KIRO (AM)

The early years as KPCB 650 (1927-1937)

KIRO began broadcasting on April 27, 1927, as the 100-watt station KPCB 650. Its founder was Moritz Thomsen of the Pacific Coast Biscuit Company. Among its announcers was Chet Huntley, later of television's Huntley-Brinkley Report. In 1935 Saul Haas's Queen City Broadcasting Company took over the station. He changed the call letters to KIRO and increased its power to 500 Watts. Haas, who was well connected in liberal politics and the business community, wanted a simple, pronounceable, and recognizable word for his new station. KING, after King County, Washington, was not available at that time. The KING calls were later used by the station on AM 1090 now known as KFNQ.

1937 to 1960 (now 710 KIRO)

In 1937, KIRO was assigned the 710 frequency and increased its power to 1,000 Watts. Soon after, the Seattle CBS affiliation moved to KIRO from KOL. Known as "The Friendly Station," KIRO personalities broke from the formal announcing style that was commonplace during the early days of radio.

On June 29, 1941, KIRO's new, 50,000-Watt transmitter on Maury Island became operational. From the 1930s through the 1950s, KIRO recorded countless hours of CBS programming for time-delayed rebroadcast. These electrical transcriptions are, in many cases, the only recordings made of World War II-era news coverage over the CBS network. The discs were donated to the University of Washington in the early 1960s and are now held at the National Archives as the Milo Ryan Phonoarchive Collection.

In 1948, the original KIRO-FM (now KKWF) took the air at 100.7 MHz, initially rebroadcasting its AM sister's programming. Preparing for a future television allocation, KIRO moved in 1952 from downtown studios to a larger building on Queen Anne Hill. This peak was already home to the KING-TV transmitter and would soon be the site for KOMO-TV as well. Queen City Broadcasting was awarded Seattle's last remaining VHF TV license in 1958, and signed on as CBS affiliate KIRO-TV on February 8th.

1960 to 1980

Haas sold KIRO to Bonneville International Corporation, part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in 1963. He earned a handsome return on his investment of 28 years earlier, and would subsequently join Bonneville's board. Bonneville executives Lloyd Cooney and Ken Hatch arrived in Seattle to lead the combined broadcast group, which included KIRO AM, in 1964. Like many network radio affiliates following the demise of full-time block programming, KIRO spent the 1960s playing Middle of the road music in addition to long-form news and interview shows. Morning host Jim French spent many years broadcasting from the rotating restaurant atop the Space Needle and was live on the air from that perch during a 6.7-magnitude earthquake in April, 1965. Bonneville moved its Seattle radio and TV stations to the newly constructed "Broadcast House" at Third and Broad Streets in 1968.

In 1973, KIRO ended a 35-year affiliation with CBS and switched to the Mutual Broadcasting System.^[1] Around this time, KIRO also picked up Herb Jepko's "Nitecap," a groundbreaking overnight telephone-talk show from Salt Lake City sister station KSL. "Newsradio 71 KIRO" debuted in June 1974, with news and talk segments replacing most music programming. In September 1974, KIRO became an NBC affiliate, but switched back to CBS in November 1976.^[2][3]

1980 to 2008

Station leadership and ownership remained constant through the next decades. In 1980, Cooney left to run for US Senate and Hatch became President, CEO and Chairman - a position he held until 1995. Under Hatch's leadership, KIRO Inc. (which, in addition to KIRO AM-FM-TV, would eventually include KING AM-FM and Third Avenue Productions) became one of the nation's premier regional broadcast groups. KIRO AM received much national recognition and was led very successfully by General Manager Joe Abel during this period.

KIRO was a full service Adult Contemporary radio station by the mid 1970s playing music during the day, talk in the evenings, and more music intensive on weekends with exception of sports events. By 1980, the station played music during the day and talk night and overnights. The station added talk middays during the week in 1985. By then amounts of music during drive times were down to about 4 songs an hour and during the day weekends to 12 songs an hour. In 1986, KIRO quietly was reclassified as News and Talk adding more news programming and dropping music altogether.

For 25 years, KIRO's morning news, anchored by Bill Yeend, consistently placed at or near the top of the Seattle Arbitron ratings. Gregg Hersholt was the station's morning news anchor for the next 10 years until he left the station on May 28, 2010, ending his 26-year career there. Dave Ross now hosts Seattle's Morning News with Dave Ross on KIRO Radio 97.3 FM.

Sports play-by-play has been a staple of the KIRO schedule throughout its years as a news/talk station. Since the team's inception in 1976, KIRO has been the flagship broadcaster for the Seattle Seahawks. About that same time, it was the flagship station for the Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League. From 1985 to 2002, and again since 2009, the station airs Seattle Mariners games. From 1978 to 1987 they were the flagship station of the Seattle SuperSonics. Additionally, KIRO has carried Washington Huskies and Washington State Cougars college football for stints during the '80s and '90s.

KIRO was also the radio home to popular sportscaster Wayne Cody, who did live sideline reports during Seattle Seahawks football games, Washington Huskies college football play-by-play, NASL Seattle Sounders pro soccer play-by-play, and hosted a sports radio talk show weeknights that was the only one of its kind at the time in Seattle.

Reporter Dave Ross joined the station from Atlanta station WSB in 1978 and took over as noon to 3 p.m. talk host in 1987. He moved to the 9 a.m. to noon timeslot after the retirement of Jim French in 1992. Ross unsuccessfully ran for Washington's eighth Congressional district as a Democratic candidate in 2004. While Ross unofficially announced his candidacy in May, he did not leave his on-air position until just prior to the July filing deadline. In response to complaints from state Republican party officials, Ross claimed that he was contractually bound to continue working for KIRO until he was a bona fide candidate.

Though he returned to the air immediately following the November election, the station's ratings did not recover entirely, and Ross was moved to the afternoon drive-time shift in February, 2005. Ross moved back to his 9am-noon shift in May 2006. Since January 2012, Ross has hosted Seattle's Morning News from 5-9 a.m.

In addition to his KIRO work, Ross does a daily commentary on the CBS Radio Network and is a frequent substitute for Charles Osgood on CBS Radio's "Osgood File" segments.

KIRO's logo, when the station broadcast only in AM, prior to August 2008.

After selling KIRO-TV to A.H. Belo Corp. in 1995, the Bonneville Seattle radio stations moved to facilities on Eastlake Avenue. KIRO (AM), KIRO-FM (now KKWF) and KNWX (now KTTH) were sold to Entercom Communications of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, in 1997. Bonneville reacquired KIRO, KTTH, and KBSG (now KIRO-FM) from Entercom in 2007.^[4]

Current programming

On August 12, 2008, KIRO began simulcasting their programming on sister station KBSG-FM, which dropped their long-running classic hits format. This began the transition of KIRO Newsradio from AM to FM.^[5] To complete the transition, KIRO switched to a sports radio format (as 710 ESPN Seattle) on April 1, 2009, and regained the rights to broadcast Seattle Mariners games, beginning in the 2009 season.^[6] KIRO also simulcasts the Seattle Seahawks games with KIRO-FM, and has extensive team-related programming throughout the year. KIRO-FM continues the news/talk format.^[7]

710 ESPN Seattle is the radio home of the Northwest’s top-rated local and national sports programming. In addition, 710 ESPN Seattle is the play-by-play home for the Seattle Seahawks, Seattle Mariners and Washington State Cougars.

Mike Salk was named Program Director of 710 ESPN Seattle on March 13, 2014, returning to the station after a stint in Boston (in his earlier stint with the station, he was Brock Huard's co-host whose capacity was held by the above-mentioned Danny O'Neil during his time away, he returned to that particular role upon his return).^[8]