KBLA (1580 AM) is a broadcast radio station in the United States. Licensed to Santa Monica, California, KBLA serves the Greater Los Angeles area. The station is owned by Multicultural Broadcasting, through licensee Multicultural Radio Broadcasting Licensee, LLC, and operated by pending owner Tavis Smiley with an urban/progressive talk format.
For much of its early history, the station had music formats and was aimed towards a black audience. The station was founded in 1947 as KOWL and played middle of the road music; Gene Autry was an early investor in the station. From 1956 to 1991, the station had call sign KDAY and had top 40, rock, and R&B formats through the early 1980s. In 1983, KDAY became the first station in Los Angeles to play hip hop music; as a result, KDAY became the most popular station among black listeners in the area.
KDAY went through multiple ownership and format changes in the 1990s, beginning with a purchase by Fred Sands in 1990. A year later, KDAY changed its call sign to KBLA and its format to business news. The business format lasted just one year, as KBLA changed to a Korean format afterwards. Keymarket Communications purchased KBLA in 1993; subsequent mergers of its parent company landed KBLA under the ownership of River City Broadcasting in 1995 and Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1996. KBLA was sold in 1998 to Radio Unica, which added KBLA to its national Spanish radio network. Multicultural Broadcasting bought KBLA in 2003 and converted KBLA to a Spanish Christian format. Tavis Smiley bought KBLA in 2020 and launched a progressive talk format on the station.
History
As KOWL (1947–1956) Originally, the station made its first broadcast July 30, 1947 as KOWL, a 5,000-watt, daytime-only station licensed to Santa Monica. It was owned and operated by Arthur H. Croghan, formerly commercial manager for WJBK in Detroit. The opening day celebration for KOWL on August 10 included such notable figures as Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron, Santa Monica Mayor Mark T. Gates, country singer Gene Autry, and actress Marilyn Monroe. However, KOWL broadcast for only six and a half hours that day due to technicians walking out of the job due to a dispute over unionization.
KOWL's studios were located at the Ambassador Hotel in Santa Monica. It had a middle of the road music format. Croghan excluded what he called "commercial religion, disc jockeys, murder mysteries, double spotting, over-commercialism, and...talk exceeding five minutes except in rare instances." In 1948, Autry became a minority owner of KOWL, and the station began orienting its music and programming towards black listeners. Autry sold back his stake in KOWL to Croghan for $80,000 in October 1949.
As KDAY (1956–1991)
Early history (1956–1966) On May 1, 1956, KOWL changed its call sign to KDAY, a nod to its daytime-only broadcast hours. KDAY changed its format to mainstream pop music, as shown by surveys from the time.
In January 1957, Radio California purchased KDAY and Corona TV station KCOA for $650,000. KDAY's studios and business offices moved from Santa Monica to Hollywood in April 1957. KDAY began carrying newscasts from the Los Angeles Herald-Express newsroom in July 1957.
From 1958 to 1961, Earl McDaniel was a DJ at KDAY. where he was soon joined by Art Laboe. Alan Freed worked for KDAY for about a year beginning in 1960 after losing his job at WABC in New York City over the payola scandal.
In April 1962, Rollins Broadcasting (later Continental Broadcasting of California) purchased KDAY for $850,000 in addition to a $150,000 non-compete clause. Rollins changed the music format to R&B.
Adult standards, top 40, and return to R&B (1966–1983) Beginning July 22, 1966, KDAY changed its format to adult standards where DJs played songs by telephone requests; Mexican station XERB in Tijuana picked up KDAY's old R&B format around a week later.
In the late 1960s, KDAY received approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to operate at night. The studio and transmitter site were moved to a new facility on North Alvarado Street north of downtown Los Angeles. In early 1969, KDAY changed to top 40 and became a member of the ABC Radio Network, then to album-oriented rock (AOR) in 1971. During the Top 40 and AOR eras, the station was programmed by Bob Wilson, who would later launch the media magazine Radio & Records. KDAY reverted to soul/R&B in January 1974.