Early history (1923–1941) In 1923,
Houston Post-Dispatch owner
Ross S. Sterling met Alfred P. Daniel, a radio instructor at a Houston YMCA whose students included Sterling's son Ross Sterling Jr. The elder Sterling and Daniel discussed starting a new radio station affiliated with the
Post-Dispatch.
William P. Hobby, president and publisher of the
Post-Dispatch, asked Sterling to launch the radio station. Before a
Westinghouse Electric transmitter arrived in Houston, Sterling Jr. died. In 1925, when the World Advertising Convention was to be held in Houston featuring U.S. Commerce Secretary
Herbert Hoover, Daniel again talked to Sterling Sr. about the radio station idea. Sterling agreed, and the radio station was created in three weeks. On May 9, 1925, their radio station KPRC signed-on on 1010 kHz with 500 watts of power, with Daniel as the station's first announcer and program director. Guests on the opening broadcast included William P. Hobby, Texas poet laureate Judd Mortimer Lewis, and the First Garrison Band of Mexico. The call signs stood for "Kotton Port Rail Center", a reference to the cotton trade. Broadcasting from the "Skyline Studios" at the 22-story
Houston Post-Dispatch building in downtown Houston, KPRC featured daily live music and a daily children's storytelling show hosted by Lewis, ''Uncle Judd's Kiddies' Hour''. In 1927, it interrupted its scheduled programming to give out dispatches for the
Houston Police Department. That year, KPRC moved from 1010 to 920 kHz.
Tex Ritter had a Saturday show on KPRC in the late 1920s singing original country ballads. KPRC co-founded the Texas Quality Network (TQN) in 1934 with three of the other top radio stations in Texas:
WBAP in
Fort Worth,
WFAA in
Dallas, and
WOAI in
San Antonio. Connecting the four stations by telephone line, TQN enabled them to make simultaneous broadcasts of the same program. The four stations also provided over 100 kW of power combined at night. KPRC increased its power tenfold to 5 kW in 1936. Then in 1937, KPRC and
KTRH co-installed what was the second transmitter in the world that could send waves from two stations at the same time. In 1950, the
Houston Post purchased KLEE-TV and renamed it
KPRC-TV. Construction began in 1952 for a new $400,000 facility for operating the KPRC AM, FM, and TV stations.
Sale of FM station, MOR format (1958–1977) The
Houston Post sold KPRC-FM in 1958. In the 1960s and much of the 1970s, KPRC had a
middle of the road (MOR) music format. A 1966 advertisement claimed that the station had the largest news staff of any Houston radio station and 20 billboards that had lights connected by telephone lines to its newsroom. The billboard lights shined when KPRC had news broadcasts. During
Hurricane Carla in September 1961, KPRC AM and TV broadcast live coverage for 113 straight hours, starting three days before the hurricane reached land; KPRC AM was the flagship station among nearly 40 affiliates of the Gulf Coast Hurricane Warning Network. In 1962, KPRC broadcast the inaugural season of the
Houston Colt .45s, a new
Major League Baseball team. When the Colt .45s became the
Houston Astros in 1965, KPRC continued broadcasting the games, with
Gene Elston and
Loel Passe hired as announcers. Other sports programming in the 1960s included
University of Houston basketball,
Rice University basketball, and
Southwest Conference football. The strong ratings continued into 1966, when KPRC began adding comedy shows and jazz music. Beginning in the
1971–72 season, KPRC began broadcasting
Houston Rockets NBA basketball games, in the team's first season after
moving from San Diego. The KPRC TV and AM stations moved to a new $3.2 million, 86,000 square foot facility on March 22, 1972. Former U.S. President
Lyndon B. Johnson visited the dedication ceremony that day. In the spring 1976
Arbitron survey, KPRC ranked tenth in the Houston/Galveston market with an average 15,100 listeners per week. Having reduced music programming in recent years, KPRC changed its programming in 1976 to have talk shows during the day and music in evenings. In another programming change, after the
1975–76 season, the Rockets moved their game broadcasts from KPRC to
KXYZ.
Change from music to talk, final years under Hobby ownership (1977–1992) Beginning in 1977, KPRC dropped music and changed to a news/talk station. KPRC showed improvement in the spring 1977 Arbitron ratings from a year ago, this time averaging 17,200 listeners per 15 minutes and ranking eighth in Houston/Galveston. In 1979, KPRC hired
Anita Martini as sports director. She was reportedly the first woman to become a radio sports director in a major media market. After the
1980 season, KPRC lost the Astros broadcasting rights to
KENR in
1981. However, KPRC resumed Houston Rockets broadcasts from 1981 to 1985. In 1983, the Hobby family corporation was renamed
H&C Communications, and it sold the
Houston Post to the
Toronto Sun Publishing Corporation. After decades of being affiliated with NBC, KPRC changed to the
CBS Radio Network in February 1988. Ten years after the last game broadcast on KPRC, the Houston Astros signed a new contract with KPRC in November 1990 following a mutual agreement with previous station
KTRH to end their contract one year early.
Further sales, shift to conservative talk (1992–present) were branded together as "SuperTalk" for much of the 1990s. In October 1992, H&C Communications announced the sale of KPRC AM to Sunbelt Broadcasting Company for $3.5 million, with the sale being finalized in February 1993. With that acquisition, former
KHOU sports director
Dan Patrick became general manager and part-owner of both KPRC and sister station
KSEV. KPRC had been declining in the ratings leading up to the purchase by Sunbelt, ranked 16th in the Houston/Galveston market in fall 1992. Following the sale closing, in an effort to make the two stations more competitive against
KTRH, Patrick announced changes to the KPRC and KSEV schedules to focus on
conservative talk radio effective April 5, 1993. Branded as "Supertalk Radio", both stations would simulcast
The Rush Limbaugh Show; KPRC also added commentary segments by
Paul Harvey and
Jim Hightower and a sports talk show co-hosted by
Houston Chronicle columnist Ed Fowler and play-by-play announcer John O'Reilly,
Sports Page. Then in March 1994, Patrick hired former Houston mayor
Kathy Whitmire, a
Democrat, to host a nightly show. Patrick commented: "Whitmire will lend some balance. She's a liberal-to-moderate Democrat, and I think to have a female liberal Democrat on the air will be neat." That show would be short lived. In July, Whitmire accepted an offer to become president and CEO of
Junior Achievement effective September 6. Sunbelt, in turn, sold KPRC and KSEV to Clear Channel Communications in 1995 for a combined $26.8 million, ending nearly 70 years of local ownership for KPRC. Following the
1995 Houston Astros season, KPRC lost the Astros broadcasting rights in January 1996 to
KILT, a sports station then owned by
Westinghouse Broadcasting. Among the Astros' stated reasons for the change of affiliation were a perceived stronger signal from KILT and the sports format allowing for more promotion of the team, in contrast to KPRC moving some games to KSEV when there were conflicts with regularly scheduled talk shows like
Rush Limbaugh. However, Patrick disputed the Astros' claim about KILT having a stronger signal due to both stations having 5 kW of power. Eventually, the
Houston Chronicle reported in April 1996 that due to listener complaints about poor reception of KILT in
Montgomery County (specifically
The Woodlands and
Conroe), the Astros radio network added Conroe station
KJOJ. Beginning around December 1998, KPRC hired former
Apollo 7 astronaut
Walter Cunningham to host a nightly 8 p.m. show,
Liftoff to Logic. For the third time, KPRC had Houston Rockets games from 1998 to 2002. KPRC subsequently added
The Dr. Laura Program. In March 2001, KPRC re-branded as "Talk Radio 950 KPRC". That month,
Chris Baker joined as a new afternoon drive host. In another programming change,
Ian Punnett replaced Cunningham as 8 p.m. host around February 2001. Baker moved to sister station KTRH effective November 15, 2004. On July 30, 2007, KPRC became the new flagship station for the
Walton & Johnson morning show, which moved from
Cumulus Media's Houston rock station
KIOL. Beginning August 2007, KPRC rebranded as "The 9-5-0 Radio Mojo", with Chris Baker returning to supplement his other show on KTRH and nationally syndicated shows including
The Dave Ramsey Show,
Mancow, and
The Phil Hendrie Show. On March 17, 2013, KPRC dropped the Radio Mojo brand and became known as "KPRC AM 950, Houston's More Stimulating Talk Radio". On July 28, 2014, KPRC signed a contract to broadcast
University of Houston football and
men's basketball. KPRC and the University of Houston renewed their contract in August 2020. In April 2025, KPRC and other iHeart stations began broadcasting
Verdict with Ted Cruz, a podcast hosted by Texas U.S. Senator
Ted Cruz. This marked the first time a sitting U.S. senator hosted a talk radio show. ==Programming==