KNX (AM)
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| KNX | |
| Image:KNX-logo.gif | |
| Broadcast area | Los Angeles, California |
|---|---|
| Branding | KNX 1070 Newsradio |
| Frequency | 1070 (kHz) |
| First air date | September 10, 1920 (as 6ADZ) |
| Format | News/Talk |
| Power | 50,000 watts |
| Class | A |
| Callsign meaning | None. Assigned sequentially, May 4, 1922 |
| Affiliations | CBS News The Weather Channel |
| Owner | CBS Corporation/CBS Radio |
| Sister stations | KCBS-FM, KFWB, KLSX, KROQ, KRTH, KTWV |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | www.knx1070.com |
KNX (1070 kHz) is an all-news radio station in Los Angeles, California. The station operates on a clear channel and is owned by CBS Radio. KNX broadcasts from facilities shared with sister stations KFWB, KCBS-FM, KTWV, and KLSX on Los Angeles' Miracle Mile, and maintains a transmitter site in Torrance, California.[citation needed]
KNX has been the West Coast flagship station for the CBS Radio Network since 1937.[citation needed] It has been broadcasting a mostly all-news format since 1968.[citation needed] In recent years however, since the arrival of David G. Hall as program director, the station has moved away from all-news and now devotes many hours each day to programs that are not "all news."[citation needed]
The station's daytime signal reaches from Mexico to Santa Barbara, California.[citation needed] At night, KNX can be heard throughout the Western United States - sometimes as far away as Amarillo, Texas - and many offshore regions along the Pacific Ocean.[citation needed] The station also broadcasts a high-definition HD Radio signal and streams online through its web site.
Contents |
[edit] Born in a Hollywood Bedroom...
The precursor to KNX took to the airways as experimental station 6ADZ on September 10, 1920, built by a former Marconi shipboard wireless operator turned radio parts retailer. Fred Christian launched the station using his Hollywood bedroom as its studio.[citation needed] He played records borrowed from music stores over his 5-watt transmitter and urged listeners to visit the stores and buy the records.[citation needed] Christian's goal was to provide programming for his crystal set customers. Some claim he was LA’s first deejay.[citation needed]
Christian's radio station was not the first in Los Angeles. The Western Radio Electric Company had received a license for Special Land Station 6XD in April, five months before Christian took to the air. Station 6XD became KZC, then KOG, then vanished from the air in 1923.[citation needed]
In December 1921, Christian’s The Electric Lighting & Supply Company received a 50-watt permit and the call letters KGC from the U.S. Department of Commerce, five years before the Federal Radio Commission was created.[citation needed]
Call letters KNX followed in 1922 when the station moved to the California Theater in downtown Los Angeles.[citation needed]
“The government assigned the move of the transmitter a new three-letter call in sequential order,” says radio historian Jim Hilliker, “It was not chosen to stand for anything.”[citation needed]
The call letters had previously been used by the radio transmitter aboard the U.S. steamship Susanah.[citation needed]
[edit] Changes in Power and Ownership
KNX's power was raised to 1,000 watts in 1924, then lowered to 500 watts in 1927.[citation needed] A year later the station was boosted to 5,000 watts, then 25,000 watts on October 20, 1932 and 50,000 watts in 1934.[citation needed] The station applied for a 500,000-watt permit in 1935 (with plans to emulate Powel Crosley's WLW, then the most powerful radio station in the world) but withdrew the application three years later.[citation needed]
KNX's dial position shifted as well, moving up the AM dial from 833 to 890, then to 1050 (under General Order 40).[citation needed] KNX's final reassignment to 1070 kHz, a shared clear channel, came at 3am on March 29, 1941 under the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement, a treaty among six North American nations to divide and manage the airways.[citation needed]
KNX's years as the radio voice of the Evening Express ended in January, 1928 when the newspaper sold the station to Western Broadcast Co., whose holdings included Portland, Oregon's KEX (AM).[citation needed]
[edit] KNX in the Thirties
On April 13, 1930, KNX became the first (and only) radio station to broadcast the Academy Awards, then in their second year, live from the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel.[citation needed] The Motion Picture Academy cancelled further radio broadcasts from then on (there were actually two Oscar ceremonies that year. April's honored films released in 1928-1929. Another, on November 3, honored 1930s movies).[citation needed]
During the 1930s, a growing number of stations which had not affiliated with NBC or CBS began forming regional networks of their own, a way of increasing original, high-quality content in order to survive the onset of the network era.[citation needed] KNX became half of the Western Network in 1935, a two-station hookup which shared programs with San Francisco's KSFO.[citation needed]
Competition with newspapers also became fierce. By the mid-thirties, radio advertising revenues were a quarter those of newspapers', and radio was growing as a source of breaking news.[citation needed] To protect their newspaper clients, the Associated Press, International News Service and United Press combined to form the Press-Radio Bureau, a virtual cartel which banned radio stations from broadcasting wire service material until five to eight hours after the news items had hit the streets in newspapers.[citation needed]
KNX refused to abide by the pact and produced a satirical radio drama lampooning newspaper efforts to squelch broadcast news.[citation needed] In retaliation, the Los Angeles Times dropped KNX's program listings from its pages and bitter court battles ensued.[citation needed] KNX ultimately joined Transradio Press which emerged from the wire service war, transmitting news dispatches especially for radio stations via shortwave Morse code.[citation needed]
[edit] CBS and William Paley
In New York, CBS founder William S. Paley was fighting battles of his own. His relationship with Cadillac-LaSalle car dealer Don Lee, who owned a network of twelve stations across the West, had soured.[citation needed] Paley had been an enthusiastic partner in cofounding the Don Lee-Columbia Network in July, 1929 as an expeditious solution to the Columbia Broadcasting System's lack of western affiliates.[citation needed] Paley had become frustrated by his lack of control over the network's twelve affiliates long before Lee died in 1934.[citation needed] Control of the Lee network was assumed by Lee's son, Tommy.[citation needed]
Columbia shows were carried live on the Lee-Columbia hookup.[citation needed]As a result, the CBS schedule ended at 8pm when the East Coast feed signed off.[citation needed] Lee filled the nighttime hours with shows from his KHJ in Los Angeles and KFRC in San Francisco, but the shared network was not the showcase Paley sought for his programs.[citation needed]
On March 19, 1936, Paley purchased KNX for a record $1.2 million.[citation needed] Paley now had his own L.A. station, putting an end to the Don Lee-Columbia network and KHJ's affiliation as Columbia's Los Angeles flagship.[citation needed] CBS moved its programming to KNX on January 1, 1937;[citation needed] Lee's stations became the western backbone of fledgling Mutual Broadcasting System.[citation needed]
Paley was eager to feed the growing nationwide hunger for Hollywood movie stars on radio.[citation needed] Twenty network programs had originated from Hollywood over NBC and CBS during the 1934-35 season.[citation needed] Already on the drawing board by the time Paley acquired KNX were plans for a new facility that would draw top Hollywood talent to his network and compete with archrival NBC's Radio City, under construction at Sunset and Vine.[citation needed]
On April 30, 1938, Paley moved KNX from its most recent studios at 5926 Sunset Boulevard to CBS Columbia Square at 6121 Sunset, a $2 million facility, the most expensive radio broadcasting facility of its day and a location KNX would occupy for 67 years.[citation needed]
KNX and CBS were inextricably linked for the next 22 years. Their shared facilities produced network and local programs. Columbia Square was a magnet for Hollywood’s top stars, writers, musicians and producers.[citation needed] While news and soap operas continued to originate in New York, the CBS/KNX facility produced the bulk of Columbia’s classic old-time radio dramas and comedies.[citation needed]
[edit] The Forties and Fifties
In February, 1942, Time magazine reported, "KNX announced at 1:15am that instead of signing off it was inaugurating a regular four-hour program lasting to 5am for the benefit of 'swing shifters' in local war industries. Knocking off work and dining after midnight, accustomed to stay up until at least 6am, these men and their families now may listen to a full 'evening' of radio, including, by transcription, some of CBS's best sustaining shows."[citation needed] World War II had pushed KNX into a 24-hour schedule.
With "swing shifters" back on normal sleep schedules at war's end, the KNX overnight lineup changed to classical music from 1952 until 1970.[citation needed] The show emerged from a casual conversation between Paley and American Airlines president C. R. Smith who complained he was unable to find quality radio programming after midnight.[citation needed] Paley responded by creating Music 'Til Dawn, sponsored by the airline.[citation needed] The program originated from KNX and was fed to ten of Columbia's western affiliates.[citation needed] Mel Baldwin was the host of the LA-produced "Music Till Dawn" for many years (the program was produced locally at other CBS-owned stations and at some major affiliates with nighttime AM signals MTD broadcasts to be heard in almost the entire country).[citation needed] George Walsh, announcer on Gunsmoke and Suspense (later an all-news anchor and one of the voices of Smokey Bear) later hosted the L.A. program, and won a Peabody Award in 1966.[citation needed]
KNX won two Peabody Awards in the 1940s: in 1940, for Meritorious Service to a Localized Area, another in 1943, for Outstanding Community Service by a Regional Station for the program These Are Americans.[citation needed]
Steve Allen joined KNX in 1948 as a late-night disc jockey.[citation needed] His show was a hybrid: part deejay, part audience participation, and aired at midnight.[citation needed] Allen gained national attention when his program was booked as a summer replacement for the Our Miss Brooks radio show in 1950.[citation needed] It was so successful that CBS moved The Steve Allen Show to the CBS Television Network on Christmas Day, 1950. Allen was not the only KNX personality to make the leap to CBS TV.[citation needed]
Connecticut deejay Bob Crane arrived LA in 1956 to host the KNX morning show.[citation needed] "The King of the Los Angeles Airwaves" filled the second-story broadcast booth with his drum set, movie stars, and cunning humor.[citation needed] His show was a very highly-rated morning show in Los Angeles, drawing Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, among other top stars, but as popular as he was, Crane's ratings could never beat those of rival KMPC's Dick Whittinghill.[citation needed] Crane, however, dreamed of becoming a star himself and left his $150,000-a-year position in 1965 to take the lead in a new CBS series, Hogan's Heroes.[citation needed]
Bob Barker hosted his first audience participation show on KNX. Truth or Consequences producer (and former host) Ralph Edwards heard Barker on KNX and hired him to host a new daytime television version of Truth or Consequences on NBC-TV (and later in syndication]].[citation needed] Barker returned to CBS in 1972 as host of The Price is Right for 35 years (although the program was broadcast from Television City, rather than Columbia Square.[citation needed]
[edit] The 1960s
The Golden Age of Radio came crashing down over the weekend of November 25-27, 1960, when the last of the CBS soap operas and most of its prime-time comedies and variety shows signed off forever.[citation needed] For the first time since 1937, when CBS began providing the bulk of KNX's air content, the station was forced to program its broadcast day largely on its own with deejay and talk shows.[citation needed]
KNX's lineup included talk show host Michael Jackson, Ralph Story, Regis Cordic (who took over Bob Crane's morning slot) and Bill Ballance (The Ballance of the Night).[citation needed] Journalist Ruth Ashton, who had worked with CBS' Ed Murrow and Bob Trout in New York (but was fired for the then-unforgivable career offense of becoming pregnant) hosted and co-hosted several KNX shows in the 1960s, often with Gene Autry's comic sidekick Pat Buttram.[citation needed] "This was not the highlight of my journalistic career,” she later said, “but it was a highlight."[citation needed]
In September, 1965, during Michael Jackson's show, vandals severed a wire supporting KNX's 500-foot tower in Torrance.[citation needed] The tower collapsed and engineers worked frantically to string a temporary antenna, putting KNX back on the air at reduced power.[citation needed] By coincidence, the signal was restored during Jackson's time slot days later. Nonplussed, Jackson began, "Now, before we were interrupted..."[citation needed] Jackson was later fired by KNX for being too forthcoming in commentaries on the Watts Riots.[citation needed]
In 1962, KNX won its third Peabody Award — for science coverage.[citation needed]
[edit] The All-News Era
The first all-news station to serve Los Angeles was Gordon McLendon's XETRA in Tijuana.[citation needed] McLendon targeted the LA market with XETRA's powerful signal though Ed Pyle, who anchored "Extra News" before joining KNX and later became its news director, has said, "When Extra News had been the only source of all-news radio in the city, there had been a team of anchors down in Tijuana pretending they were covering news in Los Angeles without a single field reporter in Southern California."[citation needed]
KNX, along with three other CBS-owned-and-operated AM stations -- WCBS in New York City, WBBM in Chicago, and KCBS in San Francisco -- began transitioning to all-news programming in 1968 at the direction of William Paley, who had been impressed with the performance of WINS in New York which had become an all-news station in 1965.[citation needed] The format change put KNX in direct competition with KFWB which also went all-news in 1968, along with other stations of the Westinghouse chain.[citation needed]
Reporter Jon Goodman was on the KNX all-news start-up team. “It was chaos at the time," he has said. "They brought in new people from all over the country. They had a format laid out and we hoped it all worked, but the catalyst for the KNX all-news format was the Robert Kennedy assassination. It happened six weeks after we went all-news.”[citation needed]
As 1968 drew to a close, Los Angeles had three hometown all-news stations: KABC-FM, (now KLOS) which later adopted a progressive rock format, had preceded KNX and KFWB relying heavily on network content.[citation needed] The KNX all-news format was given five years to prove its profitability.[citation needed] The experiment "took."
"KNX used to have what we called 'an army of field reporters'" said Pyle.[citation needed] They included Pete Moraga, Jerry Laird, Barry Rhode, Bud Kraft, John D. O'Connell, Boyd Harvey, Walt Hoffman, Alex Sullivan, Larry Atteberry, Beach Rogers, Ron Hedley and Mike Landa who remains as KNX's Orange County, California Bureau Chief.[citation needed]
Since 1968, KNX has covered virtually every major Los Angeles news event or disaster including the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 1994 Northridge Earthquake and O.J. Simpson trial.[citation needed] KNX was the only radio station to cover the entire Simpson trial gavel-to-gavel.[citation needed]
From the late 1980s until 2005, KNX used its most familiar news jingles with the slogan All You Need To Know, provided by Dallas-based Axcess Broadcasting.[citation needed] This package was also used with its sister affiliate KRLD in Dallas until the mid-1990s.[citation needed]
Ironically, as of Monday, August 13, 2007, KNX has brought back a jingle formerly used at :30 past the hour.[citation needed] This same jingle was previously used for many years at :30 past the hour and was produced by Axcess Broadcasting.[citation needed]
[edit] Traffic Reports
Traffic reporting has long been a mainstay of KNX, not surprising in a city where the term Sig Alert was invented (1955), an area cris-crossed by a dozen major Southern California freeways.[citation needed]
Prior to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake traffic reports were given every ten minutes.[citation needed] In the aftermath of the earthquake the traffic situation in Los Angeles became severe and KNX began giving traffic reports every six minutes to help the situation.[citation needed] Presently, traffic reports are now given in "extended" format every ten minutes on the "5s," identified by the distinctive KNX traffic "sounder," composed in about an hour's time in 1969 by former KNX Promotions Director Fred Bergendorf.[citation needed] "I wanted it to sound like a car horn," Bergendorf told the Los Angeles Times,[citation needed] which reported that the Moog-generated ID has played, by conservative estimates, over two million times over nearly four decades — once for every traffic report.[citation needed]
Tommy Jaxson is the morning traffic anchor from 5am to 9am, a position once held by Chuck Rowe, Jim Thornton and the legendary Bill Keene (1972-2000).[citation needed] A consummate traffic reporter who began his KNX years in as the weatherman in 1957, "The Sultan of Sig Alerts" laced his updates with colorful epithets. He is credited with naming the "El Toro Y" and "Orange Crush."[citation needed] In 1992, Keene received a star of Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Caltrans, on what would have been Keene's 80th birthday, named the interchange of the 101 and 110 freeways (known as the Four-Level Interchange, but which Keene often called "The Stacks" or "The 4-H Interchange") in his honor.[citation needed] He is also famous for the terms "Poop-out Pass" (referring to the Sepulveda Pass) and "Malfunction Junction" (referring to the East L.A. Interchange).[citation needed]
Donna Page, senior traffic anchor who has been with KNX since 1998, handles 9am to 3pm reports,[citation needed] and Denise Fondo covers the 3pm to 9pm traffic scene.[citation needed] Denise Fondo is a veteran news and traffic reporter in Los Angeles.[citation needed] She began working as a traffic reporter in 1982 for L.A. Network, a company that was owned by Rhonda Kramer.[citation needed] Kramer is now the morning and afternoon drive traffic anchor on KFWB.[citation needed]
Meghan Reyes, who once occupied the afternoon traffic slot, continues to report in-studio traffic on an as needed basis as well as reporting from the air during the morning and afternoon drive.[citation needed]
KNX has many other traffic reporters in the Los Angeles area including Doug Dunlap, Randy Keith, Wendy Sinclair, Katie Clark, Steve Cusack, Karen Harlow, Jenn Slater, David Dean and Heather Lawrence.[citation needed] Some of these reporters also are heard on Barstow's The Highway Stations at the top and 30 past each hour.[citation needed]
California Highway Patrol officer Jill Angel, Christina "Chris" Griego, Pat Haslam and Dona Dower were among the earlier voices of KNX Traffic in recent years.[citation needed] Haslam, best known in Orange County as "Dr. Drive," is famous for using dialects and Bill Keene-esque sayings during his tenure as the overnight traffic anchor.[citation needed] David Courtney, public address announcer for the Los Angeles Kings and Angel Stadium of Anaheim, is also a former KNX traffic alumnus during the late-1980s and early-1990s.[citation needed] Freelance airborne reporter Bill Thomas, who worked with various radio and television stations over the past decade, worked the midday traffic scene alongside Donna Page from 2000 to 2005. He is now the midday airborne reporter at KFWB and afternoon airborne reporter for KABC-TV's Eyewitness News.[citation needed]
KNX uses the resources of Westwood One's Metro Traffic and its aircraft during morning and afternoon commutes.[citation needed] The primary airborne reporters (who are not employed by KNX) are Mike O'Brien (not to be confused with the Las Vegas radio DJ of the same name), Mark Keene (no relation to Bill Keene), Larry Barajas and Scott Burt.[citation needed]
[edit] Broadcast Schedule
Weekdays
- Dave Williams / Vicky Moore: 5:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
- Tom Haule / Linda Nunez: 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
- Frank Mottek (KNX Business Hour): 1:00 p.m.
- Tom Haule: 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
- Jim Thornton / Diane Thompson: 3:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
- Larry Van Nuys: 7:00 p.m. - 12:00 midnight
- Jack Salvatore: 12:00 midnight - 5:00 a.m.
Weekends
- Bob Brill: 5:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
- Melinda Lee: 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
- Jeff Levy: 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (Saturdays only)
- Mark Austin Thomas: 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. (Saturdays only) and 1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. (Sundays only)
- Kim Marriner: 6:00 p.m. - 12:00 midnight
- Pat Haslam: 12:00 midnight - 5:00 a.m.
[edit] Miscellany
- Western music was a staple of KNX in the Twenties.[citation needed] The Range Riders and Arizona Wranglers were among the most popular performers.[citation needed]
- The Signal Oil Company's wildly popular Tarzan of the Apes radio serial premiered on KNX in 1932 with a three-hour remote broadcast from the PAntages Theatre, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Johnny Weissmuller in attendance.[citation needed]
- 1934 Sunday evening fare included the KNX Radio Revival Hour with evangelist Rev. Charles Fuller who enlisted "prayer warriors" on the air and later taught the Radio Bible Class on KNX weekday afternoons.[citation needed]
- The 1970s saw the premiere of the original KNX Food News Hour hosted by Chef Mike Roy and newscaster Dennis Bracken.[citation needed] A young caterer, Melinda Lee, inherited the slot in 1985, co-hosting it with Chris Lane until 1994.[citation needed]
- KNX was the first station in Southern California to announce the Northridge Earthquake on January 17, 1994.[citation needed] At 4:31am, Beach Rogers was on the air when the quake struck.[citation needed] The KNX signal remained on the air, however normal broadcasting halted and the chaos occurring in the studio, including a woman yelling in Spanish was audible over the air.[citation needed] Once the mainshock and first aftershock were over, Rogers calmly notified listeners that a major earthquake had occurred and began giving emergency safety instructions.[citation needed] Non-stop coverage of the 6.7-magnitude quake, which killed 57 and injured 1,500 people (the costliest earthquake in U.S. history), followed with six-minute traffic reports, a staple for the next 10 years.[citation needed]
- For many years, until 1995, KNX was the football and basketball flagship station for the University of Southern California. Chick Hearn, Tom Kelly and Pete Arbogast were the voices of Trojans football during that time.[citation needed] *Bill Seward, Rory Markas and longtime Los Angeles sportscaster Gil Stratton provided sports reports at 15 and 45-minutes past the hour along with Arbogast, Steve Grad and Fred Gallagher. Current KNX Sports announcers include Grad, Randy Kerdoon, Paul Olden, Chris Madsen and Joe Cala.[citation needed]
- KNX was also the home to CBS Radio and Westwood One sports, broadcasting the National Football League and Major League Baseball, including the World Series and the Super Bowl.[citation needed]
- In 2002, the year before David G. Hall took over, KNX had revenues of $36.9 million making it the No. 2 revenue-generating station in the market among AM outlets according to industry tracker BIA Financial Networks Inc.[citation needed]
[edit] See also...
[edit] External links
- KNX 1070
- KNX Station History, Historical Dates
- Farewell broadcast from Columbia Square
- KCBS-TV video, KNX Columbia Square sign-off
- KNX tour, on the site of Chief Engineer Paul Sakrison
- Query the FCC's AM station database for KNX
- Radio Locator Information on KNX
Categories: Articles lacking sources from July 2007 | All articles lacking sources | NPOV disputes from August 2007 | Articles that may contain original research since October 2007 | Wikipedia articles needing rewrite | Cleanup from October 2007 | Wikipedia articles with possible conflicts of interest | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since October 2007 | Articles with unsourced statements since November 2007 | CBS Radio stations | Radio stations in Los Angeles, California | Radio stations in San Diego, California | News and talk radio stations | Radio stations established in 1921
