KGO (AM)

KGO (810 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to San Francisco, California, and owned by Cumulus Media. Due to its extensive groundwave signal and the effects of the surrounding terrain, its coverage is greater than any Bay Area FM station, and it registers with Arbitron as a station listened to in surrounding metropolitan regions. Cumulus's local offices are based on Battery Street in the SoMa portion of San Francisco's Financial District.

KGO's transmitter site is located in Fremont, near the Dumbarton Bridge, where its prominent towers are landmarks used by pilots as a waypoint in communications with local airports. KGO broadcasts with 50,000 watts, the highest power permitted for AM stations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It uses a directional antenna fulltime, that sends most of its signal to the north and south. This limits nighttime interference to the other Class A station on 810 kHz, WGY in Schenectady, New York. Most nights, using a good radio, KGO can be heard throughout the western United States, east to the Rocky Mountains, and in northern Mexico, western Canada and Alaska. Its nighttime transmissions are received essentially free of static in locations such as Vancouver and Seattle, and San Diego, but are difficult to receive in Reno, Nevada, and other points east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, due to its directional signal.