BurntOutRadio said:
KXA's longwire was on 2nd Ave. and Union St. at the old Rhodes Department Store.
I think KXA's power was 500 watts. But for that power and the jurassic antenna, it did surprisingly well. It's signal reached into south Everett.
KXA's format was at various times pop, country, classical, CHR, oldies, religious and lite AC. In Summer '82, it simulcasted then FM sister KYYX nightly (during the last summer of their CHR run in 1982) It was oldies during the day, by night you could hear Pat Benetar and Loverboy off that old T-Line.
The simulcast stopped after KYYX went Modern and KXA continued to falter (in spite of a lineup that included Ryan and Ryan.) After KYYX and KXA were folded into Madison Park Broadcasting, KXA went religious (not that it was exactly a market necessity, but it paid the power bill, if not much else.) in 1985, KXA went 5,000 watts with a brand new tower on Pigeon Point and the old T-Line disappeared from the Seattle skyline.
KXA went to a "Love Song" soft AC/oldies format. One interesting feature was Robert E. Lee Hadwick's weekly Softcast show, which transmitted public domain software (at the time when such software can be found on cassette tapes, perhaps creating the very first filesharing system.) Hardwick later added a program on an FM cable station (when these programs he offered, which sounded like a fax machine, long before fax machines became ubiquitous) ran for about one minute each at normal speed, Hardwick tried to cut that by running them at double speed on AM, but the results on AM radio weren't as good as when he ran them at 9,600 baud.
The show ran for a few months. By this time, KXA added brokered programming and was sold to Heritage Broadcasting, the owners of KRPM-FM. In spite of pleas from local radio historians and fans, Heritage changed KXA's calls to KRPM. The new KRPM-AM simulcasted KRPM-FM, then went to a daytime classic country format briefly in 1986, then back to full simulcast. In 1991, the calls were changed to KULL and brought back the satellite "KOOL" oldies format dropped by 1590 when it became Z-Rock in 1990. The oldies format lasted until 1994 when the KRPM calls and the full FM simulcast returned. In 1995, KRPM-AM went 50,000 watts and traded frequencies with 1090 KNWX (during the OJ Simpson trial.) and KRPM-AM went to 1090 and KNWX went to 770.
In 2002, KNWX 770 became KTTH. And the rest is history.
