The Warner Bros. years KFWB first
signed on the air March 3, 1925, initially on the frequency of 950
kHz. The station was started by
Sam Warner, a co-founder of
Warner Bros. The station launched the careers of such stars as
Ronald Reagan,
Alan Ladd and
Bing Crosby during the "
Golden Age of Radio." The station was the first to broadcast the annual
Rose Parade in
Pasadena. Although theorists believed the call letters stood for its original owner (examples such as "Keep Filming Warner Brothers" and "Four Warner Brothers"), the call sign was sequentially issued by the
Department of Commerce, predecessor to the FCC. The station received its call sign just after KFWA in
Ogden, Utah, and before KFWC in
San Bernardino, both granted in February 1925. Nevertheless,
Warner Bros. Cartoons regularly used KFWB as a
running gag in its productions. On February 8, 1937, KFWB opened a new facility on the south end of the Warner Bros. lot. It included six large studios, one of which was a 500-seat theater, and a "multi-manual pipe organ, built especially for broadcasting."
Bedtime for Sniffles, a 1940
Merrie Melodies cartoon produced by Warner Bros. and directed by
Chuck Jones, has
Sniffles the mouse trying to stay awake for
Santa Claus, and a radio announcer signs off for the night identifying the station as KFWB. Another cartoon of the same year,
The Timid Toreador, co-directed by
Bob Clampett, shows an announcer broadcasting on this station, although the action takes place in Mexico. The 1934
Looney Tunes short ''
Buddy's Bearcats directed by Jack King also contains an announcer broadcasting the station where KFWB was written on a wooden sign and was narrated by a parody of Joe E. Brown. The 1933 Merrie Melodies cartoon for I've Got To Sing A Torch Song
released in conjunction with Gold Diggers of 1933'' has KFWB written on the microphones in the scenes of the torch singers. KFWB was also written on one of the microphones at the end of 1953's
Catty Cornered. In 1932, a KFWB personality, Al Jarvis, began playing recorded music, a rarity on radio at the time, where music was usually performed live. He called his show "The World's Largest
Make Believe Ballroom." In 1946, KFWB brought in two disc jockeys from New York City: Maurice Hart of
WNEW, whose morning
drive time show
Start the Day Right was described as "Words and Music Straight from the Hart," and
Martin Block, who shortened Jarvis's title to "The Make-Believe Ballroom." In those days, the DJs selected their own music, from either KFWB's extensive record library or new songs brought to them by "
song pluggers." Old and new, vocal and instrumental, were mixed together to the disc jockey's choice. In 1950, KFWB was sold to its longtime general manager Harry Maizlish. It soon moved its studios off the Warner Bros. lot to join Maizlish's FM station, KFMV (now
KTWV), on Hollywood Boulevard.
Playing rock and roll In 1958, the original "Seven Swingin' Gentlemen" (a nickname for the DJ staff) turned KFWB into a
rock & roll powerhouse in Los Angeles. Under new owners
Crowell-Collier Broadcasting, program director Chuck Blore pioneered the
Top 40 format on AM 980, calling it
Channel 98 Color Radio. KFWB became one of the most listened-to stations in the
Southland and a leader in the Top 40 format around the country. The air staff during the glory days included
Bill Ballance,
B. Mitchel Reed, Bruce Hayes, Al Jarvis, Joe Yocam, Elliot Field,
Ted Quillin, Gene Weed,
Gary Owens,
Roger Christian and Bobby Dale. Hourly updates were delivered by a staff of respected newscasters, including Cleve Herrmann, Charles Arlington, John Babcock, Beach Rogers, Mike Henry, Hal Goodwin,
Al Wiman, Bill Angel, J. Paul Huddleston and Jackson King. In the mid–1960s, KFWB was overtaken by rival
KRLA. Then KRLA was put in second place by the launch of "
Boss Radio" at
KHJ, and this relegated KFWB to the position of the third-place Top 40 music station in the L.A. market.
All-news radio In 1966, KFWB was purchased by
Westinghouse Broadcasting. The previous year, Westinghouse had successfully launched an
all-news radio format on
WINS in New York City, after that station had been playing Top 40 music. On March 11, 1968, KFWB ended its Top 40 era, and was relaunched as an all-news radio station. The station promoted itself with the slogans "All news, all the time" and "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world", as first used by WINS, although KFWB's format used a 30-minute news cycle. The 22 minutes referenced the then-average length of a Los Angeles commute. Like WINS and co-owned
KYW Philadelphia, KFWB had a running
Teletype sound effect in the background during regular newscasts. Also in Spring 1968, another Los Angeles radio station jumped into the all-news format,
KNX, owned by
CBS Radio. For the next 27 years, the two stations would be competitors, airing television commercials and sponsoring billboards, in an effort to be L.A.'s top radio news outlet. In 1995, Westinghouse bought CBS Inc., merging the broadcast operations of the two companies, with KFWB coming under the ownership of
CBS Radio. For the first several years after their parent companies merged, KFWB and KNX continued to operate separately, as friendly rivals. In addition to being an all-news station, KFWB also had sports play-by-play contracts. It previously aired
Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games and many
National Football League games from
Westwood One. The NFL broadcasts stopped after the 2007
Pro Bowl, later switching to
AM 790 KABC. With that, the slogan "all news, all the time" returned. However, in 2008, the NFL broadcasts returned for a brief period. Beginning in 2008, KNX and KFWB were jointly branded as "CBSNewsRadioLA." The CBSNewsRadioLA brand was used for
simulcasting special programs and for marketing to advertisers. In addition, there were no longer separate field reporters for KNX and KFWB. CBSNewsRadioLA reporters filed stories for both stations. Also in the 2009 season, KFWB began broadcasting some weekday baseball games of the
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, although the
flagship station remained the Angels-owned
KLAA. On August 13, 2009, CBS announced the NBA's
Los Angeles Clippers had signed a multi-year broadcast rights pact, with KFWB carrying every Clippers contest. Over time, KFWB's ratings gradually dropped. A number of factors may have been involved. KFWB is licensed to transmit with 5,000 watts, while KNX is licensed for 50,000 watts. In its final months as an all-news station, KFWB added more news about the movie and television industries, since many people in the Los Angeles market are employed in those fields. But the ratings continued to fall. The station's last all-news broadcast concluded at 1:00 a.m. on September 8, 2009. Anchors Jan Stevens and Andi Marshall bid listeners farewell and thanked them for 41 years of support.
Moving to news/talk On September 8, 2009, the station adopted a
news-talk format, limiting the all-news blocks to AM and PM drive times. The station added
nationally syndicated shows, including
Dave Ramsey,
Laura Ingraham,
Michael Smerconish and Dr.
Laura Schlessinger (who moved from longtime flagship
KFI). In 2011, Dr. Laura's show was dropped when she moved from broadcast radio to
Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Dave Ramsey shifted to 11a.m.-2p.m. and the station added motivational speaker
Les Brown to its afternoon lineup. Brown left the station in 2012. Ramsey's show was discontinued in 2014. By the summer of 2014, KFWB's weekday line-up included: LA's Morning News with Penny Griego and Phil Hulett; Money 101 with Bob McCormick; "As We See It" with Phil Hulett and friends; LA's Afternoon News with Maggie McKay and Michael Shappee; and The Amani & Eytan Show from
NBC Sports Radio. In the early 2010s, the station was authorized by the FCC to boost its power to 50,000 watts, using a
directional antenna involving multiple towers. But the power increase was short-lived. A few years later, new owners returned to KFWB's original 5,000-watt output, so the station could broadcast from a single
non-directional antenna and take up less acreage of valuable Los Angeles real estate. On November 2, 2011, CBS Radio placed KFWB into a trust headed by Diane Sutter, under the name "The KFWB Asset Trust." This was due to CBS Corp.'s ownership limitations after the network bought
KCAL-TV in 2002.
Switch to sports On September 22, 2014, KFWB became a
CBS Sports Radio Network affiliate, cancelling all news blocks and general interest talk programs. The station began calling itself "The Beast 980." The Beast 980 featured a live and local morning show,
The Home Team, hosted by
Bill Plaschke and
Jeanne Zelasko. The Beast 980's weekday lineup also featured
Jim Rome and
Fred Roggin. Sports updates were provided during the day mostly by Sam Farber, Amy Bender and Ted Sobel, with Hall-of-Fame
USC Trojans broadcaster
Pete Arbogast providing sports updates and as a fill-in host from time to time. The Beast 980 was the flagship radio station of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers and the
LA Galaxy soccer team of the
MLS. The Beast 980 also carried
NFL games,
NCAA college football games and NCAA basketball games.
South Asian programming On January 5, 2016, it was reported that KFWB was in the process of being sold to an operator of foreign-language radio stations. A filing with the
Securities and Exchange Commission stated that the station would be acquired by Principle Broadcasting, a company backed by Mercury Capital Partners, for $15 million. The final price in the contract filed with the FCC was $8 million. As a result of the sale, the station's sports format was discontinued on March 1, 2016. KFWB called itself "
Desi 980". On March 16, 2016, the Los Angeles Clippers entered into a multi-year deal making
KLAC the team's new flagship station, removing the games from KFWB.
Classic regional Mexican On October 4, 2016, Lotus Communications agreed to purchase KFWB from Universal Media Access for $11.2 million. The sale was finalized on March 7, 2017. Lotus owns 34 stations in California,
Nevada and
Arizona, including three in Southern California:
Farsi-language KIRN in
Simi Valley,
ESPN Deportes affiliate
KWKW in Los Angeles, and its simulcast partner,
KTMZ in
Pomona. On October 31, 2016, KFWB switched to a regional Mexican music format as "La Mera Mera 980" (a colloquial expression in Mexican Spanish, meaning, "The Best of the Best"). In 2018, the station was named the official radio station for calling
MLS's
Los Angeles FC matches. ==Notable former staff==