The KLSD Story

The year 2012 marks the 90th anniversary of 
San Diego's oldest licensed radio station.

On July 14th, 1922 KFBC started broadcasting on 833.3 kHz and shared the time with 8 other San Diego radio stations. As the AM band became standardized across the country, the station moved to 1210 kHz. changing to KGB in 1928, and then moved to 1360 kHz in 1942. In the 1960s KGB was an important player in the San Diego AM Top 40 race, featuring the Boss Radio format. In the 1970s, with its FM sister station KGB-FM, it became an early adopter and pioneer of what is now called the album oriented rock format. Eventually adopting the moniker "13K" in the late 70s, The AM side of KGB returned to the top 40 format for a few years with a good amount of success. KGB AM became KCNN with an all-news format in 1982; KPQP, playing Adult Standards, in 1986; in 1997 the call letters were changed to KPOP.

In 2004 program manager Cliff Albert convinced station owners Clear Channel to flip to a progressive talk format as an Air America affiliate and changed the call letters to KLSD, which went on the air in August 2004. In addition to the Air America programming, KLSD also aired the Ed Schultz show from Jones Radio Network and Mike Malloy from Nova M Radio. Local programming included the morning show, Stacy Taylor and the nationally syndicated Air America host Jon Elliott.

In August 2007, format change rumors had started in the market and was reported by SDRadio.net. This stated that KLSD would soon adopt an all-sports format, possibly called "XTRA Sports." (The format and tagline was used by AM690 for many years.) Station officials at first denied the rumor, and then said it was a financial decision, based on ratings. On August 23, a group of fans began a website (www.saveklsd.com) and movement to try to convince Clear Channel to keep the current progressive talk format. That effort evolved into a group of filmmakers to produce a documentary titled Save KLSD: Media Consolidation and Local Radio (Release Date: April 28th 2012) and an activist group CPR San Diego (www.cprsandiego.org), leading efforts keep progressive talk in San Diego.

KLSD changed programming on Monday November 12 to sports talk and is now known as XTRA Sports 1360. The progressive radio format of KLSD last received a 1.6 rating for Fall 2007.

During their first ratings period since the format change to sports, KLSD ratings dropped below the minimum Arbitron standard of 0.3 for Winter 2008. This is the first time in San Diego's AM1360 history they have not met the minimum ratings threshold.

KLSD 1360am broadcasts at 5,000 watts day; 1,000 watts night, sharing a tower with KGB-FM in the East San Diego area. In August 2005, KLSD's owners applied to the FCC to increase power to 50,000 watts day and night, sharing the six-tower KSDO array in Santee (Clear Channel Communications owns the broadcast site for KSDO).