KAKC (1300
AM) is a
conservative talk
Conservative talk radio is a talk radio format in the United States and other countries devoted to expressing conservative viewpoints of issues, as opposed to progressive talk radio. The definition of conservative talk is generally broad enough ...
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...
in
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...
. The station is owned by
iHeartMedia, Inc.
iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...
Its studios are located at the Tulsa Event Center in Southeast Tulsa and its transmitter site is near
Broken Arrow.
History
The original KAKC calls were on
970
Year 970 ( CMLXX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar, the 970th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' designations, the 970th year of the 1st millennium, the 70th yea ...
in Tulsa from the 1950s through 1980 during which time the station was owned by S. Carl Mark. It was the top rated station in Tulsa during many of those years despite having less transmitter power than its competitors.
In 1985, KBBJ 1300 picked up the KAKC call letters and flipped from a MOR/Standards format to a satellite-based
Oldies
Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as ...
format. 1300 over the years has been a
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
, R&B-disco,
album rock
Album-oriented rock (AOR, originally called album-oriented radio) is an FM radio format created in the United States in the 1970s that focuses on the full repertoire of rock albums and is currently associated with classic rock.
Album-orient ...
,
adult contemporary
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...
, news-talk, Spanish music, sports, and business news station. The station has had little success in the Tulsa radio market due to a limited night signal or little if any promotion by Clear Channel over the decades. Former call letters for 1300 AM include KOME, KCNW, KXXO, and KMOD.
John Henry and Spencer Rhodes had an early morning show that featured county/ western and swing in the early morning hours and early rock and roll later in the day. They featured many artists from the 1930s and the 1940s with a lot of focus on
Hank Williams and
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing (although ...
who did a radio show from the Cain's Ballroom originating from Tulsa, Oklahoma. This show was on every day for many years and John Henry and Spencer Rhodes did a daily show on the old country music featuring their own personal record collections. They also concentrated on the early years of Rock and Roll and had many of the original artists in studio who gave interviews and spoke of their own upbringings. These artists included the
Shirelles
The Shirelles were an American girl group formed in Passaic, New Jersey in 1957. They consisted of schoolmates Shirley Owens (later Shirley Alston Reeves), Doris Coley (later Doris Kenner-Jackson), Addie "Micki" Harris (later Addie Harris McFad ...
,
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker (born Ernest Evans; October 3, 1941) is an American rock and roll singer and dancer. He is widely known for popularizing many dance styles, including The Twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard & The Midnight ...
,
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the " Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into th ...
, Hank Williams backup musicians and driver of their tour bus,
Roy Orbison,
Bo Diddley
Ellas McDaniel (born Ellas Otha Bates; December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), known professionally as Bo Diddley, was an American guitarist who played a key role in the transition from the blues to rock and roll. He influenced many artists, inc ...
who in an interview with Spencer Rhodes spoke of days of picking cotton as a child. There were many other artists from the 1940s and 1950s that played the state fair circuits later in life that came to Tulsa, Oklahoma that stopped by the studio and gave interviews to John Henry and Spencer Rhodes early morning Country Swing and Rock and Roll show known as the Hillbilly Hit Parade. Spencer Rhodes children recorded almost all of the shows and still have them on recordings. Spencer Rhodes maintained relationships with many of the artists he admired as a teenager and many of the records played on the Rock and Roll part of show were the records he bought as a teenager and to his appreciation he had many of the artists from that era autograph the records he bought in the 1950s.
On April 16, 2007, KAKC changed its format to sports, with programming from
ESPN Radio. In 2015 KAKC became the local affiliate of
CBS Sports Radio.
Currently, it is the Tulsa radio affiliate for the
Oklahoma City Thunder
The Oklahoma City Thunder are an American professional basketball team based in Oklahoma City. The Thunder compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Northwest Division. The team plays i ...
, the
Tulsa Roughnecks FC and the
Cleveland Browns Radio Network
The University Hospitals Cleveland Browns Radio Network is an American radio network composed of 24 radio stations which carry English-language coverage of the Cleveland Browns, a professional football team in the National Football League (NFL ...
.
On September 15, 2021, KAKC changed its format from sports to conservative talk, branded as "1300 The Patriot".
1300 The Patriot Debuts In Tulsa; 1430 The Buzz Launches New Lineup
Radioinsight - September 15, 2021
Previous logo
References
External links
KAKC Website
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AKC
Radio stations established in 1938
1938 establishments in Oklahoma
IHeartMedia radio stations
Conservative talk radio
Talk radio stations in the United States