KCAA (1050
AM) is a commercial
radio station located in
Loma Linda, California
Loma Linda (Spanish for "Beautiful Hill") is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States, that was incorporated in 1970. The population was 24,791 at the 2020 census, up from 23,261 at the 2010 census. The central area of the c ...
, broadcasting to the
Inland Empire
The Inland Empire (IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the west. It includes the cities o ...
, with studios located at 1378 Industrial Park Avenue in
Redlands. KCAA airs news, talk, music and
brokered programming.
KCAA carries an eclectic mix of
brokered programming for financial services and nutritional supplements,
progressive talk radio such as ''
The Stephanie Miller Show'' and ''
The Thom Hartmann Show
Thomas Carl Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio personality, author, former psychotherapist, businessman, and progressivism, progressive pundit, political commentator. Hartmann has been hosting a nationally syndicated radio show, ' ...
'', some mainstream talk shows such as ''Imus in the Morning'',
Doug Stephan and ''
The Dave Ramsey Show'', local music
podcasts, locally produced shows lik
Cali's Besthosted by Lashaun Turner, and assorted features such as ''Beatles-a-Rama'', ''
The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas'' and reruns of
Wolfman Jack's
oldies shows. All programs, including syndicated programs that run longer, only air on KCAA for one hour each day. National news is provided by
NBC News Radio.
History
KTOT and KBBV
William W. Booth, doing business as the Big Bear Broadcasting Company built KTOT, a 250-watt daytime-only station, in 1964. The station was licensed in December 1965 but went silent in August 1966; KTOT was bankrupt by year's end. Hugh Cover and Donald Stoner, trading as the Mountain Broadcasting Company, bought the station from bankruptcy that May and returned it to the air on August 1, 1967; Mountain changed the call letters to KBBV on May 12, 1975. KBBV was sold to Vernon E. Thompson in 1987.
In 1972, Mountain built an FM sister station, KTOT-FM 101.7 (now
KXSB). The two stations remained co-owned until Lazer Broadcasting acquired the FM station in 1994.
In Loma Linda
KBBV filed to move to Loma Linda in 1996, being approved for the new site in 2000. Broadcast Management Services acquired the station in 1999 and rechristened it KCAA on May 17, 2001.
KCAA had carried programming from
Air America Radio, one hour each per weekday of
Al Franken and
Randi Rhodes, from the time of its founding in 2004; it and
KBLA
KBLA (1580 AM) is a broadcast radio station in the United States. Licensed to Santa Monica, California, KBLA serves the Greater Los Angeles area. The station is owned by Multicultural Broadcasting, through licensee Multicultural Radio Broadcas ...
were among the network's first affiliates. The programming disappeared during the winter of 2006-07 because of the limited daytime hours, and the Air America affiliation was completely dropped in April 2007.
KCAA's most popular program was
Imus in the Morning, which was played on a three-hour delay. At the time, it was the only outlet in Southern California to broadcast Imus' show. KCAA gained some notoriety when it began rebroadcasting recent episodes of the Imus program in the days immediately after it had been canceled by
CBS Radio
CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broadc ...
. However, CBS Radio sued KCAA, claiming that it had violated copyright restrictions. A settlement was reached between the two parties, when it was announced that the Imus reruns would end Friday, April 27. The station revealed that they were not selling advertising during the reruns.
By the time Imus returned to the air via
ABC Radio/
Citadel Broadcasting, local morning host Dennis Baxter, who had previously hosted the local news breaks during Imus, had established himself as the station's morning host. KCAA CEO Fred Lundgren considered bringing back Imus in a live time slot (03:00 to 06:00 on the West Coast), at the time held by
Brother Stair) but found ABC's terms, which included rights fees, unacceptable, and refused to pick up the show again; Imus would air on
KABC only until KCAA general manager Dennis Baxter inked a deal with
ABC Radio/
Citadel Broadcasting to bring Imus back to KCAA starting Thursday, September 1, 2008. As of 2017, KCAA only airs a small, delayed portion of the Imus program, one hour per day most weekdays.
On April 24, 2007, KCAA began broadcasting 24 hours per day. Prior to that date, the station operated as a
daytime-only station. In March 2008, KCAA was granted a permit to increase power to 10,000 watts.
In
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
, the station added live
play-by-play of the
Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino, a team in the
California League
The California League is a Minor League Baseball league that operates in California. Having been classified at various levels throughout its existence, it operated at Class A-Advanced from 1990 until its demotion to Single-A following Major Leag ...
of
Minor League Baseball. It debuted on KCAA on April 3, when the 66ers hosted the
Visalia Oaks.
In 2015 and 2016, KCAA acquired two FM translators, K293CF (106.5 MHz) in San Bernardino and K272FQ (102.3 MHz) in Riverside County.
In September 2015, KCAA was one of five stations nominated as Station of the Year in the Riverside, San Bernardino, Ontario and Temecula radio market.
On July 15, 2017, KCAA relocated from the
Carousel Mall, where it had been based since 2004, to its current Redlands studios as a result of the mall's closure.
In Popular Culture
The station plays a role in the 1956 movie ''
Invasion of the Body Snatchers''. Near the end of the movie while people are loading pods into trucks, soothing music from KCAA is played over loudspeakers at the site.
Former Logo
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References
External links
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{{coord, 33, 59, 22, N, 117, 11, 10, W, type:landmark_region:US_source:FCC, display=title
CAA
News and talk radio stations in the United States
Mass media in Riverside County, California
Mass media in San Bernardino County, California
Radio stations established in 1965
1965 establishments in California
Progressive talk radio