 | |
| Broadcast area | Minneapolis–Saint Paul |
|---|---|
| Frequency | 1130kHz |
| Branding | News/Talk AM 1130 and FM 103.5 |
| Programming | |
| Format | Conservative Talk |
| Network | Fox News Radio |
| Affiliations | |
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
|
| History | |
First air date | December 23, 1923; 101 years ago (1923-12-23) |
Former call signs |
|
Former frequencies |
|
Call sign meaning | "Talk" |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 59961 |
| Class | B |
| Power |
|
Transmitter coordinates | 44°38′48″N93°23′31″W / 44.64667°N 93.39194°W /44.64667; -93.39194 |
| Translator | 103.5 K278BP (Cottage Grove) |
| Repeater | 100.3 KFXN-HD2 (Minneapolis) |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | twincitiesnewstalk |
KTLK (1130kHz) – brandedNews/Talk AM 1130 and FM 103.5 – is acommercialradio stationlicensed toMinneapolis, Minnesota. It broadcasts aconservative talkradio format to theTwin Citiesradio market and is owned byiHeartMedia, Inc. Thestudios are on Utica Avenue South inSt. Louis Park.
By day, KTLK is powered at the maximum for AM stations, 50,000watts, and uses adirectional antenna at all times. At night, to avoid interference with other stations on1130 AM, it reduces power to 25,000 watts and uses a nine-tower array. Thetransmitter is on Flag Trail at Prairie Hills Lane inPrior Lake.[2] Programming is also heard on 175-wattFM translatorK278BP at 103.5MHz inCottage Grove.[3] It is alsosimulcast over anHD Radiosubchannel of 100.3KFXN-FM.
KTLK is the second-oldest continuously operating station inMinnesota. Itsigned on the air on December 23, 1923; 101 years ago (December 23, 1923). Dr. George W. Young was the founder of the station, first using the sequentially assignedcall sign KFMT. (KUOM, Minnesota's oldest station, began operation in 1922.)
Dr. Young first operated the station from his house in Minneapolis at 2219 Bryant Ave. North, cycling through other call signs 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 call letters until 1991. WDGY operated on eight frequencies over its early years.[4] In the 1930s, it was heard on1180 AM, transmitting with 5,000watts by day and 1,000 watts at night.[5] The station shared time with at least four local stations, includingWRHM andWCAL during its early years.
After moving the station out of his home, Young located the studios at several locations: his storefront at909 West Broadway in Minneapolis, the West Hotel on Hennepin at 5th Street and 609 South Second Avenue. Minnesota nativeGeorge Putnam began his broadcasting career at WDGY in 1934. Putnam later gained fame as a Los Angeles television news anchor and talk show host. In 1938, WDGY relocated its studios to theNicollet Hotel at Washington Avenue and Nicollet Avenue after WCCO had vacated the facility for new studios at Second Avenue South and Seventh Street.
WDGY made its final frequency move, to 1130 AM, in 1941 as required by theNorth American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA), under which most American, Canadian and Mexican AM radio stations changed frequencies.[6] Transmitter sites are known to have been at Young's house, at the Broadway address, and from 1927 to 1949 at Superior Boulevard (aka Wayzata Boulevard,Highway 12) and Falvey Cross Road in St. Louis Park on the grounds of a fox farm. Dr. Young died on April 27, 1945.[7]
Later studio locations included Bloomington (two locations), 611 Frontenac Place in St. Paul and, in 2004 at theClear Channel Communications consolidated offices in St. Louis Park at 1600 Utica Avenue. The transmitter site moved in 1949 toBloomington, at a site that would within a decade overlookI-35W, using a nine-tower array covering several acres.
In 1933, Dr. Young was granted a license for W9XAT, an experimentalmechanical television station that is credited with the first telecast in Minnesota. It is believed that the first transmission of the 45-line system occurred on August 4 of that year, featuring a handshake between WDGY station personalityClellan Card and Minneapolis mayorWilliam Kunze. Later on, 120- or 125-line tests were done on theVHF band. The station pushed the technological limits of mechanical scanning and provided a lot of interesting exercises for WDGY engineers, but Dr. Young never got into regular broadcasts, as he did not want attention from radio hobbyists. The license for W9XAT expired in 1938, partly because mechanical television development was discouraged by that point. After 64 years of dormancy, anamateur radio group in the area acquired the W9XAT call sign in 2002 with the intention of using it for mechanical andnarrow-bandwidth TV experiments.
Nine years after the 1945 death of Dr. Young, WDGY in 1954 flirted with modern TV, applying for Channel 9 in the Twin Cities. Also applying were competing radio stationsWLOL andKEYD. WDGY and WLOL withdrew their applications at the last minute and the new station was awarded to KEYD, going on the air in January 1955, today’sKMSP-TV.
The station was one of the first stations in the country to programrock and roll music full-time, starting aTop 40 format in 1956. It was then owned byTodd Storz, one of the pioneers in programming to thebaby boom generation with some of its music rarely heard on "white" radio stations. Storz's stations were heavy on promotion, headline-grabbing contests, and high-profiledisc jockeys, using echo-chamber voice processing. Other Twin Cities station owners resented the attention WDGY received, but several jumped on the Top 40 bandwagon. Storz is credited with energizing radio at a time when network programming was moving to television.
WDGY gained the nicknameWeegee after a time, a sounding out of the call letters. By the 1960s, the station didn't use the name itself, but the name stuck among people in the radio industry. From about 1955 to 1977, WDGY competed for youthful listeners with AM stationsKSTP andKDWB, thoughWCCO remained the top station in the Twin Cities, with a mixture ofmiddle of the road music (MOR), talk, news, sports and farm reports.
As the 1970s ended, young listeners began switching to theFM band to hear contemporary music. That prompted WDGY to change to acountry music format on September 2, 1977.[8] The only other stations playing country in Minneapolis were KTCR AM and FM (nowKFXN andKTCZ). The AM was adaytimer powered at only 500 watts, while the FM's tower was only 150 feet tall, limiting both stations in coverage area.
In 1982, WDGY's sister FM station,KEEY, flipped to a country format as well. The AM station specialized in personality and several decades of country music, while the FM kept chatter to a minimum and played mostly contemporary country hits. In 1984, WDGY and KEEY were acquired by theMalrite Communications Group.
The country format continued until April 16, 1990, when the station became "News Talk 1130, WDGY."[9][10][11] Just prior to this, WDGY became the inauguralflagship station for the expansionMinnesota TimberwolvesNBA team. The talk format gradually added more sports programming until the station switched to full-timesports talk programming on August 1, 1991.[12] With the switch, the station adopted the KFAN call letters.[13] Following this change, the WDGY call letters were moved to the 630 kHz frequency, which was formerly KDWB (nowWREY).[14] In 2000, KFAN and KEEY were acquired byClear Channel Communications, the forerunner to current owner iHeartMedia.[15]
KFAN experienced severe storm damage in April 2004 at its transmission site, when four of the nine towers at itsdirectional array inCredit River Township (nearPrior Lake, Minnesota) fell down.
On August 22, 2010, KFAN's programming begansimulcasting on 103.7 FM usingtranslator station K279AZ. The translator broadcast from a tower atop theIDS Center. It previously was owned by theEducational Media Foundation, which used the signal to broadcast itsK-LOVEChristian contemporary network prior to the translator's move fromCottage Grove.
However, within weeks of the upgrade the complaints were filed with theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) by listeners ofKLZZ ("the Loon") in St. Cloud, also at 103.7 FM. Because translators are a secondary service, a translator's owner must either immediately fix the problem or shut the translator down. As a result of the interference complaints, on September 24, K279AZ's power was significantly reduced and the translator moved to 103.5 underSpecial Temporary Authority (STA) from the FCC, and would change call letters to K278BP.
On August 8, 2011,Clear Channel Communications announced a two-way frequency swap flipping KFAN and KTLK-FM, effective August 15: KTLK-FM's talk format moved to AM 1130, while KFAN's sports programming moved to KTLK-FM's former frequency, 100.3 FM. FM listeners in Minneapolis, St. Paul and adjacent communities would be able to hear KTLK on FM, by listening to the translator station on 102.5 MHz (though this would later change to the aforementioned K279AZ).[16]
In 2006, Clear Channel Communications decided to launch atalk radio station in the Twin Cities, in order to take advantage of itsPremiere Radio Networkssyndication arm and the company's recent launch ofFox News Radio. Clear Channel informedAM 1500KSTP that it would not renew its contract to carryThe Rush Limbaugh Show and it eventually did the same with KSTP's carriage ofSean Hannity. (After losing Limbaugh and Hannity, KSTP shortly switched to aSports radio format.) Clear Channel decided to put a talk format using these and other Premiere Network hosts on one of its Twin Cities FM signals, choosing to discontinuesmooth jazz on 100.3 FM.
On January 2, 2006, the company switched KJZI to talk, becoming the second commercial FM talk station in the area after female-oriented talk stationWFMP. The new call letters on 100.3 were KTLK-FM. When KFAN and KTLK swapped formats and frequencies in August 2011, the KTLK call sign, however, did not move to 1130 because the KTLK call letters were already on a sister station inLos Angeles. Clear Channel instead chose the call sign KTCN for 1130. In early 2014, the Los Angeles station switched to the call lettersKEIB, with 1130 adopting the KTLK calls on January 8, 2014.
KTLK has one local show on weekdays hosted by Jon Justice, who interviews local lawmakers and offers news, weather and traffic updates. The rest of the weekday schedule comes fromnationally syndicated shows, mostly from co-ownedPremiere Networks:The Glenn Beck Radio Program,The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show,The Sean Hannity Show,The Joe Pags Show (fromsister stationWOAISan Antonio),The Jesse Kelly Show,Coast to Coast AM withGeorge Noory andThis Morning, America's First News with Gordon Deal (viaCompass Media Networks).
Weekends feature shows on money, health, home repair, real estate, law, the military and technology, some of which are paidbrokered programming. Weekend syndicated programs includeSunday Night with Bill Cunningham,The Kim Komando Show,At Home with Gary Sullivan,The Ben Ferguson Show andBill Handel on the Law. KTLK carriesGolden Gophers Hockey games from theUniversity of Minnesota. National news comes fromFox News Radio andNBC News Radio.
Jon Justice and Andrew Lee hosted the weekday morning program,Justice and Drew, until Andrew's sudden death on June 25, 2022. Jon Justice continues hosting the program solo.