Before it was “Hot Talk” with Brian Sussman and Melanie Morgan, and before Don Sherwood was cracking people up in the 1960s, here’s what the staff of KSFO 560 looked like. This 1942 photo is from the current edition of Radio World and radio researcher John Schneider.

In 1942, radio was king (no TV yet) and KSFO was a big player even though it had lost its CBS affiliation a year earlier to San Jose’s KQW, which would later become KCBS. This group is gathered at the transmitter site near 3rd Street and Cesar Chavez Street in San Francisco.

What about the calls KWID? Those belonged to a shortwave station that KSFO’s owner, Wesley Dumm, had built at the request of President Franklin Roosevelt as part of the war effort. KWID blanketed the Pacific with its signal, which was important in the war against the Japanese.