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 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 ...

NBC Talknet, Talknet and audio from HLN (TV network), CNN2. The call letters had been sold to Levin by the previous KSUN (Bisbee, Arizona), 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, 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, 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 KESZ, 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 (now on KHOV), first carrying all 162 games in 2004, and continues to carry Suns games. In 2021, the station will broadcast Phoenix Rising FC games. In 2015, the station partnered with Mexican radio company MVS Radio 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 Radio stations in Arizona, SUN Regional Mexican radio stations in the United States