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|---|---|
| Broadcast area | |
| Frequency | 1120kHz |
| Branding | 104.1 FM KMOX |
| Programming | |
| Format | News/talk |
| Affiliations | |
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| History | |
First air date | December 24, 1925; 99 years ago (1925-12-24) |
Former call signs |
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Call sign meaning | MissouriXmas Eve (station first signed on the air on Christmas Eve) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 9638 |
| Class | A |
| Power | 50,000 watts |
Transmitter coordinates | |
| Repeater | 104.1 KMOX-FM (Hazelwood) |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Webcast | Listen live (via Audacy) |
| Website | www |
KMOX (1120AM) is acommercial radio station inSt. Louis, Missouri, owned byAudacy, Inc. The station is a 50,000 wattClass A clear-channel station with anon-directional signal. The KMOX studios and offices are on Olive Street at Tucker Boulevard in the Park Pacific Building in St. Louis.[2] KMOX refers to itself as "The Voice of St. Louis".[3][4]
KMOX'stransmitter is located offRoute 162 inPontoon Beach, Illinois. KMOX's nighttime signal can be heard across most of the United States and into Mexico and Canada. However, it is strongest in the Central United States. Its daytime signal provides at least secondary coverage to most of EasternMissouri and much ofSouthern Illinois. The station is also heard on 104.1KMOX-FM, and promotes itself solely as "104.1 FM KMOX". Along withWIL-FM, KMOX is responsible for the activation of theGreater St. LouisEmergency Alert System for hazardous weather, disaster declarations, etc.,[citation needed] and is the EAS primary entry point for eastern Missouri and southern Illinois.
KMOX airs atalk radio format withblocks of news every morning and in weekday afternoondrive time. Two local talk shows are heard during the day:Charlie & Amy (Charlie Brennan and Amy Marxkors) in late mornings andThe Dave Glover Show in early afternoons. In the evening, the station airs a local sports show,Sports Open Line with Matt Pauley, along with repeats ofCharlie & Amy andThe Dave Glover Show. Threenationally syndicated shows run overnight,Our American Stories withLee Habeeb,The Other Side of Midnight with Frank Morano andAmerica in the Morning with John Trout.
On weekend mornings, all-news blocks start the schedule, followed by programs on money, health, car repair, home improvement andold time radio dramas and comedies. Some weekend shows are paidbrokered programming. KMOX is theflagship station of theSt. Louis Cardinals baseball] team and theSaint Louis Billikens men's basketball team.
KMOX has a large team of local newscasters and reporters, and airs updates fromCBS News Radio at the beginning of most hours. KMOX also has an agreement to share news gathering and weather information withKMOV, theCBS televisionnetwork affiliate for St. Louis. At one time, KMOX and KMOV (formerly KMOX-TV) weresister stations, both owned by CBS.
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KMOX was started in the early 1920s by a group of businessmen who formed a company known as "The Voice of St. Louis, Inc." The station's owners wanted thecall sign KVSL, for "Voice of St. Louis". The owners also applied for KMO, with MO the abbreviation for Missouri, but those call letters had been in use by another station since 1922, KMO (nowKKMO) inTacoma, Washington. KMOXsigned on the air on December 24, 1925. The "X" was added because the starting date was Christmas Eve, thus shortened with the common abbreviation of Christmas to representXmas Eve.
In 1927, the station gave prominent coverage to theCharles Lindbergh flight across the Atlantic in his plane theSpirit of St. Louis. That same year, KMOX became one of the first 16affiliates of theCBS Radio Network.[6]
Following the establishment of theFederal Radio Commission (FRC), stations were initially issued a series of temporary authorizations starting on May 3, 1927.[7] In addition, stations were informed that if they wanted to continue operating, they needed to file a formal license application by January 15, 1928, as the first step in determining whether they met the new "public interest, convenience, or necessity" standard.[8] On May 25, 1928, the FRC issuedGeneral Order 32, which notified 164 stations, including KFQA, also in St. Louis, that "From an examination of your application for future license it does not find that public interest, convenience, or necessity would be served by granting it."[9] KFQA proposed that instead of maintaining its own transmitting facility, it would share the facilities of an existing station. The FRC initially disapproved of this proposal, and ordered KFQA deleted,[10] but eventually relented, and assigned KMOX to be operated under the dual call sign of KMOX-KFQA.[11]
On November 11, 1928, the FRC made a major reallocation of station transmitting frequencies, as part of a reorganization resulting from its implementation ofGeneral Order 40. KMOX was designated aclear-channel station on 1090 kHz.[12] In mid-1930, the dual call sign operation as KMOX-KFQA ended, and the station's call sign reverted to just KMOX.[13]
CBS bought KMOX and began the process of getting approval to build a 50,000-watt transmitter tower. When completed, KMOX had a signal that could be heard at night through much of the Central United States. In the early days of radio, KMOX broadcasts had been picked up inScotland, New Zealand, theArctic Circle and South Africa.[14][15]
In 1933, KMOX covered the first post-Prohibition shipment ofBudweiser beer leaving theAnheuser-Busch St. Louis brewery for theWhite House, a story carried nationally by CBS.[citation needed] Through the "Golden Age of Radio," KMOX carried the CBS schedule of dramas, comedies, news, sports, soap operas, game shows andbig band broadcasts. The studios and offices were housed in the Merchandise Mart Building on Washington Street.[16]
On March 29, 1941, KMOX moved from 1090 to 1120 kHz, as part of the implementation of theNorth American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA). The agreement required most stations to move their frequencies.
CBS had planned to have a corporate-owned and operated television station in St. Louis, to pair with KMOX. In 1957, the network originally won an FCCconstruction permit to build a new station on Channel 11, the last remaining commercialVHF channel in St. Louis.[17] After being approached with an offer, CBS decided in August of that year to instead buy the existing KWK-TV for $4 million.[18] KWK-TV was owned by a group including the publisher of theSt. Louis Globe-Democrat.
CBS took control of KWK-TV's operations that March, and changed its call letters to KMOX-TV, sharing the call sign with AM 1120.[19]The original Viacom purchased KMOX-TV from CBS in 1986. Because of an FCC regulation in place then that prohibited TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership, from sharing the same call sign, Channel 4 changed to KMOV.
KMOX added an FM station on February 12, 1962.[20] It broadcast at 103.3MHz and mostlysimulcast the AM station. By the late 1960s, KMOX-FM was separately programmed, airing aneasy listening format, then later shifted toTop 40 as KHTR in 1982, and is currentlyclassic hitsKLOU, owned byiHeartMedia, Inc.
In July 1968, CBS opened a new studio and office facility in downtown St. Louis to house KMOX-AM-FM-TV, which until that point had been operating from separate locations. The radio stations had been headquartered nearForest Park.[21] KMOX-TV moved from Cole Street into the new facility, known as One Memorial Drive.
As network programming shifted from radio to television in the 1950s, KMOX switched to afull service format of talk shows, news, andmiddle of the road (lateradult contemporary) music. In 1955,Robert Hyland Jr. became KMOX's general manager, a role he held for nearly 40 years. It was Hyland who leveraged KMOX's relationship with theSt. Louis Cardinals, signing many lucrative advertising contracts with local businesses.
Hyland made the decision in 1960 to eliminate the station's afternoon music programming, the last of the non-talk shows. That made KMOX the first full-timetalk radio station in the country, helping keep KMOX dominance in the St. Louisradio market for many decades. On February 29, 1960,Jack Buck hosted the first "At Your Service" program, which included an interview with formerFirst LadyEleanor Roosevelt. That program, like the sports and talk shows that soon followed, pioneered a format for radio featuring news maker interviews, guest appearances, and calls from listeners.[citation needed]
After Hyland died in 1992, Rod Zimmerman was named general manager. He departed in 1998 to manage CBS stationWBBM Radio in Chicago.
KMOX picked upCostas Coast to Coast in 1994. Also, in July of that year,Bob Costas began hosting a sports call-in show on the station.[22]
Karen Carroll was general manager from 1998 until 2003, whenTom Langmyer was promoted to the top position. Langmyer left in 2005 to become vice president/general manager ofWGN Radio in Chicago. Dave Ervin managed the station from 2005 to 2008. Becky Domyan later became the Vice President and Market Manager for KMOX and sister stationsKEZK andKYKY.
KMOX started broadcasting inHD Radio in May 2006.[citation needed][23] For many years, KMOX broadcast usingC-QUAM'sAM Stereo technology, but stereo transmissions ended in the spring of 2000.[24]
On January 30, 2012, Jon Grayson'sOvernight America, based at KMOX, and also airing on CBS stationsWCCO inMinneapolis andKDKA inPittsburgh, became a nationally syndicated program with several dozen stations airing it across the country. The syndication was discontinued in 2017, but the show continued to air late nights on KMOX for several more years.
On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge withEntercom.[25] The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on November 17.[26][27] The Entercom acquisition ended KMOX's 88 years of CBS ownership.
KMOX held the distinction of holding the record for consecutive number oneArbitron ratings books in the United States. The station was consistently the top rated radio station in St. Louis since the ratings service began in 1972 until 2010, whenWARH took over the top spot in the Arbs.[citation needed] KMOX remains the top rated AM station, consistently in the top ten in theNielsen ratings for St. Louis.[28]
KMOX carriedThe Rush Limbaugh Show weekdays for several decades. The program was sometimes pre-empted bySt. Louis Cardinals' afternoon baseball games. Limbaugh was one of the few non-local shows broadcast on the station.[29] It was syndicated byPremiere Networks, a subsidiary ofiHeartMedia. KMOX also began carrying two non-local shows overnight,Our American Stories withLee Habeeb andAmerica in the Morning. Habeeb is a programmer with theSalem Radio Network.America in the Morning is supplied byWestwood One, a subsidiary ofCumulus Media.
For the past 21 years[when?], KMOX has hosted a holiday radio program every year. KMOX personalities perform an old-time radio show in front of a live audience.[citation needed] Some years, the script is fromA Christmas Carol.
On March 22, 2021, KMOX added anFM translator on 98.7 MHz, K254CR. It was formerly used forKFTK (AM), then temporarily forKFTK-FM. This translator provides coverage to the city of St. Louis and adjacent communities. KMOX added The Dave Glover Show to the schedule, which aired on KFTK for the previous two years. Following Rush Limbaugh's death, the station launched a new, local show hosted by longtime news reporter Carol Daniel in its midday timeslot.[30]
On March 6, 2025, RadioInsight.com reported that KMOX's programming would begin to simulcast on sister station WHHL (104.1 FM) in the week before opening day of the2025 Cardinals season.[31] This change was officially announced on March 10; the simulcast on 104.1, renamedKMOX-FM, launched on March 24, with an automated version of WHHL's former format replacing KMOX on 98.7.[32][33]
KMOX has had a long history of broadcasting sports. In 1926, it aired theCardinals-Yankees World Series, and starting the next season the station began airingSt. Louis Cardinals' games.
During the 1930s and 1940s, KMOX was one of several St. Louis stations broadcasting both the Cardinals andSt. Louis Brownsbaseball games. KMOX lost broadcasting rights in 1948 when a new Cardinals radio network was formed by the team, but by the 1950s, it became theflagship station of that network (in part due to its clear channel status).[citation needed]
KMOX's most famous sports broadcaster wasJack Buck, who was the station's year-round sports director during the years he was also calling baseball and football for theCBS radio and television networks. Another famous announcer wasHarry Caray, who did play-by-play for Cardinals' baseball from 1945 through 1969.Dan Kelly was hired in 1968 to broadcast the new Blues hockey team and became the voice of hockey in the city until his death in 1989: his sonJohn is the team's TV commentator today.Bill Wilkerson, the station's football caller, was the first black man to be the lead announcer for an NFL team when he took over commentary duties forthe football Cardinals in 1973: three years later, he would assume the same position for Mizzou football, where once again he would be one of the first black primary broadcasters in major college athletics, only leaving the post in 1993 when he was poached byKTRS.Bob Costas did play-by-play on KMOX for theSpirits of St. Louis of theAmerican Basketball Association from 1974 until theABA-NBA merger in June 1976.[34]
At times, the station's emphasis had shifted away from broadcasting St. Louis professional sports teams. In 2000, theSt. Louis Blues hockey team moved toKTRS after having been on KMOX for all but three of the team's 33 seasons (1967–2000), but the games returned starting in the2006–07 season. The St. Louis Blues moved toWXOS starting in the 2019–2020 season. In 2006, the Cardinals' broadcasts moved to KTRS after 52 seasons on KMOX (1954–2005) after the team purchased controlling interest in KTRS.[citation needed] On September 1, 2010, the Cardinals announced the return of broadcasts to KMOX, starting in the 2011 baseball season.[35]
KMOX airedUniversity of MissouriTigers football andbasketball games for many years, and was the flagship of their radio network until the 1990s. In 2011, the Tigers moved to KTRS.[36]
The station continues to host sports programming such as "Sports Open Line". Matt Pauley is the main host.[37]
Notable current and past KMOX broadcasters include:
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