History
Early years
The station's first license, with the sequentially assigned call letters of KFJF, was issued in July 1923 to the National Radio Manufacturing Company in Oklahoma City, for a transmitter power of 20 watts on 1190 kHz. [2] The station made its first broadcasts in early July. [3] [4] In early August, station founder Dudley Shaw and partner George H. Gabus announced that KFJF had begun a regular daily schedule of news and music each afternoon at 3:00. [5]
In late 1924 KFJF was licensed for 225 watts on 1150 kHz, [6] with the station claiming to have over 100,000 listeners. Power was increased to 500 watts in late 1925. [7] In June 1927 its frequency was changed to 1100 kHz. On November 11, 1928, as a result of the FRC's General Order 40, KFJF changed to 1470 kHz, a "high power regional" frequency, [8] and raised its power to 5,000 watts. In early 1930 KFJF, along with WKBW in Buffalo, New York, was reassigned to 1480 kHz, another "high power regional" frequency. [9]
KOMA
In 1932, the station changed its call letters to KOMA, [11] and moved its studios to the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. The station was purchased in 1938 by J.T. Griffin, who also owned the Griffin Grocery Company, which made condiments and baking products for distribution around the region.
In March 1941, KOMA shifted to its current "clear channel" frequency of 1520 kHz as a result of North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, with the provision that it and WKBW in Buffalo, as "Class I-B" stations, had to maintain directional antennas at night in order to mutually protect each other from interference. [12]
KOMA became an affiliate of the CBS Radio Network. It carried the CBS line up of dramas, comedies, news, sports, soap operas, game shows and big band broadcasts during the "Golden Age of Radio". KOMA began operating at 50,000 watts in early 1947. [13] [14] A new transmitter site was constructed around the northeast corner of Kelly and Britton where the present-day Oklahoma Centennial High School sits. KOMA-FM was granted a license on 105.9 MHz and went on the air in the 1948. [15] It mostly simulcast the AM station, but management didn't see much future in FM broadcasting and gave up the station by the late 1950s.
J.T. Griffin, along with Griffin's son John and his brother-in-law, were all involved in securing a construction permit from the Federal Communications Commission to start a television station. KWTV on channel 9 went on the air December 20, 1953, initially broadcasting from a shorter temporary tower on the studio grounds while the permanent tower was under construction. The new tower was at one time the tallest in the world, at 1,572 feet (479 meters). The call sign KWTV was chosen, instead of KOMA-TV, standing for World's Tallest Video.
Top 40 years
By the late 1950s, network programming was moving from radio to television. In May 1958, KOMA ended its long-time affiliation with CBS to become "an independent." (There was a brief affiliation with NBC Radio.) KOMA management decided to turn from serving adults to focusing on the growing youth market. The station became the third in Oklahoma City to flip to a Top 40 format, behind KOCY and WKY.
Todd Storz, one of the early pioneers in Top 40 radio, purchased KOMA in 1958. He added it to his list of hit radio stations, included WHB in Kansas City, KXOK in St. Louis, WTIX in New Orleans, WDGY in Minneapolis and WQAM in Miami.
Prior to the sale to Storz, a preliminary agreement was reached with Gordon McLendon in February 1958 to purchase the station. [16] Had the McLendon sale been approved, KOMA would have been co-owned with KLIF in Dallas and KILT in Houston. McLendon is widely credited for perfecting, during the 1950s and 1960s, the commercially successful Top 40 radio format created by Storz.
In 1961, KOMA became an automated station, but by 1964, returned to "live" programming.
Competition with WKY
Even with its 50,000-watt signal, KOMA faced a serious challenge during the 1960s and '70s from cross-town competitor WKY.
Many times WKY led the ratings in the Oklahoma City metro area, while KOMA was much better known outside the market, due to ita greater nighttime "skywave" coverage. In 1974, Billboard magazine named KOMA the medium market "station of the year" and Program Director J. Robert Dark was named Billboard's medium market Program Director of the year.
With little adjacent channel interference, KOMA had a tremendous reach with its 50,000 watt signal. In many areas of the plain states and the West, KOMA was the only Top 40 station serving some rural areas and small towns. At night, KOMA could be picked up in such far away locales as Denver, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Phoenix. Fans of rock 'n' roll and top 40 music living in North and South Dakota in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, frequently waited until evening to enjoy listening to music on KOMA from a great distance away.
Country, adult standards, oldies
KOMA's Top 40 era officially ended on September 12, 1980, when the station flipped to country music, and "KOMA Country" was born. The first song played was John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy". KOMA would remain in the Storz family until July 1, 1984, when it was purchased by Price Communications. By the 1980s, many country music listeners were shifting from AM to FM stations.
Price Communications kept KOMA's country format in place until September 1985, when it was determined that FM competition was too much to overcome. KOMA adopted the slogan "Forty Years of Favorites," and specialized in an adult standards format.
On September 1, 1988, Chicago-based Diamond Broadcasting, Inc. purchased KOMA along with sister station KRXO. On September 22, KOMA returned to its glory days by switching to an oldies format, bringing back the hits of the 1950s and 1960s to a familiar spot on the dial for those who grew up listening to the station.
The KOMA call letters made the transition to 92.5 FM on June 22, 1992, after Diamond Broadcasting entered a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Wilks Schwartz Broadcasting, which owned that FM station. It was the first agreement of its kind in the Oklahoma City area; listeners now could hear their favorite oldies on either the AM or FM station.
Ownership changes
In May 1998, it was announced that KOMA and KRXO were to be purchased by Renda Broadcasting. New state-of-the-art digital studios in northeast Oklahoma City were constructed for the arrival of the legendary station. At 3 p.m. on November 9, 1998, KOMA began broadcasting from the new location. The studios, ironically, once housed KOMA's rival, WKY. Danny Williams, Ronnie Kaye and Fred Hendrickson all worked in the building during the 1970s when they were disc jockeys for WKY.
After 37 years of broadcasting in Moore, KOMA's studios became vacant and remained unoccupied until 2016, when the building was razed. KOKC's tower and transmitter facility remain at the former site.
On July 15, 2012, Ty and Tony Tyler's "Tyler Media" entered into an agreement with Renda Broadcasting to purchase that company's Oklahoma City radio cluster (KMGL, KOMA, KRXO and KOKC) for $40 million. In accordance to limits imposed by the Federal Communications Commission on the number of radio stations a single broadcasting entity can own in a single market, Tyler sold KTLR and KKNG to WPA Radio for $1.6 million. [17] [18] [19] Tyler's purchase of KOKC and its sister stations was consummated on November 13, 2012.
Switch to talk and call letter change to KOKC
In 2002, the station added The Radio Factor with Fox News Channel star Bill O'Reilly as well as CBS Radio News at the top of the hour, fueling speculation about a move to a talk format. Later that year, KOMA's then parent company, Renda Broadcasting, announced it was discontinuing the simulcast with KOMA-FM. The oldies format would remain on the FM station while the AM station would switch to all-talk.
The launch date for the talk format was originally set for Monday, February 3, 2003. However, the disintegration of Space Shuttle Columbia on re-entry prompted the change two days earlier.
In an effort to distinguish the station from the oldies programming on KOMA-FM, KOMA changed its call letters to KOKC on August 27, 2004. The call letters had previously been used since the 1950s at KOKC 1490, a station based in Guthrie, Oklahoma. In 2004, KOKC switched its news network to ABC a short time later.
In February 2011, KOKC dropped its network affiliation with ABC, returning to CBS. During the 1930s and 1940s, CBS provided the station over 90% of its programming. The station has been affiliated with the network on several occasions, most recently when KOKC (then KOMA) flipped to a news-talk format in 2003. That relationship ended in 2004 in the wake of Rathergate, a disputed CBS news report involving the military service record of then President George W. Bush.
In September 2017, KOKC dropped CBS News once again, and changed network affiliation to Westwood One News. On August 30, 2020, KOKC returned to CBS after Westwood One News ended operations. In January 2020, the station laid off its local morning and afternoon hosts and began airing primarily syndicated talk programming. [20] This would last until November 2020, when prior local radio host Chad Alexander returned to the 4 PM weekday slot with a talk show.
OU Sooners
For more than 20 years, KOKC was the flagship station of University of Oklahoma sports, covering OU football, men's and women's basketball as well as baseball. Much of that programming has been shifted to KOKC's all-sports sister station, KRXO-FM.
March 2015 tornado
On March 25, 2015, two of the station's three towers were destroyed, one other was heavily damaged when a tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma. KOKC's programming was temporarily moved to sister station, KEBC. KOKC engineers were able to utilize the remaining standing, but damaged, tower to transmit the signal at reduced power. In February, 2022, KOKC applied to the FCC to redesign its 3-tower directional array and return to broadcasting at 50,000 watts full time. On April 22, 2022, KOKC was granted the construction permit for the redesign by the Federal Communications Commission. [21]
