KLAA (AM) - History

History

830 AM first came on air on January 9, 1986 as KSRT, a Spanish language news station. The station was directional day and night, with day power of 2,500 watts and 1,000 watts night. Former National Football League placekicker Danny Villanueva was co-owner and general manager. The transmitter site was at Oak Flat in the Santa Ana Mountains between Sierra Peak and Santiago Peak. While mountain tops are good for FM transmission, AM stations need low, flat land for best signal propagation. The poor ground conductivity yielded a poor signal for KSRT.

In 1991, the station was sold to Children's Radio Network and became KPLS "Radio AAHS" and was part of the first nationwide network of radio programs for children. The downfall of Radio AAHS came when the Walt Disney Company established a competitor, Radio Disney. After the sign-off of Radio AAHS in January 1998, the parent company, Children's Broadcasting Corporation, needed programming for the network of stations until they could find buyers. KPLS and the other nine CBC-owned and operated Radio AAHS stations flipped to "Beat Radio", which broadcast electronic dance music 12 hours a day.

KPLS was sold in late October 1998 to Catholic Family Radio and adopted a Catholic talk format. During this period, the station was owned by John Lynch, father of the veteran National Football League cornerback of the same name. Lynch was former CEO of Noble Broadcasting of San Diego.

In 2000 the station was granted a power increase by the FCC. A new transmitter site was built east of Orange in Chino, California that broadcasts 50,000 watts non-directional day and 20,000 watts directional nights.

KPLS' programming foundered and it transitioned to a conservative talk station as "HotTalk 830 – LA's Conservative Voice" which featured Laura Ingraham and Michael Savage. KPLS had close ties to the Orange County community and was the flagship station of the Anaheim Ducks hockey team.

In 2003, the station was sold to Radiovisa Corp. for $38 million and flipped to a Spanish-language station that operated as KMXE. It was the Angels' flagship station in that language. Its slogan was "¡Así Se Habla!".

The station sold again in February 2006 for $44 million, this time to LAA1, LLC headed by Angels Baseball owner Arte Moreno, which changed the call letters to KLAA. The station added English-language programs in the summer of 2006 and gradually phased out Spanish-language shows except for some sporting events. The general talk format lasted from fall of 2007 to April 4, 2010, when the station went to full English-language programming, mostly sports talk, live sports and some paid programs. Talk show hosts included Rusty Humphries, Glenn Beck, Dr. Roy Masters and Michael Savage. The brokered shows included Ridin' Dirty, ROEX Health Show (which sold natural health remedies), and The American Advisor, which offered the sale of gold coins and bars.

Today, KSRT is a Spanish-language station in Cloverdale, California and KMXE is a classic rock station near Billings, Montana.