Broadcast area | Fresno area |
---|---|
Frequency | 900 kHz |
Branding | KBIF 900 AM |
Programming | |
Language(s) | Hmong, Punjabi |
Format | World Ethnic |
Ownership | |
Owner | Overgaard Broadcasting LLC |
History | |
First air date | September 8, 1947 |
Former call signs |
|
Technical information [1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Facility ID | 9226 |
Class | B |
Power | 1,000 watts (daytime) 500 watts (nighttime) |
Transmitter coordinates | 36°41′30″N119°40′46″W / 36.69167°N 119.67944°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Webcast | Listen Live |
Website |
|
KBIF (900 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a World Ethnic format to the Fresno, California, United States, area. The station is currently owned by Cordell Overgaard, through licensee Overgaard Broadcasting LLC. [2]
KBIF broadcasts in the Hmong language from Monday to Friday and in Punjabi on Saturday and Sunday. [3]
The Radio Sanger Company, formed by four prominent local farmers, [4] was granted a construction permit by the Federal Communications Commission on March 12, 1947, to build a 1,000-watt, daytime-only radio station to serve nearby Sanger on 900 kHz. [5] The station was constructed at Centerville. [4] KSGN signed on September 8, 1947. [6]
The station was sold for the first time in 1950 to a group led by Earl J. Fenston, a Fresno attorney; by this time, it had established satellite studios at Fresno's Sequoia Hotel. [7] KSGN became KSJV on Easter Sunday 1951, a decision undertaken to reduce confusion with other local stations with similar call signs. [8] Fenston expanded his media holdings when he bought The Hanford Sentinel and KNGS radio in Hanford in 1952. [9] The FCC granted the Hanford radio station's sale on the condition that Fenston divest himself of KSJV in Sanger, prompting him to sell it to his son. [10]
In the end, the Fenstons decided to sell KSJV outright to another interest: John H. Poole, who owned radio station KBIG in Los Angeles and had already applied to start a television station on channel 53 in Fresno. [11] Foreign-language programs were removed from the schedule, and KBIG changed its call letters to KBIF at the start of April 1953, after having received permission two months prior. [5] [12] The station also moved all offices from Centerville to Fresno in the Warner Theatre [13] and then to another site in town. [14]
Poole sought to move KBIF closer to Fresno and secured approval to have the community of license changed accordingly, even as Poole's Fresno TV station, KBID, lasted just five months after failing to secure a network affiliation. [15] The move was completed in December 1954, when KBIF's new transmitter at North and Fowler avenues was activated and the station relocated its studios to the Hotel Californian. [16] [17]
Poole divested a majority stake in KBIF in 1957 to David Harris and Ethan Bernstein, two employees of Fresno station KMJ; [18] Bernstein then bought out Harris two years later. [19]
Bernstein and Poole sold KBIF in 1961 to Norwood Patterson, who owned San Francisco's KSAN radio. [20] The sale reunited KBIF with a planned television station, as Patterson held a construction permit for KICU-TV, a new television station to be licensed to Visalia. [20] Once the sale closed in February 1962, it also brought a change in programming to religious fare. [21] The new manager was Norwood's brother-in-law Richard Bott, [21] who months later moved to Kansas City and started what became the Bott Radio Network. [22]
In later years, Norwood's son, Norwood "Jim" Patterson, Jr., became KBIF's manager. [23] However, his father committed a crime that would ultimately lead to a change in control. Beginning in 1965, Patterson withheld taxes from his employees without depositing the money into a trust, as required by law; according to the indictment, he owed the federal government $141,000 in taxes and penalties, [24] He was convicted on 16 charges the next year [25] and, after two attempted appeals, served a 10-month jail sentence beginning in 1973. [26]
As a result of the jail sentence and financial woes, KBIF was placed into receivership in 1973. [5] The transfer caused Jim Patterson to lose his job at KBIF; in 1975, he would buy KIRV and relaunch it as a Christian station, later becoming a two-term mayor of Fresno and member of the California State Assembly. [27]
Cascade Broadcasting Corporation acquired KBIF in 1975, two years after the receivership began. [5] Cascade, based in Portland, also owned a Christian station in New Orleans and a Spanish-language station in San Jose; in 1986, KBIF began broadcasting after sunset for the first time. [28] Programs for specific ethnic groups became more prevalent on the Christian station's schedule. The first Punjabi shows began airing in 1987; [3] in the early 1990s, programs in Hmong began on KBIF, serving a community that had grown to 56,000 people by 2001. [29] The station developed an eclectic lineup of brokered religious and ethnic talk programs. [30]
In 1997, Cascade sold KBIF to Gore-Overgaard Broadcasting. [31] The new owners continued and expanded the ethnic formats, with all weekend hours given over to Punjabi output in 2003. [3]
In July 2024, Overgaard Broadcasting sold KBIF to Punjabi American Media for $130,000. Hatjot Khalsa and Balwinder Kaur Khalsa acquired the station’s tower site for $500,000. [32]
Fresno County, officially the County of Fresno, is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most populous city in California.
Kings County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. The population was 152,486 at the 2020 census. The county seat is Hanford.
Reedley is a city in Fresno County, California, United States. It is located in the San Joaquin Valley, 22 miles (35 km) east-southeast of Fresno, at an elevation of 348 feet (106 m). The population at the 2010 census was 24,194. Its chief economic source is agriculture, particularly fruit and vegetable cultivation and has thus dubbed itself "The World's Fruit Basket". Reedley is situated along the Kings River, downstream from Centerville.
KSEE is a television station in Fresno, California, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CBS affiliate KGPE. The two stations share studios on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fresno; KSEE's transmitter is located on Bear Mountain.
KFTV-DT is a television station licensed to Hanford, California, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language Univision network to the Fresno area. It is owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision alongside Porterville-licensed UniMás outlet KTFF-DT. The two stations share studios on Univision Plaza near the corner of North Palm and West Herndon avenues in northwestern Fresno; KFTV-DT's transmitter is located on Blue Ridge in rural northwestern Tulare County.
KVPT is a PBS member television station in Fresno, California, United States, owned by Valley Public Television, Inc. Its studios are located on Van Ness Avenue and Calaveras Street in downtown Fresno, and its transmitter is located on Bear Mountain, near Meadow Lakes, California. It is also broadcast in Bakersfield on translator K18HD-D.
KKDZ (1250 AM) is a radio station in Seattle, Washington, owned by New Media Broadcasting. It was first licensed in April 1922 as KTW, and is one of the oldest stations in the United States. It known as "Radio Punjabi", airing a radio format of music and talk in Punjabi and other South Asian languages. Most programming is simulcast on KZIZ in Pacific, serving the Tacoma area and KNTS in Seattle.
KFIG is a sports station in Fresno, California, United States.
James Norwood Patterson is an American politician serving in the California State Assembly. He is a Republican representing the 23rd district, which encompasses eastern Fresno County, including the cities of Fresno and Clovis, and a small slice of Tulare County. He is the former Mayor of Fresno, California.
Valley Public Radio now branded as KVPR is a public radio organization in Fresno, California, broadcasting programming from National Public Radio (NPR) and other public radio producers and distributors, as well as locally produced news, music, talk, and public affairs programs. Valley Public Radio consists of two FM stations–KVPR in Fresno and satellite station KPRX in Bakersfield (89.1 MHz).
KCBL is a broadcast radio station in the United States. Licensed to Fresno, California, KCBL is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. and has a sports format. Most of its programming originates from Fox Sports Radio, and KCBL also broadcasts play-by-play coverage of the Fresno State Bulldogs and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
KIGS is a commercial radio station licensed to Hanford, California, United States. It serves the Visalia-Tulare and Fresno radio markets. The station is owned by Charanjit Singh Batth, and it carries programming from "Radio Punjab." Radio Punjab is also heard in San Francisco, Seattle and other West Coast cities, airing Punjabi language music, talk and news for South Asian listeners.
KIRV is a commercial AM radio station broadcasting a Spanish-language Christian radio format. It is licensed to Fresno, California and is owned by Centro Cristiano Viva Abundante, Inc.
KXEX is a commercial AM radio station broadcasting a talk radio format branded as "TalkRadio 1550". Licensed to Fresno, California, the station serves the Fresno metropolitan area of Central California. The station is owned by Bendita Eucaristia Radio, Inc. The radio studios and offices are on West Olive Avenue in Fresno.
KFBT is a commercial radio station that is licensed to Hanford, California and serves the Visalia—Tulare—Hanford and Fresno areas. The station is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. and broadcasts a rhythmic adult contemporary format. The KFBT studios are located on Shaw Avenue in North Fresno, and the transmitter tower is south of Fresno near Caruthers.
The Hmong are a major ethnic group in Fresno, California. The Fresno Hmong community, along with that of Minneapolis/St. Paul, is one of the largest two urban U.S. Hmong communities. As of 1993 the Hmong were the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group in Fresno. As of 2010, there are 24,328 people of Hmong descent living in Fresno, making up 4.9% of the city's population.
KOAD-LP was a classic rock formatted broadcast radio station. The station was licensed to Hanford, California and serving Hanford, Lemoore, and Kings County in California. KOAD-LP was owned by Denise M. White and operated under the Hanford Youth Services, Inc.
The Mid Valley Times is a weekly newspaper, published on Thursdays, serving Reedley, Dinuba, Sanger, and surrounding communities in Fresno County and Tulare County, California. It was known as the Reedley Exponent until July, 2019, when it merged with the Dinuba Sentinel and the Sanger Herald. At the time of the merger, the Herald was the oldest business in Sanger. The Sanger Herald was founded in 1889, the Reedley Exponent was founded in 1891. It has a current circulation of 3,400 copies and it is edited by Jon Earnest.
KICU-TV was a television station on channel 43 in Visalia, California, United States. It operated from December 1961 until October 1968. The transmitter was located 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Badger at Eshom Point.
Fresno County Rural Transit Agency (FCRTA) is the primary bus agency providing intra- and inter-city routes for smaller cities and unincorporated rural communities in Fresno County, California since 1979, including Coalinga, Firebaugh, Fowler, Huron, Kerman, Kingsburg, Mendota, Orange Cove, Reedley, Sanger, San Joaquin, and Selma. FCRTA riders may transfer to Fresno Area Express service within the county seat of Fresno, and FCRTA has additional transfer points connecting to neighboring agencies in Fresno, Kings, and Tulare counties, including Clovis Transit Stageline, Kings Area Regional Transit, and Dinuba Connection.