KKZZ

KKZZ
City Port Hueneme, California
Broadcast area Ventura County, California
Branding KKZZ 1520 AM & K242CW 96.3 FM
Frequency 1520 kHz
Translator(s) 96.3 MHz K242CW (Oxnard, CA)
First air date July 1958 (as KACY)
Format Adult standards
Power 10,000 watts day
1,000 watts night
Class B
Facility ID 25091
Transmitter coordinates 34°10′2.00″N 119°8′2.00″W / 34.1672222°N 119.1338889°W / 34.1672222; -119.1338889
Former callsigns KYNE (1957-1958, not used on air)
KACY (1958-1984)
KTRO (1984-1999)
KVTA (1999-2013)
KUNX (2013-2015)
Owner Gold Coast Broadcasting LLC
Sister stations KCAQ, KFYV, KOCP, KUNX, KVTA
Website goldcoastbroadcasting.com

KKZZ (1520 kHz) is an AM radio station licensed to Port Hueneme. The station is owned by Gold Coast Broadcasting LLC and airs an adult standards format.[1] KKZZ is fully automated with no disc jockeys or advertisements.

History

The station was first licensed in 1957 with the call letters KYNE. However, it would adopt a different callsign when it went on air the following year.

KACY

During the 1960s and 1970s, the station used the call letters KACY.[2] Branded "KACY 152", it carried a top 40 format and used the slogan "Boss of the Beach". It was the dominant top 40 station in the region, often co-sponsoring concerts (most in Santa Barbara) with local promoter Jim Salzer.

Several KACY disc jockeys went on to greater prominence in their subsequent careers. During KACY's first few years on the air, Robert W. Morgan hosted a live nightly program at the now-defunct Wagon Wheel Bowl in Oxnard (at the time known on-air as Bob Morgan) before becoming a famed "Boss Jock" at KHJ in Los Angeles.[3] "Shotgun" Tom Kelly was also heard on KACY in the early 1970s (as Bobby "Shotgun" McCallister);[4] later, he moved on to major markets such as San Diego (appearing on KGB-FM and KCBQ) and Los Angeles (heard on KRTH as recently as 2016). Other notable former KACY 152 DJs are TV host Bob Eubanks[5] and radio programmer Bill Tanner.[6]

In June 1976, Dellar Broadcasting sold KACY to CTW Communications — a subsidiary of New York City-based Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), producer of Sesame Street — for $866,000.[7] Three years later, on May 3, 1979, CTW Communications sold KACY and its FM sister station (now KCAQ) to Channel Islands Radio Co. for $1.69 million.[8]

In November 1982, Channel Islands Broadcasting sold KACY-AM-FM to Sunbeam Radio Partnership for $2.59 million.[9] Harold A. Frank, vice president and general manager of WINZ-AM-FM in Miami, Florida, became both a partner in Sunbeam Radio and the new general manager of the Oxnard stations.[10]

During its KACY era, the station increased daytime power to 50,000 watts. More recently, the daytime power was rolled back to the previous 10,000 watts. The nighttime power remains unchanged at 1,000 watts.

KTRO

On September 10, 1984, KACY changed its call letters to KTRO and flipped to a Spanish-language format known as "Radio Tiro".[11][12] During that period, instead of jingles, the sound effect of a pistol firing was used out of commercial breaks into music ("tiro" being the Spanish word for "bullet").

In October 1987, Sunbeam Radio Partnership sold KTRO and its FM sister station KCAQ to Greater Pacific Radio Exchange Inc., a company owned by the stations' general manager Harold A. Frank, for $5 million. As Frank was also the minority partner in Sunbeam Radio, the transaction gave him complete ownership of the station pair.[13]

KVTA

In the summer of 1996, Greater Pacific Radio Exchange sold KTRO and KCAQ to Gold Coast Broadcasting for $3.65 million.[14] The new owner immediately dropped the Spanish programming and switched to a news/talk format in English. Three years later, on February 15, 1999, KTRO changed its call letters to KVTA and became the new home of competitor KVEN's news team, led by the latter's longtime morning hosts Dave Ciniero and Bob Adams.[15][11]

The station had been operating at reduced power starting in 2011 under Special Temporary Authority (STA) from the FCC due to engineering problems. On April 15 of that year the station discovered one of the monitoring points for their antenna system had gone over the limit prescribed in their license, and they reduced nighttime power to 648 watts while they investigated the cause. However, before they could discover and correct the problem, a farmer plowing on land adjacent to the KVTA transmitter site mistakenly crossed a boundary and tore up at least half of the ground wiring for one of the three towers used for KVTA's daytime antenna pattern. This required them to reduce daytime power to 4,600 watts and nighttime power further, to 136 watts. As of January 8, 2013, they had not completed repairs and requested an extension of the STA.[16]

On July 31, 2012, two hosts of brokered-time real estate shows that were broadcast on KVTA, Kenneth A. Powell and Kathryn "Katie" Rose, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for perpetrating a Ponzi scheme-type of fraud.[17] Radio stations that air programming of this sort are usually held harmless if the broadcasters who buy time on their facilities are not directly tied to ownership.

KUNX and KKZZ

Gold Coast Broadcasting orchestrated a three-way format shuffle among its AM stations in early 2013. In February, KUNX 1590 began a simulcast of KVTA, then on 1520 AM, and the station's website header graphic was modified to show this change. Later that month, KVTA started announcing that all programs would be moving to 1590 because of its stronger signal and that listeners should reprogram presets accordingly. On March 6, 2013, KVTA and KUNX swapped frequencies, sending the KVTA calls and news/talk format to 1590 while KUNX moved to 1520.[18]

On January 21, 2015, KUNX went silent (off the air). While silent, KUNX changed its call letters to KKZZ.[19] On January 21, 2016, KKZZ returned to the air with a regional Mexican format as "La Super K 1520 AM". In June, the station adopted a variety format consisting of adult standards.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 "Point Broadcasting In Ventura, CA Realigns Executive Staff". AllAccess.com. All Access Music Group. December 29, 2017. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  2. ↑ "Directory of AM and FM Stations in the U.S." (PDF). Broadcasting Yearbook. Broadcasting Publications Inc. 1968. p. B-20. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  3. ↑ Hochman, Steve (January 8, 1998). "'Good Morgan,' Goodbye". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 4, 2018.
  4. ↑ Hall, Doug (August 30, 1980). "Programming: Vox Jox" (PDF). Billboard. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  5. ↑ Wagoner, Richard (November 24, 2015). "Bob Eubanks, Stephanie Edwards receive much deserved Pacific Pioneer honors". Los Angeles Daily News. Los Angeles News Group. Retrieved June 4, 2018.
  6. ↑ "KACY Modifies Its Format; Lineup Set" (PDF). Billboard. March 20, 1971. p. 28. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  7. ↑ "In Brief" (PDF). Broadcasting. Broadcasting Publications Inc. June 28, 1976. p. 23. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  8. ↑ "For the Record" (PDF). Broadcasting. Broadcasting Publications Inc. May 14, 1979. p. 71. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  9. ↑ "KACY-AM & FM Sold For $2.6 Million" (PDF). Radio and Records. November 26, 1982. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  10. ↑ "'83 in Review: January" (PDF). Radio and Records. December 9, 1983. p. 6. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  11. 1 2 "Call Sign History". Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved April 8, 2018.
  12. ↑ "Motion" (PDF). Radio and Records. September 21, 1984. Retrieved April 8, 2018.
  13. ↑ "For the Record: Changing Hands" (PDF). Broadcasting. October 27, 1986. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  14. ↑ "Clear Channel Claims Heftel in $275 Million Stock Sale" (PDF). Radio and Records. June 7, 1996. Retrieved December 15, 2017.
  15. ↑ Pisani, Paula (February 3, 1999). "KVEN Radio Show Hosts Jump to KTRO". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
  16. ↑ "KVTA Application for STA". U.S. Federal Communications Commission. November 21, 2011.
  17. ↑ Hernandez, Raul (July 31, 2012). "Former radio infomercial hosts sentenced in real estate fraud case". Ventura County Star. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  18. ↑ Venta, Lance (March 9, 2013). "Ventura AM's Play Musical Chairs". RadioInsight. RadioBB Networks. Retrieved May 7, 2018.
  19. ↑ Venta, Lance (February 8, 2015). "FCC Applications 2/8". RadioInsight. RadioBB Networks. Retrieved May 7, 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.