KCEA (89.1 FM) is a broadcast

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

licensed to Atherton, California, serving the

San Francisco Peninsula The San Francisco Peninsula is a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area that separates San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. On its northern tip is the City and County of San Francisco. Its southern base is Mountain View, south of Palo Alt ...

. The station broadcasts a music format featuring

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...

, swing and adult standards in addition to local high school sports. KCEA is owned and operated by

Sequoia Union High School District The Sequoia Union High School District is a public union school district in the San Francisco Bay Area, primarily serving the southern San Mateo County communities of Atherton, Belmont, East Palo Alto, Ladera, San Carlos, Menlo Park, Portol ...

History

In 1979,

Menlo-Atherton High School Menlo-Atherton High School (known as M-A to locals) is a four-year public charter secondary school located in Atherton, California. Menlo-Atherton is part of the Sequoia Union High School District.

founded radio station KMAH, which broadcast local music and student programming. During off hours, the station broadcast a live audio feed of the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

from

Fort Point, San Francisco Fort Point is a masonry seacoast fortification located on the southern side of the Golden Gate at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. It is also the geographic name of the promontory upon which the fort and the southern approach of the Golden Gat ...

. KMAH became KCEA (named after "sea") in 1983 and switched to its present big band music format in order to attract a wider audience and financial support. KCEA-FM 2014

KCEA first broadcast local high school sports on January 8, 1999, when the station broadcast a Menlo-Atherton home basketball game. The October 11, 2013 broadcast of a football game between Sequoia and Terra Nova high schools was KCEA's 500th high school sports broadcast. Late in October 2018, the

Board of Trustees discussed converting KCEA into a student run station in order to align the station closer to the district's educational mission. The

NAMM Oral History Program The NAMM Oral History Program is a collection of one-on-one interviews with people involved in the music products industry, including music instrument retailers, instrument and product creators, suppliers and sales representatives, music educators ...

music historian, Daniel Del Fiorentino, conducted his first interview when he worked for the KCEA radio station in 1983 to 1994. He has since then interviewed thousands of people of who have made an impact on the history of music.

References

External links

FCC History Cards for KCEA
* * {{San Francisco Radio CEA High school radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1979 1979 establishments in California Adult standards radio stations in the United States