KTUC - History

History

KTUC is one of the oldest stations in Tucson. It went on the air in 1925.

In the early 1970s it used the slogan 'Formula 1400', which referred to its practice of airing 35 minutes of news programming and 25 minutes of beautiful music programming to round out the hour. The hour started with the news programming then went to the music programming.

In the late 70s the station segued to a news/talk format, airing news all day and syndicated talk shows at night. It was an affiliate of the Arizona Broadcasting System and picked up newscasts from KTAR in Phoenix on a phone line. By 1977, it was airing a 20-minute newswheel format, with CBS, ABC and Mutual radio newscasts leading each piece of the pie—ABC and Mutual were both tape-delayed. Larry King aired overnight, although he was replaced by Enterprise Radio (a progenator of ESPN Radio)by 1979.

Tucosn Toros cames were carried live, although road games in 1980 were recreated in the studio.

It was the AP Broadcast News Station of The Year in Arizona in 1980. That year, its news staff broke the story about chemical contamination in the underground aquifers of southern Tucson, news items that ended up in a major political controversy and subsequent cleanup. It also won investigative awards for breaking and following up on the story of a factory that painted glow-in-the-dark watch dials and instriument panels using tritium, a radioactive isoptope that was found in school lunches prepared in a commissary across the street.

Throughout the entire period from the 70s until the Arizona Diamondbacks came into existence, KTUC was the exclusive Tucson affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers radio network syndicated from KABC radio in Los Angeles. It also carried California Angels broadcasts picked up from KMPC in Los Angeles, and would tape delay the AL games when the Dodgers were on the air. In the days before cable television, when baseball games could be seen once a week on NBC, the Dodgers radio broadcasts developed a huge following in Tucson. Sports were always huge at KTUC, and its 1970s sports director Rory Markas (now deceased) went to the 2002 World Series as voice of the Angels. General manager Tom Maples vowed he could sell ads for a play-by-play of two kids playing basketball with peach hoops.

In the late 1980s they were also the Tucson affiliate of the Arizona State University Sun Devils radio network (the Sun Devils are the Phoenix-area based Pac-10 arch-rival of the locally-based Arizona Wildcats of the University of Arizona), and also the Tucson affiliate of the Phoenix Suns radio network.

In the early 1990s, KTUC went through several new owners and went to an adult standards format, and today they air the present combination of rock oldies and adult standards.