 | |
| |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | San Jose -Santa Clara Valley |
| Frequency | 95.3MHz (HD Radio) |
| Programming | |
| Format | Contemporary Christian music |
| Subchannels | HD2: K-Love 90s HD3: K-Love 2000s |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Educational Media Foundation |
| KWAI,KLVS,KMVS | |
| History | |
First air date | 1966 (as KLGS) |
Former call signs |
|
Call sign meaning | "K-Love" |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 35569 |
| Class | A |
| ERP | 870watts |
| HAAT | 262 meters (860 ft) |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Webcast | Listen Live Listen Live (HD2) Listen Live (HD3) |
| Website | klove |
KJLV (95.3FM) is aradio station inLos Gatos, California, United States, serving theSan Jose andSanta Clara Valley area. It is owned by theEducational Media Foundation (EMF) and part of itsK-Love network. The primarytransmitter is on Blackberry Hill Road in Los Gatos. KJLV also has twobooster stations on 95.3 MHz: KJLV-FM1 servingScotts Valley and KJLV-FM2 atNew Almaden.
What is today KJLV began broadcasting in 1966 as KLGS. From 1990 to 2022, it aired a country music format under the KRTY call sign. Despite good ratings performance, it was sold as part of the dissolution of deceased owner Bob Kieve's estate to EMF. An internet station, KRTY.com, continues the country format.
After obtaining aconstruction permit in 1964,[2] KLGS went full-power on 95.3 MHz in September 1966, owned by the Western Stereo Company.[3][4][5]
Tomentose Broadcasting bought KLGS in October 1968 for $133,500 and obtained the broadcast license in February 1969 for an additional $127,500.[4][6]
KTAO was an FM station in Los Gatos, owned by former Random House editor, Bill Ryan, andLorenzo Milam.[7][8][9][10][11][12] From March 1969 to June 1974, 95.3 had afreeform format.[13] Programming on KTAO included 48 hours ofIndian music on Christmas Eve and Day of 1970 andAngela Davis announcingstation identifications with calls to release theSoledad Brothers from prison.[14]
Joseph Vieira and two partners bought KTAO in 1974 and changed the station to aPortuguese format with call sign KRVE.[15]
The 95.3 frequency took on the call sign KATD on September 9, 1985.[16] It aired aTop 40 format and DJs broadcast from a studio on North Santa Cruz Avenue in Los Gatos where passers-by could make song requests by holding up signs to the window. The station immediately faced competition againstKWSS.
On November 28, 1989, KATD became KYAY and changed its format from rock to country.[17] KYAY changed to the KRTY call sign on January 10, 1990, but retained the country format.[17][16]
In October 1992, Bob Kieve's Empire Broadcasting purchased KRTY for more than $3 million from Randolph E. George.[18] By the latter half of the decade, as theTelecommunications Act of 1996 led to the consolidation of radio station ownership around the United States and in the Bay Area, the Empire Broadcasting family of stations including KRTY were among the last locally owned stations in the Bay Area.[19]
KRTY attracted a front pageSan Jose Mercury News story for banning theDixie Chicks song "Goodbye Earl" due to violent lyrics and hosting an on-air, call-in program on March 13, 2000, about the song.[20] The station's editorial decision also got attention in theLos Angeles Times[21] andUSA Today.[22] KRTY later added the song to its playlist and donated to a domestic violence shelter for every play of the song.[22]
Beginning in the 2016–17 season, KRTY became the South Bay affiliate for theGolden State Warriors radio network, after the team moved from the powerful signal ofKNBR that covered the entire San Francisco Bay Area.[23]
Bob Kieve died on May 25, 2020;[24] longtime midday host Randy Jones died unexpectedly on December 1, 2021.[25]
On March 23, 2022, Empire Broadcasting announced that it would sell KRTY to theEducational Media Foundation, operators of nationally syndicated Christian music networksAir1 andK-Love, for $3.138 million. The sale would result in the end of KRTY's country music format; Empire Broadcasting would retain the KRTY call sign.[26] The future of the country music radio format in the Bay Area was uncertain untilKBAY andKKDV flipped to country on April 5.[27]
On June 3, it was announced that KRTY would leave the air on June 17, coincident with the consummation of the sale. However, the country format remained, complete with the still-retained airstaff, as an internet-only station.[28] On June 22, 2022, the station changed call signs to KLRK in a swap with the K-Love transmitter atGreat Bend, Kansas.
Due to a glitch inNielsen Audio's reporting system, KRTY's Web stream was inadvertently included along with KLRK's ratings in the station's first ratings report in July 2022. When Nielsen corrected the error to only show KLRK's listenership, it indirectly revealed that KRTY's Web stream had retained half of the listening audience it had during its last days on FM, and that the Web stream had an audience four times higher than K-Love had drawn on KLRK.[29]
The station changed its call sign to KJLV on August 8, 2023.
The concept of listener-supported, noncommercial radio was still fairly new when it arrived in Los Gatos in about 1968. Operating at 95.3 FM, station KTAO was under the management of Lorenzo W. Milam, one of the pioneers of what was called 'free-form' radio.
KTAO-FM was a free-form radio station in Los Gatos, California, that existed from March, 1969, through June, 1974. Operating at 95.3 FM, it was run essentially as a "benevolent dictatorship" by Lorenzo W. Milam (1933–2020), a founder of KRAB in Seattle and KDNA in St. Louis, who had purchased radio station KLGS (soon to be renamed KTAO), along with veteran literary editor William Harvey "Bill" Ryan III (1928?-1986).
In 1971 Don also began hosting a radio program on KTAO-FM in Los Gatos California under the mentorship of Lorenzo W. Milam, one of the founding fathers of community radio in the USA.
Lorenzo Milam is more than a verbal/dramatic, concerned observer; he's a participant. Milam is co-owner of KDNA, the listener-supported St. Louis station that was busted. He was a founder and director of KRAB, the Seattle FM station now going through FCC hearings to determine its status as a licensee. And, as head of KTAO, a small but successful "commercial co-op" station in Santa Clara Valley (wiped out, in nearby San Francisco, by Metromedia's 50,000-watt KSAN), he is in touch with the KMPX Collective.
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