KTOP (1490
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 radi ...
serving the
Topeka, Kansas, metropolitan area. The station currently broadcasts a
sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...
format, but prior to October 4, 2007, had broadcast an
adult standards/
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. KTOP is owned by
Cumulus Media
Cumulus Media, Inc. is an American broadcasting company and is the third largest owner and operator of AM and FM radio stations in the United States behind Audacy and iHeartMedia. As of June 2019, Cumulus lists ownership of 428 stations in 8 ...
and licensed to Cumulus Licensing LLC. The transmitter and antenna are located in northern Topeka on NW Buchanan Street near the
Kansas River
The Kansas River, also known as the Kaw, is a river in northeastern Kansas in the United States. It is the southwesternmost part of the Missouri River drainage, which is in turn the northwesternmost portion of the extensive Mississippi River dr ...
.
KTOP went on the air in 1947 as the second radio station for the Topeka area. After years as a
Top 40
In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or "cont ...
station, it flipped to country music and then oldies. For most of the 1990s into the 2000s, it broadcast an
adult standards format.
History
On January 5, 1946, a partnership of T. Hall Collison and Norville G. Wingate, both World War II veterans,
filed an application with the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...
(FCC) to build a new radio station in Topeka, originally proposing studios in the Kansan Hotel in downtown Topeka. The FCC approved the application on March 20, 1947, and after a modification to specify a different studio site,
the station began broadcasting in July 1947. That timing made it the second radio station in Topeka and the first of two to arrive in the city in the same year, the other being
WREN (1250 AM), which had been located in
Lawrence
Lawrence may refer to:
Education Colleges and universities
* Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States
* Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States
Preparator ...
until moving to Topeka.
To get the KTOP call letters, the FCC selected the Topeka station over a new outlet being built in
Monterey, California and another in
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces (; "the crosses") is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New Mexico and the seat of Doña Ana County. As of the 2020 census the population was 111,385. Las Cruces is the largest city in both Doña Ana County and southern Ne ...
.
KTOP was affiliated with the
Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System (commonly referred to simply as Mutual; sometimes referred to as MBS, Mutual Radio or the Mutual Radio Network) was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the Old-time radio, golden ...
. Within months, Wingate sold his stake to Collison, opting to retire due to poor health. Charles B. Axton bought KTOP from Collison in 1950. During the
Great Flood of 1951
In mid-July 1951, heavy rains led to a great rise of water in the Kansas River, Missouri River, and other surrounding areas of the Central United States. Flooding occurred in the Kansas, Neosho, Marais Des Cygnes, and Verdigris river basins. ...
, the
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...
airlifted a transmitter to the station's studios, as its normal transmitter location had flooded out and there was a pressing need to restore radio service in the Topeka area. A 1958 storm toppled the station's tower;
the station was back on air within 23 hours, beating the 24 hours it took to put it back into service after the 1951 flood.
Harris Publications acquired the station in August 1963;
that December, Axton died in a Topeka hospital at the age of 53.
Harris increased the station's power from 250 to 1,000 watts in 1965.
In 1977, KTOP switched from Top 40 to automated country music. The format was short-lived, and the station flipped to oldies in 1979. UNO Broadcasting purchased KTOP and KDVV in 1987. In 1991, the AM station switched from oldies to
adult standards.
Meanwhile, WREN went off the air due to financial issues in 1987. UNO Broadcasting attempted to buy that frequency in 1989; it would have moved KTOP's programming and call sign to 1250 kHz and divested the 1490 frequency to another company, Barr Broadcasting. However, the owner of UNO Broadcasting—Robert Tezak, the one-time owner of the card game
Uno—fell into financial trouble as a result of an unrelated court case. In 1987, he was alleged to have ordered the arson of a bowling alley he owned in order to collect insurance payments. While awaiting trial in that case, he was arrested for intimidating a witness—his former wife—by sending her a death threat.
When a court ordered him to put aside $400,000 in restitution after being convicted in March 1994, he filed bankruptcy for himself, his wife, and three businesses, one of them UNO Broadcasting.
The filings were made in large part to try and regain control of the radio stations, which had been placed in court-appointed receivership.
Frederick Reynolds Sr. acquired the station out of bankruptcy in 1994 as part of a $750,000 sale with KDVV. In 1995, Frederick Reynolds sold the station and
KMAJ to his son, Frederick Reynolds Jr., for $75,000. The cluster of four stations owned by the Reynolds family was sold to Cumulus for $10.425 million in 1998.
The station ditched its standards format at the start of 2000 to switch to
classic country
Classic country is a music radio format that specializes in playing mainstream country and western music hits from past decades.
Repertoire
The radio format specializes in hits from the 1950s through the early 1980s, and focus primarily on innov ...
, only to revert to standards the next year.
KTOP joined the new
CBS Sports Radio network on January 2, 2013, having previously been an
ESPN Radio outlet.
References
External links
{{Cumulus Media
TOP (AM)
Sports radio stations in the United States
Radio stations established in 1947
1947 establishments in Kansas
CBS Sports Radio stations
Cumulus Media radio stations