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The year 2007 marked the 85th
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 Radio (Summer of 2008) 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.
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. As a
comparison, the progressive radio format of KLSD last received a
1.6 for Fall 2007. 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). As of November 2007, this
application is still pending approval.
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