is the callsign for two radio stations on the AM and
FM Bands in the Albuquerque radio market. Both stations' callsigns were KOB before
October 28 ,
1986 .
KOB-TV , also in Albuquerque, is still commonly confused with the two radio stations because it was co-owned with them for many years. Despite their different ownership, KKOB-AM currently has a news partnership with KOB-TV.
is an
AM Radio Station operating out of
Albuquerque, New Mexico , the oldest in the state. It operates on 770
KHz with 50,000
Watt s of power and is owned by
Citadel Broadcasting Corporation . The station's format is
Talk Radio . Its
Brand is "News Radio 770 KKOB." KKOB-AM is the local outlet for nationally syndicated talk radio hosts
Rush Limbaugh ,
Sean Hannity ,
Michael Savage , and
Coast To Coast AM as well as
Paul Harvey . It also features local hosts Bob "Giggles" Clark in the morning and Jim
"The minuteman" Villanucci in the afternoon and a sports talk program with Scott Stiegler in the evening. It also provides local news and weather updates every half hour 24-hours a day and national news updates from
ABC News hourly.
KKOB-AM also broadcasts
University Of New Mexico Basketball and
Football games. Their play-by-play team is longtime broadcaster
Mike Roberts and Joe O'Neill (who only does play-by-play for basketball games). Some other Lobo sports can also be heard on its sister sports station KNML-AM 610.
The station was founded at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now
New Mexico State University ) by Ralph Willis Goddard, and began broadcasting tests in
1919 under the call letters 5XD. On
April 5 ,
1922 the station began regular operation as KOB. New Mexico A&M sold the station after Goddard was electrocuted while adjusting the transmitter on
December 31 ,
1928 . In
1933 the station moved to Albuquerque, and were later bought by the
Albuquerque Journal .
In
1948 , Tom Pepperday, owner and publisher of the Journal, signed on
KOB-TV , the first television station between the Mississippi River and the West Coast. The stations passed to Time-Life in
1952 and to
Hubbard Broadcasting in
1957 . Hubbard Broadcasting sold the radio stations in
1986 . In order to trade on the well-known KOB calls, the new owners simply added an extra "K" to the radio station's call letters.
KOB was involved in a 38-year-long dispute with
New York City station
WABC (originally WJZ) over the use of the 770 kHz frequency. KOB was moved there from 1030 to make room for
WBZ in
Boston . While the
Federal Communications Commission had requested that WJZ install a
Directional Antenna to allow the stations to interoperate over large areas, the station refused to comply, encroaching on the range KOB was intended to receive. Only after reaching the
U.S. Supreme Court was the issue settled, when the FCC assigned KOB to a new license class. Interestingly KKOB and WABC will both be owned by Citadel when its purchase of ABC Radio is finalized.
