Radio Killed The Video Star

1944 Philco ‘Hippo’ vacuum tube radio

According to a Broadcasting Yearbook, KVWO signed on from Cheyenne, Wyo., in 1952.  It’s hard to find much about the station’s history.  It appears to have played country music in the early 1970s.  There is a KVWO-FM 106.3 mentioned in that link.  That frequency is today’s KLEN-FM.

In 1978, the KVWO call letters were assigned to 650 AM.  It became KUUY in 1979 and KMRZ in 1996.  In 1997, the station became KGAB and current airs a news/talk format.

If you have any information about KVWO’s history, leave a note!

The New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in Las Cruces (today’s New Mexico State University) started experimenting with radio in 1919.  Ralph Goddard operated the station.  It became KOB in the early 1920s.  Goddard was electrocuted in 1928 while adjusting the transmitter, and the university sold it.

In 1933, KOB moved to Albuquerque and later was purchased by The Albuquerque Journal newspaper.

A TV sister, KOB-TV, was the first TV station between the West Coast and the Mississippi River when it signed on the air in 1948.  

KOB-AM-TV passed between a couple of owners in the 1950s.  When Hubbard Broadcasting sold the radio station in 1986, the new owner renamed it KKOB-AM, attempting to keep a connection to the well-known KOB call letters.

KKOB-AM has been a highly rated station for most of its existence. After adopting a full-service, middle-of-the-road format, it evolved to a news/talk sound in the 1980s and 1990s.

As of 2016, Cumulus Media owns the station.

Read much more about KKOB-AM’s history here.

WPOR launched in 1949 from Portland, Maine, and eventually adopted a country format.  WPOR-FM signed on in 1967 as a simulcast of the AM station’s country programming.  

WPOR-AM became WBAE-AM in 1999, airing an adult standards format.  It later was simulcast over Biddeford’s WVAE.  

In 2009, the stations adopted a “hot talk” format before switching to an advice-oriented talk format the following year.

WVAE split from WBAE in 2013 to simulcast sister station WGAN’s news/talk format as WGIN.  At the same time, WBAE flipped back to an adult standards format. The programming continued until December 2015, when WBAE began simulcasting WZAN-AM’s talk format.  It moved exclusively to WBAE in January 2016.

WPOR-FM continues the original country music format.

As of 2016, Saga Communications owns WBAE-AM and WPOR-FM.

James Noe, Sr., a former governor of Louisiana and owner of KNOE-AM-FM,  signed on KNOE-TV in 1953 from Monroe, Louisiana. At its launch, KNOE-TV had affiliation agreements with CBS, NBC, ABC and DuMont.  

Over the years, competing stations signed on the air, taking network affiliations and leaving KNOE-TV as the region’s full-time CBS affiliate in 1974.

The Noe family owned the KNOE stations until it sold the AM radio station in 2006 and the KNOE-FM and KNOE-TV in 2007.

As of 2016, Gray Television owns KNOE-TV.  It is the region’s dominant local TV news operation.  KNOE-TV also carries ABC and CW programming on its digital subchannels.

Here’s a lengthy 1979 KNOE-TV aircheck:

“Hold Everything” – a loot-laden telephone quiz sparked by Hal Proctor and Bettie McCall is made-to-measure for low-budget participating sponsors in the Baltimore market.  Slotted for 9:15 to 9:45 A.M., Monday through Friday, it’s packed with “gimmicks” to maintain peak listenership – and needle sales.

Here are earlier entries about Baltimore’s WCAO-AM.