KFAN (AM) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

See also KFXN-FM

KTCN (1130 AM

AM broadcasting

AM broadcasting is the process of radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation. AM was the first method of impressing sound on a radio signal and is still widely used today. Commercial and public AM broadcasting is carried out in the medium wave band world wide, and on long wave and short wave...

)—branded News/Talk 1130—is a commercial radio station

Radio station

Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

, broadcasting a conservative news/talk

Talk radio

Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...

format. The station is owned by Clear Channel Communications

Clear Channel Communications

Clear Channel Communications, Inc. is an American media conglomerate company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It was founded in 1972 by Lowry Mays and Red McCombs, and was taken private by Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP in a leveraged buyout in 2008...

, and serves the Twin Cities market. KTCN's main studios are in St. Louis Park.

Operated by Clear Channel Communications

Clear Channel Communications

, the station is the oldest continuously operating station in the state, dating to December 23, 1923 when Dr. George W. Young signed on with the call letters KFMT. This claim, however, is based on a technicality and is really only due to older longtime Minneapolis broadcaster WCCO having to sign off for two months due to an ownership transition in the early 1920s.

At midnight on August 15, 2011, Clear Channel swapped the formats of KFAN

KFAN (AM)

* See also KFXN-FMKTCN —branded News/Talk 1130—is a commercial radio station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, broadcasting a conservative news/talk format. The station is owned by Clear Channel Communications, and serves the Twin Cities market. KTCN's main studios are in St...

(1130 AM

AM broadcasting

), and 100.3 FM's former conservative news/talk

Talk radio

format KTLK-FM. A new call sign, KTCN, was reserved for the station, replacing KFAN that August 31 (that callsign now exists on a repeater for KFXN on the 1250 kHz facility in Rochester, Minnesota

Rochester, Minnesota

Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on both banks of the Zumbro River, The city has a population of 106,769 according to the 2010 United States Census, making it Minnesota's third-largest city and the largest outside of the...

History

Dr. Young first operated the station from his house in north Minneapolis at 2219 Bryant Ave. N., cycling through the names WHAT, WGWY ("W-George W. Young"), and finally WDGY ("W-Dr. George Young") in the next two years until being chastised by the government for changing too frequently. The station kept the WDGY calls until 1991. WDGY operated on eight frequencies by the time it settled on 1180 AM. It made its final move to 1130 AM in 1941 as required by the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement

North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement

The North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement, usually referred to as NARBA, is a treaty that took effect in March 1941 and set out the bandplan and interference rules for mediumwave AM broadcasting in North America. Although mostly replaced by other agreements in the 1980s, the basic bandplan...

(NARBA) under which most American, Canadian and Mexican AM radio stations changed frequencies. In 1942, the station gained approval to broadcast at night.

The station shared time with at least four local stations, including WRHM

WWTC

WWTC is a long-standing radio station serving the Twin Cities region. Despite its up-and-down history, the station spawned two of the area's major television stations and had some very innovative and unusual periods in its history...

and WCAL

KCMP

-WCAL:The station began with physics experiments in 1918 when five students and a professor built a small radio transmitter at St. Olaf College. Using a wire antenna strung between the campus chapel and the college's "Old Main" , signals from these experiments were picked up as far away as New...

during periods of 1927. Subsequent to his home as the station's base, Young located the station's studios at his storefront at 909 West Broadway in Minneapolis, the West Hotel on Hennepin at 5th Street, the Nicollet Hotel on Nicollet Avenue at Washington Avenue (beginning in 1938 in WCCO's space after WCCO moved to its new building on 2nd Avenue) and the Builders Exchange at 609 S. 2nd Avenue. Transmitter sites are known to have been at Young's house, at the Broadway address and from 1927 to 1949 at Superior Boulevard and Falvey Cross Road in St. Louis Park on the grounds of a fox farm; the site is known now as I-394 at Louisiana Ave. Following Dr. Young's death on April 27, 1945, studio locations included Bloomington (two locations), 611 Frontenac Place in St. Paul and, since 2004, the current Clear Channel consolidated offices in St. Louis Park at 1600 Utica Avenue. The transmitter site moved in 1949 to Bloomington at a site that would within a decade overlook I-35W, using a vast 9-tower array.

Minnesota native George Putnam

George Putnam (newsman)

George Putnam was an American television news reporter and talk show host based in Los Angeles. He was known for his catchy phrase "See ya at ten, see ya then" intro prior to a broadcast of the news.-Biography:...

began his broadcasting career at WDGY in 1934. Putnam later gained fame as a Los Angeles television news anchor and talk show host.

Television

In 1933, Dr. Young was granted a license for W9XAT, an experimental mechanical television

Mechanical television

Mechanical television was a broadcast television system that used mechanical or electromechanical devices to capture and display video images. However, the images themselves were usually transmitted electronically and via radio waves...

station. It is believed that the first transmission of the 120- or 125-line system—probably the first telecast in Minnesota—occurred on August 4 of that year, featuring a handshake between WDGY station personality Clellan Card

Clellan Card

Clellan Card was a noted on-air personality at the Minnesota station WCCO best-known for the dozen years where he played Axel Torgeson on the local children's show Axel and His Dog. Card was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and spent most of his life in the Twin Cities region, although he attended...

and Minneapolis

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

mayor William Kunze. The station pushed the technological limits of the day and provided a lot of interesting exercises for WDGY engineers, but Dr. Young never got into regular broadcasts. The license for that station expired in 1938, partly because mechanical television development was heavily discouraged by that point. After 64 years of dormancy, an amateur radio

Amateur radio

Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...

group in the area acquired the W9XAT call sign in 2002 with the intention of using it for mechanical and narrow-bandwidth TV

Narrow-bandwidth television

Narrow-bandwidth television is a type of television designed to fit into a low-bandwidth channel, in the extreme case using amateur radio voice frequency channels that only range up to a few kilohertz...

experiments. Nine years after the 1945 death of Dr. Young, WDGY in 1954 flirted with modern TV, applying for channel 9

KMSP-TV

KMSP-TV, channel 9, is the Fox-owned-and-operated television station serving the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota designated market area, owned in a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate WFTC...

in the Twin Cities. Also applying were competitors WLOL and KEYD

KDIZ

KDIZ is a radio station serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It is owned by The Walt Disney Company, and airs the Radio Disney radio network.-History:...

. However, WDGY and WLOL withdrew their applications at the last minute and the new station was awarded to KEYD, and the station went on-air in January, 1955.

Top 40

The station was one of the first stations in the country to program rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

music in a top 40 format in 1956. It was then owned by Todd Storz

Todd Storz

Robert Todd Storz is credited with being the father of the Top 40 radio format, which Gordon McLendon then went on to perfect with great commercial success during the 1950s and 1960s.-Biography:...

, one of the pioneers in programming to the baby boom generation with music that theretofor had been rarely heard on "white" radio stations. Storz's stations were heavy on promotion, headline-grabbing contests, and high profile dee-jays (usually using echo-chamber microphones). Other Twin Cities station owners resented the attention WDGY received, but soon they too jumped on the top-40 bandwagon. Later they admitted that the Todd Storz they often disparaged very well may have saved radio at a time when television was stealing its audience.

WDGY gained the (perhaps unfortunate) nickname Weegee after a time. By the 1960s, the station didn't use the name itself, but the name stuck among people in the radio industry for many years to come. From about 1955 to 1977, the station played popular music and was one of the most popular stations in the area, primarily competing for music listeners with KSTP 1500 and KDWB

KDWB

KDWB-FM is an American commercial radio station broadcasting in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, the radio format was known for over fifty years as a major contemporary hit radio Top 40 pop music outlet. Its transmitter is located in Shoreview, Minnesota. It broadcasts in 5.1 cinema-quality...

630, though WCCO 830 was the major force of the day with a mixture of music, talk, and farm reports.

Later Years as WDGY

WDGY station changed to a country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

format in September 1977, around the time when most music stations began shifting onto the FM band. In 1982, its sister FM station, KEEY

KEEY

KEEY-FM is a country music formatted radio station serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul market of Minnesota. It is the most popular country station in the area, and often comes in just below area powerhouses KQRS-FM and WCCO in overall ratings. The station is owned by Clear Channel Communications...

, flipped to a country format.

KFAN

See also KFXN-FM

The country format continued until 1989, when it became "News Talk 1130, WDGY". Just prior to this, WDGY became the inaugural flagship affiliate for the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves

Minnesota Timberwolves

The Minnesota Timberwolves are an American professional basketball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They play in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association . Founded in 1989, the team is currently owned by Glen Taylor...

NBA team. The talk format gradually morphed into a sports talk format, and the calls were changed to KFAN in 1991. Following this change, the WDGY call letters were adopted by KDWB for the 630 kHz frequency.

More recently, KFAN experienced severe storm damage in April 2004 at its transmission site, when four out of nine towers at its directional array

Directional array

In broadcast engineering, directional array refers to an antenna array arranged such that the superposition of the electromagnetic waves produce a predictable electromagnetic field...

in Credit River Township

Credit River Township, Minnesota

Credit River Township is a township in Scott County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,895 at the 2000 census. The Credit River flows northwardly through the township.-Geography:...

(near Prior Lake, Minnesota

Prior Lake, Minnesota

In 2007, there are an estimated 19,319 residents. The population density was 1,207 people per square mile . There were 5,791 housing units at an average density of 428.9 per square mile . The racial makeup of the city was 94.5% White, 0.8% African American, 2.1% Native American, 0.9% Asian, 0.3%...

) were blown down.

On August 22, 2010, KFAN's programming began simulcasting on 103.7 FM via K279AZ, a translator station atop the IDS Center

IDS Center

The IDS Center is the tallest building in the state of Minnesota at 792 feet . Opened in 1974 as the IDS Centre, it stood 775 feet 6 inches , though a 16-foot garage for window washing equipment was added at a later date...

previously owned by Educational Media Foundation

Educational Media Foundation

Educational Media Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that operates the K-LOVE and Air 1 radio networks. EMF is based in Rocklin, California....

, which used the signal to broadcast its K-LOVE

K-LOVE

K-LOVE is a Contemporary Christian music radio programming service in the United States operated by the Educational Media Foundation. As of January 2011, K-LOVE's programming is carried on over 440 FM stations and translators in 45 states. K-LOVE claims an audience of 250,000 people each week via...

network prior to the translator's move from Cottage Grove. Within weeks of the upgrade, however, complaints were filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

(FCC) by listeners of KLZZ

KLZZ

KLZZ "103.7 The Loon" is a radio station in St. Cloud, Minnesota airing a classic rock format. The station is owned by Townsquare Media.The station's studios, along with Townsquare's other St. Cloud stations, are located at 640 Lincoln Avenue SE, on St. Cloud's east side.-External links:*...

("the Loon") in St. Cloud. Because translators are a secondary service, any interference issues must be immediately addressed and either be fixed or the translator must leave the air. As a result of the interference complaints, on September 24, K279AZ's power was significantly reduced and it moved to 103.5 under Special Temporary Authority from the FCC. The low-power signal is intended primarily for commuters within the 494

Interstate 494

Interstate 494 is a loop route making up part of a beltway of Interstate 94, circling through the southern and western portions of the Minneapolis – Saint Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota...

/694

Interstate 694

Interstate 694 is an east–west auxiliary Interstate Highway located in the Minneapolis – Saint Paul metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The western terminus of the route is at its junction with Interstate 94 and Interstate 494 in Maple Grove...

beltway to take advantage of the stronger signal reception of a car stereo. K279AZ broadcasts KFAN by translating KTLK-FM

KTLK-FM

KFXN-FM 100.3 —branded 100.3 FM KFAN: The Fan—is a commercial radio station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, broadcasting a sports talk format. The station is owned by Clear Channel Communications, and serves the Twin Cities market. KFXN-FM's transmitter is located in the suburb of Shoreview on...

's HD Radio

HD Radio

HD Radio, which originally stood for "Hybrid Digital", is the trademark for iBiquity's in-band on-channel digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data via a digital signal in conjunction with their analog signals...

HD2 subchannel of KFAN's programming, which is allowed per FCC regulations.

On August 8, 2011, Clear Channel announced a two-way frequency swap that would move KTLK-FM's talk format to 1130 AM and a translator at 102.5 FM, while the sports format of KFAN would move to 100.3 FM, which took effect Monday, August 15th, 2011. The low-power signal at 103.5 FM and the HD2 subchannel at 100.3 FM both underwent the same format swap as did 1130 AM. The company planned to simulcast the talk station's signal on FM translator 102.5 FM, but has been delayed in seeking FCC

Federal Communications Commission

approval.

KTLK-FM

In 2006, Clear Channel decided to launch a news/talk

Talk radio

station in the Twin Cities, in order to take advantage of its Premiere Radio Networks

Premiere Radio Networks

Premiere Networks is an American radio network. It is the largest syndication company in the United States based on popularity of programming...

syndication arm and the company's recent launch of FOX News Radio. Clear Channel denied renewal of Premier synidcated shows such as Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American radio talk show host, conservative political commentator, and an opinion leader in American conservatism. He hosts The Rush Limbaugh Show which is aired throughout the U.S. on Premiere Radio Networks and is the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United...

, who was a local longtime affiliate of KSTP for the new station. This resulted in KSTP flipping to sports talk. Having no AM stations in the market on which they could run a news/talk format (KFAN

KFAN (AM)

was already highly successful with its sports/talk format, and KFXN possessed too weak a signal), Clear Channel decided to put a talk format on one of its FM signals. The company had experienced success with the introduction of news/talk programming on one of its Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

FM stations, WPGB

WPGB

WPGB is a conservative talk radio station based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Owned by Clear Channel Communications, the station broadcasts at 104.7 MHz with an ERP of 13 kW...

. More recently, Clear Channel has launched FM news/talk stations in other markets.

On January 2, 2006, the company switched KJZI (100.3 FM) to talk, becoming the second commercial FM talk station in the area after female-oriented talk station WFMP. The new call letters were KTLK-FM, and they obtained the local syndication rights to Limbaugh's and later Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity is an American radio and television host, author, and conservative political commentator. He is the host of The Sean Hannity Show, a nationally syndicated talk radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. Hannity also hosts a cable news show, Hannity,...

's radio programs from KSTP. A mix of local and syndicated hosts such as Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck

Glenn Edward Lee Beck is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks...

and Laura Ingraham currently fill out the rest of KTLK's schedule, including former KSTP host Jason Lewis

Jason Lewis (radio host)

Jason Lewis is an American radio talk show host and political commentator. His show is currently syndicated nationally on the Genesis Communications Network. His radio show was previously broadcast locally for 10 years on KSTP in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota, until Lewis...

and paranormal talk show Darkness Radio. The station has also resumed carrying Vikings football broadcasts. (There is an AM News/Talk station in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

that also uses the KTLK call sign. While two stations on different bands and/or in different cities may use the same call sign, they must be owned by the same company — in this case, Clear Channel is also the owner of the Los Angeles KTLK.)

In the spring of 2008, former KTLK news director, Jeff Monosso, was honored with U.S. Congressional recognition for his reporting on the 35W Bridge collapse. He and host, Jason Lewis, were also honored by the Minnesota Associated Press for best spot news coverage.

Initially, the new talk station was not much of a ratings success, but over time, KTLK began to see ratings growth in the Metro area.

External links

News/Talk 1130 website

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Television

Top 40

Later Years as WDGY

KFAN

KTLK-FM

See Also

External links