KKZZ
| City | Port Hueneme, California |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area |
Ventura County, California Santa Barbara County, California |
| Branding | La Super K 1520 AM |
| Frequency | 1520 kHz |
| First air date | 1958 (as KACY) |
| Format | Regional Mexican |
| Power |
10,000 watts day 1,000 watts night |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 25091 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 34°10′2.00″N 119°8′2.00″W / 34.1672222°N 119.1338889°W |
| Former callsigns |
KACY (1958-1984) KTRO (1984-1999) KVTA (1999-2013) KUNX (2013-2015) KKZZ (2015-Present) |
| Owner | Gold Coast Broadcasting LLC |
| Sister stations | KCAQ, KFYV, KOCP, KUNX, KVTA |
KKZZ (1520 kHz) is an AM radio station licensed to Port Hueneme, in Ventura County, California. The station is owned by Gold Coast Broadcasting LLC. KKZZ airs a Regional Mexican format as "La Super K 1520 AM". With a 10,000 Watt signal, KKZZ can be heard along the entire Southern California Coast in the daytime. But due to other dominant stations on 1520 kHz, a clear channel frequency, KKZZ must reduce power to 1000 watts at night.
History
During the 1960s and '70s, the station was known by the call letters KACY. It was a top-40 format station that used the slogan "Boss of the Beach." It was the dominant Top-40 station in the region, often co-sponsoring concerts (most in Santa Barbara) with local promoter Jim Salzer. Several KACY disc jockeys went on to greater prominence in their subsequent careers, including TV host Bob Eubanks and radio programmer Bill Tanner. Shotgun Tom Kelly was also heard on KACY in the early '70s, before moving to major markets like San Diego (appearing on KGB, KCBQ) and Los Angeles (where he is currently heard on KRTH).
During its KACY era, the station increased daytime power to 50,000 watts. More recently, the daytime power was rolled back to the previous 10,000 watts. The nighttime power remains unchanged at 1,000 watts.
The station has been operating at reduced power since 2011 under Special Temporary Authority (STA) from the FCC due to engineering problems; on April 15 of that year the station discovered one of the monitoring points for their antenna system had gone over the limit prescribed in their license, and they reduced nighttime power to 648 watts while they investigated the cause. However, before they could discover and correct the problem, a farmer plowing on land adjacent to the KVTA transmitter site mistakenly crossed a boundary and tore up at least half of the ground wiring for one of the three towers used for KVTA's daytime antenna pattern. This required them to reduce daytime power to 4,600 watts and nighttime power further, to 136 watts. As of January 8, 2013, they had not completed repairs and requested an extension of the STA.[1]
From 1984 until 1999, the station had a Spanish-language format as "Radio Tiro" under the call letters KTRO. During that period, instead of jingles, the sound effect of a pistol firing was used out of commercial breaks into music ("tiro" being the Spanish word for "bullet").
On August 2, 2012, two hosts of brokered-time real estate shows that were broadcast on KVTA, Kenneth A. Powell and Kathryn "Katie" Rose, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for perpetrating a Ponzi-scheme type of fraud. Radio stations that air programming of this sort are usually held harmless if the broadcasters who buy time on their facilities are not directly tied to ownership.
In February 2013, KUNX/1590 began a simulcast of KVTA, then on 1520, and the station's website header graphic was modified to show this change.[2] In late February, 2013 the station started announcing that all programs would be moving to 1590 because "it has a better signal" and that listeners should reprogram presets to said frequency. On March 6, 2013, the call letters between KVTA and KUNX were exchanged, with the KVTA call sign and Talk format moving to 1590 and the KUNX call letters on 1520.
On January 21, 2015, KUNX went silent (off the air). On February 2, 2015, KUNX changed call signs to KKZZ.
On January 21, 2016 KKZZ Returned to the air as a Regional Mexican Format as La Super K 1520 AM after a year of being off the air.
References
External links
- Query the FCC's AM station database for KKZZ
- Radio-Locator Information on KKZZ
- Query Nielsen Audio's AM station database for KKZZ
- FCC History Cards for KKZZ
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