News/Talk Radio Era
An event which foreshadowed KLIF's future success in the news/talk format was the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. KLIF News was always quick to report news bulletins when they came in, and this resulted in the station being one of the first media outlets on the air with reports of the shooting.
KLIF 1190 AM changed to talk radio during the early 1980s and became one the market's leading talk radio stations before other competitors soon emerged. KRLD, its primary competitor during the mid and late 1980s, was mostly all-news.
KLIF had its "classic" lineup of hosts. Kevin McCarthy, a more centrist host, held the midday spot with interesting interviews and conversational radio. David Gold had the late afternoon shift with his brand of conservatism. Gold may well have been Dallas' first major conservative host. The station's morning show featured Norm Hitzges on sports. Hitzges virtually defined AM sports talk. Up until then, sports talk had primarily aired in afternoons and evenings in most U.S. cities. That lineup made the station one of the most respected Dallas-Fort Worth talk radio stations. Community leaders and politicians listened regularly, according to a Dallas magazine report.
It was during this time when KLIF achieved its highest ratings ever as a news-talk station, the only time it ever cracked the Top 10 after its Top 40 heyday.
Competition in the form of all-sports radio began to hurt KLIF's ratings. Also, during the late 1990s, KLIF's station owners stumbled by removing its popular hosts. The respected Gold was let go and the respected McCarthy was dismissed in favor of more confrontational shows. This change in the lineup caused listeners who had tuned into Gold and McCarthy for years to depart, and as a result, the station's ratings plummeted, barely garnering a 1.0 share.
Cumulus Media acquired Citadel Broadcasting, including the former ABC Radio Network, in late 2011, bringing it and its larger rival WBAP-AM/FM under common ownership. To reflect the common ownership between the two channels, KLIF 570 began swapping programming with WBAP and retooled its AM/PM drive to an all-news format, designed to compete against CBS Radio-owned KRLD 1080 AM. KLIF replaced Fox News Radio's top-of-the-hour newscast with ABC News Radio's. Afternoon host Chris Kroc was transferred to WBAP for a local talk show in the evening hours, while morning host Jeff Bolton was dismissed. Two talk shows, The Mike Huckabee Show and The Dave Ramsey Show, remained on KLIF's lineup (Ramsey eventually moved over to KRLD); the evenings and overnights are filled by John Batchelor's nightly newsmagazine, which moved over from WBAP. KLIF also discontinued Coast To Coast AM from their line-ups, leaving the Dallas/Fort Worth market without such programming.
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