KXO is the oldest station in the Imperial Valley, and is probably the oldest in any community between
San Diego and
Phoenix. It was first licensed, as KGEN, to E. R. Irey and F. M. Bowles on January 7, 1927. The original call letters were randomly assigned from an alphabetic roster of available call signs. On November 11, 1928, with the implementation of the
Federal Radio Commission's
General Order 40, the station was assigned to 1200
kilohertz with a power of 100 watts, and at the same time changed call letters to KXO. (In Southern California, the only
three-letter stations that remain, apart from KXO, are
KFI,
KHJ and
KNX in
Los Angeles and
KGB in
San Diego.
KGB-FM is the FM sister station to the original KGB, now
KLSD.) In 1930 KXO moved to 1500 kHz. In the 1930s the studios were at 793 Main Street. After the
North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA) took effect in 1941, KXO moved to 1490
kHz. It was owned by Valradio, Inc. and was a
network affiliate of the
Mutual Broadcasting System and the
Don Lee Network, during the "
Golden Age of Radio." Over the years, it spent time as an affiliate of
ABC and
NBC Radio. In 1944, KXO moved to
AM 1230. In 1963, the governments of the U.S. and Mexico agreed to give El Centro two TV stations, channel 7 and channel 9, whose signals would include parts of Mexico. KXO, Inc. received permission from the
Federal Communications Commission to build a TV station, KXO-TV (channel 7). A TV station in
Yuma, Arizona,
KIVA (channel 11), worked to block the competing stations, saying there was not enough economic activity in the region to support three commercial TV stations.
KECY-TV (channel 9) eventually made it on the air in December 1968, but KXO-TV never did. Channel 7 finally came on the air in 1996, under the ownership of
Entravision Communications, as
KVYE. Over the years, KXO featured several different programming formats. The station has had news and weather sharing partnerships with television stations KECY-TV and
KSWT. Some on-air personalities and newscasters have also been heard on KXO and the TV stations. ==See also==