What is today KJLV began broadcasting in 1966 as KLGS. From 1990 to 2022, it aired a country music format under the KRTY call sign. Despite good ratings performance, it was sold as part of the dissolution of deceased owner Bob Kieve's estate to EMF. An internet station, KRTY.com, continues the country format.
History
KLGS (1964–1969)
After obtaining a construction permit in 1964,[2] KLGS went full-power on 95.3 MHz in September 1966, owned by the Western Stereo Company.[3][4][5]
Tomentose Broadcasting bought KLGS in October 1968 for $133,500 and obtained the broadcast license in February 1969 for an additional $127,500.[4][6]
Joseph Vieira and two partners bought KTAO in 1974 and changed the station to a Portuguese format with call sign KRVE.[15]
KATD (1985–1989)
The 95.3 frequency took on the call sign KATD on September 9, 1985.[16]It aired a Top 40 format and DJs broadcast from a studio on North Santa Cruz Avenue in Los Gatos where passers-by could make song requests by holding up signs to the window. The station immediately faced competition against KWSS.
KYAY and KRTY (1989–2022)
On November 28, 1989, KATD became KYAY and changed its format from rock to country.[17] KYAY changed to the KRTY call sign on January 10, 1990, but retained the country format.[17][16]
In October 1992, Bob Kieve's Empire Broadcasting purchased KRTY for more than $3 million from Randolph E. George.[18] By the latter half of the decade, as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to the consolidation of radio station ownership around the United States and in the Bay Area, the Empire Broadcasting family of stations including KRTY were among the last locally owned stations in the Bay Area.[19]
KRTY attracted a front page San Jose Mercury News story for banning the Dixie Chicks song "Goodbye Earl" due to violent lyrics and hosting an on-air, call-in program on March 13, 2000, about the song.[20] The station's editorial decision also got attention in the Los Angeles Times[21] and USA Today.[22] KRTY later added the song to its playlist and donated to a domestic violence shelter for every play of the song.[22]
Beginning in the 2016–17 season, KRTY became the South Bay affiliate for the Golden State Warriors radio network, after the team moved from the powerful signal of KNBR that covered the entire San Francisco Bay Area.[23]
Bob Kieve died on May 25, 2020;[24] longtime midday host Randy Jones died unexpectedly on December 1, 2021.[25]
Sale to EMF
On March 23, 2022, Empire Broadcasting announced that it would sell KRTY to the Educational Media Foundation, operators of nationally syndicated Christian music networks Air1 and K-Love, for $3.138 million. The sale would result in the end of KRTY's country music format; Empire Broadcasting would retain the KRTY call sign.[26] The future of the country music radio format in the Bay Area was uncertain until KBAY and KKDV flipped to country on April 5.[27]
On June 3, it was announced that KRTY would leave the air on June 17, coincident with the consummation of the sale. However, the country format remained, complete with the still-retained airstaff, as an internet-only station.[28] On June 22, 2022, the station changed call signs to KLRK in a swap with the K-Love transmitter at Great Bend, Kansas.
Due to a glitch in Nielsen Audio's reporting system, KRTY's Web stream was inadvertently included along with KLRK's ratings in the station's first ratings report in July 2022. When Nielsen corrected the error to only show KLRK's listenership, it indirectly revealed that KRTY's Web stream had retained half of the listening audience it had during its last days on FM, and that the Web stream had an audience four times higher than K-Love had drawn on KLRK.[29]
The station changed its call sign to KJLV on August 8, 2023.
^"Ownership changes"(PDF), Broadcasting, vol. 76, no. 7, p. 110, February 17, 1969
^"Radio, Man". The Mercury News. November 19, 2012. Archived from the original on April 27, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2021. The concept of listener-supported, noncommercial radio was still fairly new when it arrived in Los Gatos in about 1968. Operating at 95.3 FM, station KTAO was under the management of Lorenzo W. Milam, one of the pioneers of what was called 'free-form' radio.
^"KTAO Radio". afana.org. Archived from the original on March 18, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021. KTAO-FM was a free-form radio station in Los Gatos, California, that existed from March, 1969, through June, 1974. Operating at 95.3 FM, it was run essentially as a "benevolent dictatorship" by Lorenzo W. Milam (1933-2020), a founder of KRAB in Seattle and KDNA in St. Louis, who had purchased radio station KLGS (soon to be renamed KTAO), along with veteran literary editor William Harvey "Bill" Ryan III (1928?-1986).
^"bio". Don Campau. Archived from the original on April 21, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021. In 1971 Don also began hosting a radio program on KTAO-FM in Los Gatos California under the mentorship of Lorenzo W. Milam, one of the founding fathers of community radio in the USA.
^Fong-Torres, Ben (November 26, 1970). "FM Radio: Power to What People?". Archived from the original on June 27, 2022. Retrieved February 8, 2021. Lorenzo Milam is more than a verbal/dramatic, concerned observer; he's a participant. Milam is co-owner of KDNA, the listener-supported St. Louis station that was busted. He was a founder and director of KRAB, the Seattle FM station now going through FCC hearings to determine its status as a licensee. And, as head of KTAO, a small but successful "commercial co-op" station in Santa Clara Valley (wiped out, in nearby San Francisco, by Metromedia's 50,000-watt KSAN), he is in touch with the KMPX Collective.((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Munger, Philip (November 30, 2007). "Jeremy Lansman - Part I". Progressive Alaska. Archived from the original on February 14, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
^Alexander, Geoff. "KTAO Radio". Academic Film Archive of North America. Archived from the original on April 25, 2017. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
^ abWeimers, Leigh (January 9, 1990). "Lotto change will add up for schools". San Jose Mercury News. p. 1D. Archived from the original on June 27, 2022. Retrieved June 20, 2019 – via NewsBank.
^"Newsline", Billboard, vol. 104, no. 42, p. 77, October 17, 1992, archived from the original on June 27, 2022, retrieved October 18, 2020
^Pulcrano, Dan (June 4, 1998). "The Big Radio Play". Metro Silicon Valley. Archived from the original on May 5, 1999. Retrieved June 20, 2019.
