KFBK (1530 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Sacramento, California. It is simulcast on KFBK-FM 93.1 MHz. KFBK-AM-FM air a news-talk radio format and are owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The studios and offices are on River Park Drive in North Sacramento, near the Arden Fair Mall.
KFBK 1530 is a Class A radio station. Its 50,000-watt transmitter is on Pleasant Grove Road at Catlett Road in Pleasant Grove. Because KFBK shares AM 1530 with another Class A station, WCKY Cincinnati, KFBK uses a directional antenna, which operates with separate day and night parameters and has the highest field strength of any AM station in the United States. The daytime signal covers much of the Northern California, from the northern Sacramento Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Valley. At night, it reaches much of the Western United States and Western Canada.
Programming
iHeart owns three talk stations in the Sacramento metropolitan area, KFBK-AM-FM, which air mostly local shows and news blocks on weekdays, and KSTE 650 AM which carries mostly syndicated conservative talk shows. Weekdays on KFBK-AM-FM begin with "The KFBK Morning News" with Cristina Mendonsa and Sam Shane, followed by "Clay Travis & Buck Sexton," Tom Sullivan (originally local, now syndicated via NBC News Radio), John McGinness and "The Afternoon News with Kitty O'Neal." At night, three syndicated shows are heard: "The Pat Walsh Show," "Coast to Coast AM with George Noory" and "This Morning, America's First News with Gordon Deal."
Weekends feature shows on money, health, the outdoors, guns, car repair and travel, some of which are paid brokered programming. Some weekday shows are repeated on weekends. ABC News Radio begins most hours nights and weekends.
History
Earlier activities
According to official government records, KFBK's first license was granted in August 1922. However, the station has in some cases included as part of its history an earlier Sacramento station, KVQ, which began broadcasting in February 1922.
KVQ received its initial license, as Sacramento's first broadcasting station, on December 9, 1921, issued to J. C. Hobrecht. It was operated in conjunction with the Sacramento Bee newspaper, and made its debut broadcast on February 2, 1922. A few months later, ownership was transferred from J. C. Hobrecht to the Bee's publisher, James McClatchy, followed a short time later by a transfer to "Sacramento Bee (James McClatchy Co.)". However, KVQ suspended operations on December 20, 1922, and was formally deleted on January 2, 1923. Early reviews in the Sacramento Bee treated KVQ as a separate station from the later KFBK, and government regulators at the time consistently considered the two to be separate, unrelated stations.
Early history
KFBK was first licensed, as the city's second broadcasting station, on August 16, 1922, to the Kimball-Upson Company, and initially was operated in conjunction with the Bee's primary competitor, the Sacramento Union. The call letters were sequentially assigned from an alphabetic list maintained by the Department of Commerce, which regulated radio in the United States at this time. KFBK began test transmissions in early September, and made its formal debut broadcast on September 17, 1922.
Initially there was only a single wavelength, 360 meters (833 kHz), available for radio station "entertainment" broadcasts, which required stations in various regions to develop timesharing agreements assigning operating hours. As of November 1, 1922, there were seven "Inland Stations" sharing time on 360 meters, with KFBK allocated 6:00 to 6:30 P.M. daily except Sunday, plus 8:00 to 9:00 P.M. Thursdays and 8:00 to 10:00 P.M. Sundays.
In May 1923 the Department of Commerce greatly expanded the number of broadcasting station frequencies, and later that year KFBK was assigned unlimited use of 1060 kHz. A series of reassignments followed, until November 11, 1928, when, under the provisions of Commerce's General Order 40, the station was assigned to a low-powered "Local" frequency, 1310 kHz.