KSTN 1420 Radio
The Hotel Clark
Stockton

The Hotel Clark, located at the intersection of Market and Sutter streets in downtown Stockton, as it appeared in a picture postcard dating from the 1940s. The Clark served as the studio home of KSTN (1420 AM) through the 1950s.

Longtime KSTN personality and engineer Paul Shinn relates the following about the Hotel Clark:

When KSTN first went on the air, the studios were not at the transmitter site on Ralph Avenue; they began with remote studios from day one. The Ralph Avenue building has a shower (still does) and minimal living quarters because at the time it was required that an engineer be on duty at all times the station was on the air. They used a regular dialup phone line for STL. Back in those days, a phone line would pass 15 kc. audio! What actually killed the Clark Hotel studios was when the phone company degraded the quality of a dialup line. Seriously. They couldn't afford to get one of them fancy dedicated circuits (they were prohibitively expensive then), and Knox blew a fuse. Having them broadcast from the transmitter was Knox's way of showing the phone company he didn't need them. And, that in itself began a whole story unto itself.

The Hotel Clark was subsequently razed as part of a modernization program in downtown Stockton.

NOTES ON THE POSTCARD: The card was printed by Schwabacher-Frey of San Francisco, one of the city's legendary lithographers. The postcard is imprinted on the reverse with:

Hotel Clark
Air-Conditioned Throughout
Stockton, California
A Newcomb Hotel Interest

ELSEWHERE:

• KSTN 1420 Stockton History and Airchecks

• KSTN Staff Photos (Circa 1958)