Historic Los Angeles Hilltops

Every summer for the past several, Scott and I have sat down across a dinner table with a large pile of photographs. Most of the photos he has shown me have been taken in Southern California in April, either before or after his annual trip to the National Association of Broadcasters' annual convention (now the world's second-largest trade show). Usually at least a few have been of the sort to make me insanely jealous of what he was able to see that I never will. His response has always been, “Why don't you come? It's easy to get a free pass to the show floor.” Finally, this year, I gave in and made plans to spend a long April weekend in the desert.

We arrived separately at Las Vegas–McCarran International Airport (KLAS for the aviation geeks), and after some fooling with baggage we picked up our rental car and booked it down I-15 (or “the 15” if you're from SoCal). We stopped in Baker to admire the World's Tallest Thermometer-like Object (and get fantastic fresh strawberry shakes at the Mad Greek), had a late dinner in Apple Valley, and finally checked in to our hotel in Burbank (a rather unpleasant Quality Inn conveniently located next to railroad tracks serving the busy Metrolink Ventura and Antelope Valley lines).

Friday morning dawned, and we met our first of this day's four traveling companions. Dennis Gibson had stayed in the same hotel as we had. He's a weights-and-measures inspector in Santa Barbara County; like us, he is a facilities geek; he's also been involved in the SoCal radio history community. We then drove to the Glendale home of consulting engineer Burt Weiner, where Burt and Mike Tosch joined our party, and headed down local streets (under Burt's expert guidance) to the new CBS Radio studios on Wilshire Boulevard for an early appointment with CBS AM chief Paul Sakrison. After a tour of the new KNX (1070) and KFWB (980) studios, we drove out to the three-tower transmitter site of KLAC (570), the center tower of which is also used by KFWB.

At KLAC we were met by Rick Lucas, a radio-geek friend of Scott's from Rochester, by long-time Los Angeles engineer Marvin Collins, and by Clear Channel's John Paoli. After a good look around at both stations' transmitter buildings, Mike Tosch then took us up to his 1540 site, just a mile or two north of KLAC, which was upgraded last year to 37 kW nights by building six new towers (and later knocking down the three old towers).

From 1540 we headed back up to Glendale to meet KROQ-FM's Fred Holub for our tour of Verdugo Peak. With some creative seating, we were able to squeeze all seven of us into Rick's rental 4x4 and headed up to the top. We spent at least an hour there, admiring the unusual site (about which more later).

On the way down from Verdugo, we heard from Clear Channel's Mike Callaghan, who had some free time and was able to show us the Montecito Heights facility that was formerly home to the station on 1150, the erstwhile KRKD and KFSG. The building is still owned by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (about which more later), and Clear Channel still holds a lease on the towers—which may come in handy soon. Spanish Broadcasting's KXOL-FM (96.3), which was also once KFSG, still has a backup transmitter there as well.

Finally, we returned to Glendale to have dinner, dropped Burt and Dennis off, and booked it east on the 210 and north on the 15 to our first Nevada hotel, located in Primm on the California-Nevada line, the less said about which the better. We arrived there just after midnight and crashed.

Some station history

Normally, I would put the station history bits in photo captions related to each station. However, the nature and history of the sites we visited require some additional, long-form explanation.

We'll start, for reasons which will become clear, with KIEV (1500 Culver City). This construction permit is ultimately the descendant of a graveyarder in Burbank, KBLA (1490). The station started on October 10, 1951 (after the failure of an earlier station on that channel), and spent the next decade-and-change doing what graveyarders in small parts of big markets do. In the early 1960s, the owners decided to make a bold move, to 1500 kHz, with greatly increased power. Unfortunately for them, there aren't many good places to build a six-tower AM directional array in Burbank. So, like many of L.A.'s second-tier AMs, they ended up building the station on a rocky hilltop, the only sort of land cheaply available in the Los Angeles basin. On that hilltop, a 2,641-foot ridge known today as Verdugo Peak, they built six “flagpole”-style monopoles (which, although relatively short, still had to be painted and lit due to the proximity of Burbank Airport). KBLA in those days had a hit-radio format, but it was not particularly successful, and in June of 1967 it switched to country as KBBQ. This didn't work too well either, and the station went back to hits as KROQ on Labor Day weekend of 1972.

Meanwhile, the Pasadena Presbyterian Church had built an FM companion to its KPPC (1240 Pasadena). Little KPPC had only 100 watts, and was limited to operating Sundays and Wednesday nights; KPPC-FM came on the air as a full-time, commercial class-B FM on 106.7 in November of 1962, with a transmitter on the church building in downtown Pasadena, later moving to Flint Peak in Glendale. The church rapidly ran out of programming to fill KPPC-FM's program days, and while still operating from the basement of the church, it became one of the nation's first progressive rockers. Pasadena Presbyterian eventually sold KPPC and KPPC-FM to an outfit called National Science Network, which ran drug advertisements on an FM subcarrier, and didn't care how the stations were programmed at all. NSN ran into what today would be called “compliance issues” at the FCC, and was forced to sell its stations. The AM went to an outfit called “Universal Broadcasting”, but KPPC-FM was sold to the owners of KROQ and on closing promptly became KROQ-FM, which it still is today.

During the 1970s, KROQ and KROQ-FM lost buckets of money, and went silent a number of times. At some point, KROQ-FM moved from Flint Peak to Verdugo Peak, presumably as an economy measure. The AM 1500 signal never worked usefully; with nearby stations to protect on 1490 and 1510, the directional pattern was awful, and so was the ground conductivity atop Verdugo. The station even built a large cistern, and took to irrigating the ground field with the hope that it would improve the AM signal. KROQ-FM began its highly-successful run as an album rocker in 1978, when it was one of the first stations to play “new wave”. The AM limped along, changed calls to KRCK in 1985, and went silent.

KRCK handed in its license on September 19, 1986, but requested that the Commission renew a construction permit for 50 kW-D, 14 kW-N from a different site. The renewal was granted in December of 1988, and the station has persisted, unbuilt, by additional CP extensions and amendments ever since. The current owners, Ed Stolz's Royce International Broadcasting, have only recently filed another amendment to the CP (now under the callsign KIEV and with a new community of license), which may some day actually be built. KROQ-FM, meanwhile, became one of Infinity Broadcasting's first stations and has continued a successful run as a rock outlet to the present day under a succession of corporate names; it's currently owned by CBS.

KTLK (1150) and KXOL-FM (96.3) also trace their history to a church. KTLK is the descendant of two stations which formerly shared time, KFSG and KRKD. KFSG was started by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a pentecostalist church led by the flamboyant Aimee Semple McPherson. McPherson is said to be the first woman to have received a broadcasting license, in February, 1924; KFSG operated from a “T” antenna suspended between two self-supporting towers atop the church's Angelus Temple, 1100 Glendale Boulevard, in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles. The station that would become KRKD began in 1927 in Inglewood, but moved to its own flat-top antenna atop the Spring Arcade on Broadway in downtown L.A. KRKD-FM took to the air in 1948, with a new tower at 1050 Montecito Drive—not far from today's KLAC/KFWB and KMPC sites. I haven't been able to find any information that would say precisely when 1150 moved to Montecito, but it was definitely there by 1961, when Foursquare Gospel bought KRKD AM and FM and combined the 1150 operations under KRKD's license, and was probably there when the tower was built in 1948. By that time, KRKD had fairly-standard class-II facilities of 5 kW-D, 1 kW-N ND-U; the two additional towers that allowed 5-kW night service were not built until 1980.

In the late 1960s, KRKD-FM became KFSG, a callsign which it kept, under church ownership, until May 9, 2001, when it was sold to Spanish Broadcasting Systems and became “Sol” KXOL-FM. The church had already sold the AM in the early 1970s, although they kept ownership of the transmitter site (and still own it today). The new owners of the AM changed the callsign from KRKD to KIIS, which was not (contrary to common belief) meant to suggest “Kiss”, but rather the station's dial position, “115” on old analog radios.

Another thread of this story starts in 1948, when KFMV (94.7) took to the air. KFMV was a stand-alone station, owned by Union Broadcasting Corp. At the time, KFWB (980) was still owned by the Warner Brothers studio, but a couple of years later, in 1950, long-time KFWB general manager Harry Maizlish bought the station from Jack Warner. By late 1951, Maizlish had control of Union Broadcasting as well, and with it KFMV; in 1952 KFMV became KFWB-FM. KFWB was sold in 1956, but Maizlish kept the FM, renaming it KRHM after himself and his wife, Rose. Metromedia's KLAC-FM (102.7) signed on in March of 1961. In 1967, the stations swapped facilities, with KLAC-FM becoming KMET at the same time, soon developing into an album-rock powerhouse. KMET lasted until Valentine's Day, 1987, when it became new age “The Wave”, first as KTMV-FM and later that year under its current callsign, KTWV. Two years later, Westinghouse bought Legacy Communications, which then owned all of the former Metromedia FMs, bringing it under common “Group W” ownership with KFWB. Meanwhile, KRHM became automated top-40 KKDJ in April, 1971; this lasted until 1975. The station's owners at the time, Pacific and Southern Company, merged into Combined Communications in 1975; Combined bought (or perhaps had already owned, my references are unclear) KIIS and flipped 102.7 to KIIS-FM with an on-air “marriage”.

Long-time readers of the FCC files may recognize the name “Pacific and Southern Company” as the name under which Gannett operates its broadcast properties (much as The New York Times had “Interstate Broadcasting Company”). Gannett didn't acquire Combined, and thus P&S, until 1978. It was about that time that KIIS dropped the simulcast with KIIS-FM and struck out on its own with religious programming as KPRZ. In 1984, the station was briefly used to warehouse the KUSA calls, a Gannett favorite, in advance of KBTV (9 Denver) becoming KUSA-TV on March 19. (In addition to being used on TV in Denver, the calls were also parked on the former KSD [550 St. Louis] for nine years.) KUSA (1150 Los Angeles) returned to KPRZ on that date, and later in 1984 went back to KIIS, reflecting the return of the simulcast with KIIS-FM.

Gannett would eventually sell its radio properties; KIIS and KIIS-FM ended up with Jacor, one of the ancestors of today's Clear Channel. KIIS-FM has continued its highly successful CHR format to this day, and thanks to a foresightful Gannett lawyer, Clear Channel today owns a federal trademark for “Kiss” brand radio stations. The AM continued to simulcast the FM until 1997, when it switched to a simulcast of all-sports XETRA (690 Tijuana) under the callsign KXTA. The simulcast was soon broken, as Los Angeles and San Diego are separate markets for sports rights. KXTA acquired the rights to L.A. Dodgers baseball games, under the condition that the station had to be upgraded to 50 kW full-time. KXTA moved from the Montecito Heights site it had called home for at least forty years to a diplex with KTNQ (1020 Los Angeles) in record time, and was on the air with the new 50-kW signal in time for the first pitch. Meanwhile, Clear Channel kept the lease up at Montecito; although much of the old 1150 equipment has now been removed, the towers still stand.

Now to follow up on the KXOL-FM side of the story: When Spanish bought KFSG from the Church of the Foursquare Gospel, one of the very first things they needed to do was to move the station to a better transmitter site. Montecito Heights, although an excellent transmitter site in 1948 with clear line-of-sight to downtown Los Angeles and suburbs to the south and east, is shadowed from the fast-growing San Fernando Valley. In order to serve this area, KXOL-FM would have to move north and west, but the station also had serious spacing issues in those directions, necessitating a directional antenna. Accepting this restriction, Spanish Broadcasting signed a lease on the Flint Peak tower owned by Emmis Communications. (Montecito remained, and remains, a licensed backup location.) The Flint Peak lease, however, contained a non-competition clause, and when Spanish changed KXOL-FM's format to a Spanish-language urban format (known in the trade as “Hurban”), Emmis enforced their non-compete and evicted 96.3 from the tower. In need of an emergency transmitter site, Spanish looked to the next ridge over in Glendale, and found that it was being used as an FM site by their 10% shareholder, CBS. That site was, of course, Verdugo Peak, and KXOL-FM's engineers quickly obtained Special Temporary Authority to attach their antenna to one of the old 1500 monopoles. That arrangement is in the process of being regularized.

The station now known as KMPC adopted that callsign in 2000. The calls had previously been on a little AM in Abilene, Texas, but for many years before that, KMPC was what is now ESPN Radio outlet KSPN (710 Los Angeles), owned by Gene Autry's Golden West Broadcasting. (It goes to show that you can't keep a good L.A. callsign down: the KSPN callsign was previously on 1110 in Pasadena, now KDIS but for years KRLA. The current KRLA is the former KIEV in Glendale. The current KIEV is, as mentioned previously, the former KROQ, which was originally KBLA. The current KBLA was previously KDAY, and that callsign is now on a class-A FM in Redondo Beach that was briefly KFSG and before that KFOX, which in turn is now on the 1650 in Torrance, about which an entire article could be written.)

Getting back to the current KMPC: it was originally KPOL (a heritage L.A. callsign that really is gone—it's now on a religious LPFM in Oregon) and signed on in 1953. Originally it operated with 10 kW-D, DA-D, with a two-tower array; by the time Marvin Collins joined the station in 1957, a third tower had been built to allow full-time operation with 10 kW-U DA-2. In the early 1960s, KPOL was able to increase day power to 50 kW (Marv recalls helping to install the new GE transmitter) while retaining the existing tower configuration. By 1958, KPOL-FM was on the air at 93.9 MHz. Formatically, KPOL started out playing polkas, and spent many years as one of L.A.'s numerous Beautiful Music stations. In 1978, KPOL-FM became KZLA, and a year later the AM followed suit. In 1984, the AM was sold off to the newly-formed Spanish Broadcasting System and became KSKQ (“La Super K-Q”, as on New York-market sister station WSKQ [620 Newark, N.J.]). It became KXED in 1992, and KXMG in 1996, still under SBS ownership, before becoming KCTD in a deal that sent it and 620 Newark to the Chicago-based One-on-One Sports network in 1997. (KZLA-FM, meanwhile, kept its country format through a succession of owners and is now an Emmis property.) One-on-One merged with The Sporting News newspaper and came under the control of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2001.

Revised 2008-10-01 to reflect new information about the early history of 94.7.

References

The Los Angeles market is a bit of uncharted territory for me. Although I had been there twice before, and read a bit about it, I didn't know a lot about the history (and almost nothing of what is written above). I used the following references, among others, in reconstructing this history: