KSUN (1400 AM) is a Spanish-language radio station broadcasting out of

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...

and serving the

Phoenix metropolitan area The Phoenix Metropolitan Area – also the Valley of the Sun, the Salt River Valley, or Metro Phoenix (known by most locals simply as “the Valley”) – is the largest metropolitan area in the Southwestern United States, centered on the city ...

. It is locally owned by the Marques brothers and operates a

regional Mexican Regional Mexican is a Latin music radio format encompassing the musical genres from the different parts of rural Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Genres include banda, country en español, Duranguense, grupero, mariachi, New Mexico ...

music format under the branding "La Mejor". The station simulcasts on translator at K293CO 106.5 FM. The station is also the Spanish-language

play-by-play In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was ...

home of

Phoenix Suns The Phoenix Suns are an American professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Suns are the only team in t ...

basketball games and

Phoenix Rising FC Phoenix Rising Football Club is an American professional Association football, soccer team based in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 2014 as Arizona United Soccer Club, the team is a member of the USL Championship. History On March 13, 2014, Kyle E ...

soccer matches.

History

1400 AM in Phoenix signed on August 28, 1954 as KONI, the 9th radio station in Phoenix; originally KBLR, the station's callsign changed by the time it signed on. KONI became KXIV in 1961. Until 1982, KXIV was programmed with a middle of the road (MOR) music format. The station was co-owned by Ira Lavin and actor

Dick Van Dyke Richard Wayne Van Dyke (born December 13, 1925) is an American actor, entertainer and comedian. His award-winning career has spanned seven decades in film, television, and stage. Van Dyke began his career as an entertainer on radio and telev ...

(an Arizona resident).

Disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music f ...

s included George Scott, Jack Dey, Jim Hutton, Paul B. Mundt, and Jim Spero (who also served as program director). Van Dyke and Lavin sold KXIV in 1982 to local real estate developer Michael Levin, who relaunched the station with a news/talk format as KSUN, featuring personalities from ABC's TalkRadio Network,

NBC's The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

Talknet and audio from

CNN2 Calponin 2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''CNN2'' gene. The ''CNN2'' gene is located at 19p13.3 in the human chromosomal genome, encoding the protein calponin 2. Calponin 2 is one of the three isoforms of calponin and an actin fi ...

. The call letters had been sold to Levin by the previous KSUN in Bisbee, at the time silent and in receivership. Hourly discount auctions through a segment called "BarterBank" were also heavily advertised. Levin's tenure running KSUN was marred by suspicious vandalism and layoffs. The station fell into bankruptcy and went silent on Memorial Day weekend 1983. CAZ Broadcasting bought KSUN out of bankruptcy in 1984, and brought the station back the next year as an affiliate of the original

Radio AAHS Radio AAHS was a radio network managed by the Children's Broadcasting Corporation. Its flagship station was WWTC (1280 AM) in Minneapolis, which broadcast from the former First Federal Bank building at Minnesota State Highway 100 and Excelsior ...

, a radio service developed for children, with adult-oriented music at night. By 1986, KSUN was running jazz full-time with minor league baseball play-by-play of the

Phoenix Firebirds The Phoenix Firebirds were a Minor League Baseball team that played in Phoenix, Arizona, from 1958 to 1959, and from 1966 to 1997. Before 1986, the team was known as the Phoenix Giants. The franchise was a member of the Triple-A Pacific Coast Le ...

, having lost Radio AAHS when Children's Radio Network opted to cease distributing it outside of its owned-and-operated stations. After an abortive attempt to sell the station to TransCom, owners of KLZI 99.9 FM, and going silent again at the end of summer, Fiesta Radio purchased the station in November 1986. Radio Fiesta officially signed on March 23, 1987. The station became a sports play-by-play specialist; it was the long-time home of Spanish broadcasts of the

Arizona Diamondbacks The Arizona Diamondbacks (colloquially known as the D-backs) are an American professional baseball team based in Phoenix. The Diamondbacks compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. The f ...

(now on

KHOV KHOV-FM is a radio station on 105.1 MHz in Wickenburg, Arizona, serving the Phoenix metropolitan area. It is owned by Univision Communications and carries a simulcast of KQMR. History KHOV-FM began in 1983 with the callsign KHBC, broadcasting a ...

), first carrying all 162 games in 2004, and continues to carry Suns games. In 2021, the station will broadcast

games. In 2015, the station partnered with Mexican radio company

MVS Radio {{primary sources, date=December 2011 MVS Radio are a group of four international Spanish-language radio networks owned by the mass media conglomerate MVS Comunicaciones. The group of radio networks consists of Exa FM, La Mejor, FM Globo and MVS No ...

to launch its regional Mexican La Mejor format in Phoenix.

References

External links

FCC History Cards for KSUN
{{Phoenix Radio Hispanic and Latino American culture in Phoenix, Arizona Mexican-American culture in Arizona

SUN The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

Regional Mexican radio stations in the United States