Radio station in Oklahoma City
KTOK
(1000
AM
) is a
commercial
radio station
in
Oklahoma City
and airs a
news/talk
format
. It is owned by
iHeartMedia, Inc.
, and licensed as iHM Licenses, LLC. KTOK and its
sister stations
,
KGHM
,
KJYO
,
KOKQ
,
KTST
and
KXXY-FM
, have offices and state of the art studios at 6525 North Meridian Avenue on the Northwest side of Oklahoma City.
KTOK is powered at 5,800
watts
, using a
directional antenna
at all times, with a three to five-
tower array
. Because
AM 1000
is a
clear channel frequency
reserved for
Class A
WMVP
in
Chicago
,
KNWN
in
Seattle
and
XEOY
in
Mexico City
, KTOK's nighttime signal must protect those stations. The
transmitter
is in
Moore, Oklahoma
, off NE 25th Street.
[1]
KTOK programming is also heard on co-owned
KXXY
's
HD2
stream and on the
iHeartRadio
app.
Programming
[
edit
]
KTOK has one local talk host each weekday, Lee Matthews, in afternoon
drive time
. Matthews' show is shared with co-owned
KAKC
in
Tulsa
. The rest of the weekday schedule is made up of
nationally syndicated
conservative talk
shows, mostly from co-owned
Premiere Networks
. They include
The Michael DelGiorno Show
,
The Glenn Beck Program
,
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
,
The Sean Hannity Show
,
The Mark Levin Show
,
The Jesse Kelly Show
,
Coast to Coast AM
with
George Noory
and
This Morning, America's First News with Gordon Deal
.
Weekends feature programs on money, health, home repair, real estate and guns. Some weekend shows are paid
brokered programming
. Syndicated weekend shows include
The Weekend with Michael Brown
,
Sunday Nights with Bill Cunningham
and
Somewhere in Time with Art Bell
. Most hours begin with world and national news from
Fox News Radio
.
KTOK, along with the other iHeart stations in Oklahoma City, simulcasts audio of
KFOR-TV
if a
tornado
warning is issued within the Oklahoma City metro area. KFOR-TV channel 4 is Oklahoma City's
NBC
Network affiliate
.
History
[
edit
]
Early years
[
edit
]
KTOK was first licensed with the sequentially assigned call letters,
KGFG
,
signing on
the air on January 27, 1927
; 97 years ago
(
1927-01-27
)
. It was owned by the Full Gospel Church in Oklahoma City.
[2]
By the 1930s, the station was owned by the Oklahoma Broadcasting Company. It broadcast on 1370
kilocycles
with a power of 100 watts.
[3]
KGFG's studios were housed in the Cotton Exchange Building.
The call letters were changed to
KTOK
on February 17, 1937.
[4]
With
WKY
as an
NBC Red Network
station and
KOMA
carrying the
CBS Radio Network
, KTOK first became a
network affiliate
of the
Mutual Broadcasting System
. By the 1940s, it had switched to the
NBC Blue Network
(later
ABC
).
1940s and 50s
[
edit
]
In 1941, with the enactment of the
North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement
(NARBA), KTOK moved to 1400 kHz.
[5]
The power increased to 250 watts, but management wanted to make KTOK's signal competitive with 930 WKY (5,000 watts) and 1520 KOMA (50,000 watts).
In the late 1940s, KTOK got permission from the
Federal Communications Commission
to move to 1000 kHz.
[6]
The power increased to 5,000 watts by day, 1,000 watts at night. The station also added an FM companion. KTOK-FM signed on in 1946 at 104.3 MHz. It mostly
simulcast
the AM station. However, management saw little hope in making KTOK-FM profitable and gave it up after several years.
By the 1950s, as network programming was moving from radio to television, KTOK switched to a
full service
,
middle of the road
(MOR) format of popular adult music, news and sports. As WKY and KOMA became youth-oriented
Top 40
stations, KTOK began carrying sports from their former networks, NBC and CBS, including the
World Series
, championship fights and auto racing. An advertisement in the 1960 edition of the
Broadcasting Yearbook
said KTOK plays "toe-tapping music (no rock and roll) and all of the announcers are adults," to contrast KTOK with the youthful Top 40
disc jockeys
on WKY and KOMA.
[7]
1960s - 1980s
[
edit
]
In the 1960s, the nighttime power increased to match the daytime power, 5,000 watts. But it had to use a complicated directional antenna system to make the higher nighttime power work, while still protecting other stations on AM 1000.
In 1978, KTOK was acquired by the Insilco Broadcasting Group, which also bought an FM station at 102.7, KZUE, which aired an
adult contemporary music
format.
[8]
(102.7 today is
Top 40/CHR
KJYO
.) KTOK became an affiliate of the
ABC Information Radio Network
.
KTOK gradually increased the talk programming and cut the MOR music programming. By the 1980s, it had become a talk station.
1990s - Today
[
edit
]
KTOK and its FM station were acquired in 1992 by
San Antonio
-based
Clear Channel Communications
(the forerunner to current owner
iHeartMedia
).
[9]
At one time, the news staff numbered 12. iHeart moved its Oklahoma City operations to
50 Penn Place
off Northwest Expressway and
Interstate 44
.
In the 2010s, the station got a slight power increase, going from 5,000 watts to 5,800 watts, day and night. It also got a simulcast on an
HD Radio
subchannel of co-owned
KXXY-FM
.
For much of the late 1990s and early 2000s, KTOK's
studios
and offices were in the
50 Penn Place
building on the Northwest side. In early 2022, iHeartMedia Oklahoma City moved KTOK, along with sister stations
KGHM
,
KJYO
,
KTST
,
KXXY-FM
,
KREF-FM
(now KOKQ), to new state of the art studios at 6525 North Meridian Avenue. further up the road on the Northwest side, just a few miles west from their former studios.
Current and former on-air staff
[
edit
]
Show hosts:
- Dink Bernardi
- Larry Bledsoe
- Jack Bowen
- Robert D. "Bob" Coker
- Carole Arnold
- Jerry Bohnen
- Gene Collett
- Carlton Cordell
- John Dale
- Jason Doyle (host of "Doyle in the Morning")
- Tom Furlong
- Ken Gaines
- Sharon Gaines
- Mike Hutton
- Niles Jackson
- Dave Marshal
- Greg Merrick (sportscaster)
- Mike McCarville (afternoon drive show)
- Lee Matthews (weekday mornings & afternoons)
- Greg "Eggman" Moore
- Steve Neumann
- Pam Pryor
- Bob Riggins
- Billie Rodely
- Ed Sossen
- Rick Tasetano
- Mark Shannon
(hosted "The Drive")
- B. J. Wexler (later hosted "
KETA-TV
" Movie Club)
- Jim Rupe
- Al Eshbach
News reporters and anchors:
- Tim Allen
- Phil Bacharach
- Bill Bateman
- Natalie Bell
- Megan Bishop
- Jerry Bohnen
- Bill Boren
- Bob Burke
- Mike Gannon
- Stephanie Chase
- Chris Davala
- Bob Durgin
- Jon Dahlander
- Bob Davidson
- Trey Davis
- Jack Edens
- Cam Edwards
- Mike Elder
- Brian Gan
- Melissa Gandal
- Mary Beth Henschel
- Carrie Hulsey
- Steve Jones
- Karen Fuhrmann
- Gwin Faulconer-Lippert
- Jackson Kane
- Delvin Kinser
- Rand Lavonn
- Laura Knoll (later with
KGOU
)
- Ken Johnson
- Craig Logsdon
- Beth Meyers
- Dan Mahoney
- Karen McCoy
- Gene Molter
- Bill Mondora
- Reid Mullins
- Mark Myers
- Derrick Nance
- Charles Newcomb
- Joe Oliver
- Jim Palmer
- Jim "Captain" Perdue
- Randy Pyburn
- Jim Reagan
- Jacqueline Scott
- Bill Reker
- Randy Renner (sports director, formerly a reporter at CBS affiliate
KWTV-TV
)
- Mike "Road King" Rogers
- Scott Rowland
- Cynthia Rozmaryn
- David Rucker
- Rob Salinas
- Mary Shea
- Dawn Shelton
- Bill Simonson
- Matt Skinner
- Linda Steele
- Larry Stein (later the
County Assessor
for
Oklahoma County
)
- Merrit Thomas
- Bryan Walke
- Kim Walkingstick
- Nate Webb
- Connie Webber
- John Williams
- Calvin Wright
- John Wright
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
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