Early history The regents of the
University of Utah (UofU) approved in November 1959 an application to the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to establish an FM radio station on the campus. The FCC awarded the
construction permit in January 1960. housed KUER-FM's studios from 1960 to 1993 and its transmitter from 1960 to 1962. On June 4, 1960, KUER-FM was authorized to begin program testing. It made its first broadcast the next day, June 5, consisting of a dedication program and the university's commencement ceremonies, simulcast with KUED. The studios in
Kingsbury Hall had previously been used to run a
carrier current station on the campus. In its initial period of operation, KUER broadcast for six hours a day, five days a week, with classical music and discussion programs as the primary programming. One regular feature was
Chapter a Day, in which a chapter of a selected book was read each day; another was music instruction for students. The station made two large leaps in its early years: expanding to an 11-hour weekday program schedule and adding weekend broadcasts in April 1961 and relocating its transmitter from Kingsbury Hall to Mount Vision in the
Oquirrh Mountains in 1962, improving reception in Salt Lake City and extending coverage along the
Wasatch Front to
Ogden and
Provo. During this period, KUER was primarily run by students, though it was not targeted at the student audience. The lack of programming for this group led to a push to start a new carrier current outlet, "KUTE", aimed at campus interests. In 1968,
The On Campus Show debuted, in part to serve as a vehicle for student action; it was the first such program in KUER's history. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, KUER almost ran out of money twice after the station was removed from the university's uniform school fund. Beginning in the 1967–68 school year, the station was funded by the Intermountain Regional Medical Program, which used KUER to broadcast postgraduate courses in medicine to physicians, but this was supplanted by direct telephone lines to hospitals. The medical program continued to provide $5,000 annually in support to the station through 1972, when it ceased providing money, raising the possibility of the station being shuttered. The station survived with funding from the Associated Students of the University of Utah and, beginning in the 1972–73 school year, became entirely student-operated, with some 70 volunteers and—for the first time—opportunity to earn course credits for working at KUER.
Going public and going statewide In May 1971, KUER joined the new
National Public Radio network and began carrying its first program,
All Things Considered. It became a seven-day-a-week operation with Saturday programming beginning in 1972 and began broadcasting at higher power and in stereo in 1974. A 24-hour programming schedule followed in 1984. During the leadership tenure of Don Smith, KUER's first paid employee (in 1962) and station manager between 1975 and 1985, the station adopted a format of daytime classical music, early evening news and information, and nighttime jazz, responding to research into public radio audiences. The classical and jazz sections each had tenured on-air personalities associated with them. Gene Pack started with KUER when it began in June 1960 and remained for 42 years, spending almost all of that time hosting classical music programming. In 1988, Wes Bowen left
KSL to join KUER, where he hosted the nightly
Just Jazz; the program remained on air into the 2000s. Another jazz program was hosted by Steve Williams from 1984 to 2015; upon his retirement, Scott Pierce of
The Salt Lake Tribune hailed Williams as "the pre-eminent local authority on jazz". In 1982, the station ceased reporting local news in response to NPR budget cuts. This changed four years later when KUER revived a news department, initially using students to gather news. By 1991, student involvement in newsgathering had been reduced again to nothing with the scrapping of a weekly public affairs program,
Sunday Journal. In spite of this, many people believed KUER was a student station in its news department. KUER began laying the groundwork in the late 1970s for a statewide expansion of its programming. In October 1979, it filed for 14 different translators to rebroadcast into communities from
Vernal to
Washington. The translator network began to roll out in late 1982; there were 19 translators by 1988 and 28 by 1993.
New studios and new competition in 1993. During the 1980s, the University of Utah's broadcasting operations were outgrowing their cramped quarters. KUED, which was located separately in the Music Hall, sought new studios as early as 1981, and KUER was similarly facing a lack of space in Kingsbury Hall. After a $5 million gift by Dolores Doré Eccles, ground was broken on the
Eccles Broadcast Center in 1989. KUED, KUER-FM, and
KULC (channel 9) began broadcasting from the site in 1993. In November 1992, KUER-FM gained competition for public radio talk listeners in the Salt Lake area. A new station,
KCPW (88.3 FM)—an outgrowth of
KPCW in
Park City—signed on the air, offering what founder Blair Feulner called an "intelligent, all-information format" including such NPR shows as
Talk of the Nation and
Fresh Air as well as the
BBC World Service overnights. Though Feulner disclaimed any competition with KUER-FM, KCPW was seen as a competitor to KUER and, in the late 1990s, began to chip away at KUER's listenership. Meanwhile, classical music listeners were slowly switching to the all-classical music station from
Brigham Young University,
KBYU-FM. In response, Greene proposed a reduction in classical programming, which met with opposition from some listeners. Later that year, KUER reduced its classical programming by an hour on afternoons and added
The World in its place. The response to proposed classical cuts, as well as the loss of listeners to KCPW for information and KBYU for classical music, informed Greene's decision to move quickly three years later. On March 16, 2001, with little notice, Greene discontinued KUER's daytime classical programming and replaced it with additional NPR talk shows. Greene justified the decision as a bid to shore up continuing listener erosion as classical listeners switched to KBYU and as providing a more distinctive service statewide. KCPW also protested the change, calling it "predatory" and fearing that duplication among the two stations—of six syndicated programs on weekdays—would harm it financially. The format change resulted in a sharp outcry from listeners and a dip in daytime listening figures, reaching as far as protests with the state Information Technology Commission. It did not dent listener contributions for the fiscal year, even though it was more than halfway complete at the time of the switch. In the first fund drive after the switch, donations reached a record high, in part driven by high demand for news in the wake of the
September 11 attacks. Pack remained with KUER, producing an arts calendar and engaging in other behind-the-scenes work, before retiring the next year. In 2006, KUER began broadcasting in
HD Radio, and the next year, it began multicasting, including a classical music subchannel.
Switch to all-talk and second station acquisition In 2015, Steve Williams retired, ending his 31-year tenure with KUER. Concurrently, nighttime jazz programming was dropped and replaced with additional talk programming. It was Greene's last major move as the leader of KUER; he retired in 2017 after a 28-year tenure and was replaced with Maria O'Mara, a former KUER reporter and journalist who had been the communications director for the University of Utah. Leadership of KUER and KUED was combined in 2020 when KUED's general manager, James Morgese, retired. KUER acquired the license and facility of KCPW in 2023, after that station put itself up for auction for financial reasons. KUER began broadcasting Spanish-language
Radio Bilingüe—which had already been airing on an HD subchannel—on the frequency, while
Utah Public Radio absorbed KCPW's programming. KCPW's call sign was changed to
KUUB. ==Funding==