast via a Long
Beach satellite and got updates himself from the newsroom, which
he aired every 15 minutes. Most SF newspaper columnists got their
first news about the quake from KQED 88.5FM. On October 27, rock
promoter Bill Graham calls Tony Tiano to propose the possibility
of KQED broadcasting a rock and roll Earthquake Relief Benefit Concert.
Broadcast on Sunday, November 27, it includes simultaneous concerts
at the Cow Palace, Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, and Watsonville
High School, and raises more than $2 million. Entertainers include
Crosby, Stills, and Nash; Neil Young; Steve Miller; Eddie Money;
Bonnie Raitt; John Fogerty; Tower of Power; and an unexpected cameo
by Bob Hope, who tells old golf jokes to a crowd clearly made up
of Deadheads.
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