KNZZ (1100 AM) is a

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 radio ...

licensed to

Grand Junction, Colorado Grand Junction is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Mesa County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 65,560 at the 2020 United States Census, making Grand Junction the 17th mos ...

and serves the Grand Junction area. The station is owned by MBC Grand Broadcasting, Inc. KNZZ's broadcast towers outside of Grand Junction They are an affiliate of the BYU Cougars Sports Network.

History

KNZZ was first licensed on September 16, 1925 as a portable broadcasting station, with the sequentially assigned call letters of KFXJ, to Mountain States Radio Distributors, Inc. in Denver. However, Mountain States' 26-year-old president, Elden F. Horn, was electrocuted the next month while working on the installation of radio station KFBU at St. Matthew's cathedral in

Laramie, Wyoming Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States. The population was estimated 32,711 in 2019, making it the third-largest city in Wyoming after Cheyenne and Casper. Located on the Laramie River in southeastern ...

for the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...

."Our Respects To — Rex George Howell"
''Broadcasting''. January 14, 1946, pages 50, 52. In 1926, as part of the settlement of Horn's estate, KFXJ's license and equipment were transferred to R. G. "Rex" Howell, a recent high school graduate from

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

and early employee of one of that city's first radio stations,

KFEL KFEL (970 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a Catholic radio format. Licensed to Pueblo, Colorado Pueblo () is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, United Sta ...

. Howell ran the station himself—including the advertising. He originally intended to base the station in Denver. However, under the regulations of the day, since the equipment had been licensed for portable use, KFXJ could not operate in any city with a fully licensed radio station. To solve the problem, Howell built his studios at a house in Edgewater, just two blocks from the Denver city limits. KFXJ first broadcast from Edgewater on May 1, 1926, and this has traditionally been recognized as the station's founding date. For all intents and purposes, though, it was a Denver station, and quickly established itself as one of the city's leading stations."The KREX Story: A History of Broadcasting in the Grand Valley"
by Kenneth L. Schweitert, ''Journal of the Western Slope'', Spring 1991, pages 19-31. In September 1926, Howell had the station's status changed from "portable" to a permanent location of "Edgewater (near)". KFXJ developed such a strong reputation that it was widely expected to garner the

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 ...

affiliation for Denver. When it lost out to

KLZ KLZ (560 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Denver, Colorado and owned by Crawford Broadcasting. KLZ received its first broadcasting license on March 10, 1922. It is the oldest broadcasting station in the state of Colorado, and one of ...

, Howell decided to move the station to Grand Junction, which didn't have any radio stations at the time. KFXJ signed on from Grand Junction on January 31, 1931 from an Art Deco and block glass building on Hillcrest Manor. Howell added a television station in 1954, KFXJ-TV. However, searching for a more distinctive callsign, in 1956 he changed the call letters to KREX-AM-TV—after his first name. He added KREX-FM in 1960. He sold the stations to a Cincinnati group in 1966, but reclaimed control after several missed payments in 1969. Howell died in 1978, and his estate broke up his empire in 1984, earning a handsome return on Howell's original investment of 58 years prior. The television station still has the

KREX-TV KREX-TV, virtual channel 5 ( VHF digital channel 2), is a CBS- affiliated television station licensed to Grand Junction, Colorado, United States and serving Colorado's Western Slope region. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is a sister stat ...

calls, and still operates out of the building Howell originally built for its former radio sister. The AM station changed its calls to KVEE after the sale. On November 15, 1989, the station changed its call sign to KJYE and on April 30, 1990 to the current KNZZ.

References

External links

FCC History Cards for KNZZ
(covering KFXJ / KREX for 1927-1980) * * {{News/Talk Radio Stations in Colorado NZZ Radio stations established in 1925