Early years The station first signed on in August 1925. The original call sign was KFXB, licensed to
Big Bear Lake, California, and broadcasting at 1430 kHz. KFXB moved to Los Angeles in 1927, changing its call letters to KPLA in the process. On November 15, 1929, KPLA was sold to
Earle C. Anthony, a
Packard automobile dealer and owner of rival radio station
KFI. Anthony changed KPLA's call letters to KECA, representing Anthony's initials. KECA and KFI were located in studios at 1000 Hope Street. KFI, then and now, transmitted with 50,000 watts, while KECA broadcast at 1,000 watts. In August 1939, Anthony purchased KEHE (780 kHz, formerly KTM) and took that station off the air so he could relocate KECA to that station's frequency. In 1941, KECA moved one step up the dial to 790 kHz as part of the
North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA), which shifted the frequencies of many radio stations. The power was increased to 5,000 watts, with a directional antenna used at night.
ABC buys 790 In 1944, new
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules went into effect prohibiting any person or company from owning more than one radio station in the same
media market. Anthony decided to keep KFI, and divested KECA to the
Blue Network for $800,000 in July 1944; the FCC approved the transfer on July 18. The studios and offices were then moved to 1440
North Highland Avenue in
Hollywood. (A
Chick-fil-A restaurant now stands on the site.) KECA became the
West Coast flagship station of the
American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network. Some of the programs broadcast nationally by ABC originated in the KABC studios. In 1947, an FM station was added at 95.5
MHz. At first, KECA-FM transmitted with 4,500 watts and it largely simulcast the AM station; in 1971, it became
album rock station
KLOS. In 1949, ABC put KECA-TV (channel 7) on the air. It was the last of Los Angeles' six original
VHF television stations to sign on and the last of ABC's five original
owned-and-operated stations to go on the air. To reflect their corporate ownership, in 1954, the call letters for the three ABC stations were changed to KABC, KABC-FM, and
KABC-TV, after that call sign was released by a
station in San Antonio. The studios for KABC-AM-FM-TV were at 1539 North
Vine Street in Hollywood. The radio stations later moved to 3321
La Cienega Boulevard, where the AM station transmitter and towers had been located since 1938.
Pioneering talk radio KABC became a pioneer of the
talk radio format, going "all-talk" around the clock, in September 1960. It was the second radio station to make a 24-hour commitment to the format, a few months after
CBS-owned
KMOX in St. Louis. Through the 1970s, on into the early 1980s, KABC was frequently Los Angeles' top radio station, and among the most listened-to radio stations in America. In the 1961–1962 edition of
Broadcasting Yearbook, an advertisement shows a KABC microphone, the headline reading "Here's Los Angeles' Conversation Piece" and stating KABC's talk programming is "newsworthy, stimulating and provocative". Along with co-owned
KGO in San Francisco, ABC built a nationally syndicated radio network around the personalities of the two top-rated West Coast talk outlets. The ABC TalkRadio Network featured KABC personalities
Michael Jackson who hosted middays, psychologist
Dr. Toni Grant in afternoons, and Ira Fistel and
Ray Briem at night. The network was heard on scores of radio stations around the country, including co-owned
WABC in New York City. The station has also served as the home of psychiatrist
David Viscott and early talk radio pioneers
Joe Pyne and
Louis Lomax. In 1992, KABC hired its first African American woman news anchor, Yolanda L. Gaskins. Two former KABC hosts,
Dennis Prager and
Larry Elder, were later syndicated on the
Salem Radio Network; Prager is still heard on its Los Angeles station
KRLA. The talk radio duo
John and Ken (John Chester Kobylt and Kenneth Robertson Chiampou) came over to KABC to host mornings after they were released from the afternoon show on KFI. Their KABC stint lasted from July 1, 1999, to October 20, 2000. They later returned to afternoons on KFI.
Changes in ownership Capital Cities/ABC was acquired by
The Walt Disney Company in 1996. Disney sold off its radio division to
Citadel Broadcasting in 2006. Citadel later merged with
Cumulus Media on September 16, 2011. After Cumulus Broadcasting took over, airborne traffic reporter
Jorge Jarrín, son of
Los Angeles Dodgers Spanish-language broadcaster
Jaime Jarrín, was let go after 26 years. Also fired were imaging voice Howard Hoffman and news director/morning newscaster Mark Austin Thomas, who joined
KNX. A lawsuit alleged that school employees of Academia Semillas del Pueblo (ASDP) received death threats, and that the school was the target of a bomb threat, because of
Doug McIntyre's extensive on-air criticism of the school, in which he accused ASDP of espousing a racist and separatist anti-American philosophy. The suit was dismissed in January 2008. On March 31, 2016, KABC was granted an FCC
construction permit to move to the same transmitter site as the one used by
KWKW; the daytime power would increase to 6,600 watts and nighttime power would be raised to 6,800 watts. An application to modify this construction permit the following February increased the night power to 7,900 watts. As of August 2018, KABC was the 40th-ranked station in the market in a 50-station survey, tied with
Persian language station
KIRN; in intervening years Cumulus stopped reporting KABC's ratings for services that made their rankings public.
Jillian Barberie,
Drew Pinsky,
Leeann Tweeden, and Peter Tilden were all dismissed at the end of 2019 as KABC changed to an all-syndicated talk lineup; John Phillips, Randy Wang, and
Larry O'Connor (from
WMAL-FM in Washington, D.C.) were the lone local hosts retained.
Sports From 1974 to 1997, KABC was the flagship station of the
Los Angeles Dodgers and their
hall-of-fame broadcaster
Vin Scully. After some years on
KFWB, the team returned to KABC in
2008. On September 28, 2011, the final Dodgers baseball game was broadcast on KABC from
Chase Field in Phoenix. The games moved to
KLAC for the 2012 season. In August 2014, KABC became the flagship radio station of the
Los Angeles Kings hockey team; that arrangement ended in 2018, with the games switching to
KEIB. The
LA Galaxy soccer team also had its games on KABC, later moving to
ESPN Radio-owned
KSPN.
Los Angeles Lakers games were also previously broadcast. In August 2025, the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced that
UCLA Bruins sports would move to KABC from KLAC; the station primarily airs
UCLA Bruins football and
men's basketball, along with select
women's basketball games. ==References==