You sent me down a rabbit hole, but that's OK, since I found I made an error: KCXL actually went off the air in March 1992. I was living in Kansas City at the time - actually, just a few blocks away from the station's studios and offices - but the pulling of the plug took me by surprise and even the Kansas City Star by surprise. The station went off the air March 4 but the Star didn't report on it until the 10th, and the Star was usually pretty good on coverage of other media.
KCXL started as KBIL in Liberty in 1967, with "Town and Country" programming aimed to the Kansas City suburban areas north of the Missouri River. As it remains today, the station was a 500-watt daytimer at 1140. Eventually, after the FM station in Lexington, Mo. moved from 106.3 to 107.3, KBIL was able to apply for an FM station at 106.5. KBIL changed its call letters to KFIX, and the FM became KFIX-FM. The FM tower was at Excelsior Springs and had some signal issues in the main part of the Kansas City metropolitan area, leading to jokes about "FIX" standing for what the station needed to do for its signal. The pair was bought by Dean Goodman in 1979 - apparently his first foray into station ownership - with the FM becoming album-rock station KSAS. The AM station remained KFIX with a country format. Neither station did particularly well. After an ownership change, KSAS became KKCI, under a new general manager, John Beck, who tightened up the format, brought in consultant Bob Hattrik from St. Louis, and the result was a better-performing station. (Beck went to KSHE as general manager when Emmis bought it in 1984, and was well-regarded there.) KFIX, on the other hand, didn't do much. The AM and FM stations began simulcasting in 1982 and the AM station was put up for sale with an asking price of $600,000.
The AM station was sold to two prominent black Kansas City businessmen in March 1984 for $280,000. They changed the format to "urban contemporary" and established studios and offices on East 63rd Street in Kansas City. The general manager was Chuck Moore, a Kansas City broadcasting stalwart who also hosted a public-affairs program, "Urban Matters", on KCTV. The station got good publicity for its public-service efforts. However, according to the Star, "the station received most of its revenue by selling time to churches and by selling advertising spots before and after the church broadcasts". It often did not show up with the minimum audience share necessary to appear in Arbitron reports. It went off the air in 1992 as mentioned in the start of this post. A Small Business Administration loan had been used to buy the station; the SBA foreclosed on the station. The contents of the studios and offices were auctioned off in August 1992. The station stayed off the air until Pete Schartel bought it and returned to the air from Liberty on September 23, 1994.
There's a minor irony here: KCXL had far more stable ownership and programming than its former FM station. The KKCI format declined after Beck left the station. It first announced plans to become an urban contemporary station but ultimately went to soft AC as KLTY. Two announced sales fell through, though the second sale finally did take place about half a year after it first became known (so whether the earlier announcement actually fell through may be a matter of intepretation). Then it became KXXR and rocketed to the top-tier of Kansas City FM station with a "Rock 40", but that success only lasted a year. The station went to CHR, challenging longtime incumbent KBEQ, at just the time when CHR was going through another of its periodic programming doldrums. The format and ownership shifts on 106.5 in the 1990s are too numerous to mention here.
That probably told you more than you ever wanted to know about KCXL!
