KIVA (AM)


KIVA is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is owned by the Rock of Talk LLC and airs a talk radio format. Studios and offices are located on Renard Place Southeast, near the Albuquerque International Sunport. The transmitter tower is on Amo Street, near Interstate 25, about a mile from the studios.
KIVA broadcasts with 10,000 watts by day. But to protect other stations on AM 1600 from interference, at night it dramatically reduces power to 175 watts. It uses a non-directional antenna at all times. KIVA is also heard on 250 watt FM translator K229CL at 93.7 MHz.

Programming

On weekdays, KIVA carries mostly nationally syndicated conservative talk shows. They includes Glenn Beck, Dana Loesch, Dave Ramsey, Sean Hannity, Ben Shapiro and Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. KIVA also features a local afternoon show called "The Rock of Talk" with Eddy Aragon from 4:00 to 6:00 pm. A variety of live programming is broadcast on the weekends, including Bloomberg Radio, Denver Broncos, and Notre Dame Football. Saturdays are dedicated to business talk with local broadcasts from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm after Bloomberg Businessweek Radio. Sunday's include Mayo Clinic Radio, Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis, Christian talk and teaching programs including Joel Osteen and The Lutheran Hour and the live Sunday edition of The Alex Jones Show as well as Free Talk Live on Saturday and Sunday evenings. Some weekend shows are paid brokered programming.
KIVA brands itself as "Fox News ABQ.FM." Hourly news updates are provided by Fox News Radio as well as bottom of the hour business updates on weekdays from Fox Business.
The station broadcasts via its MP3 streams which can be accessed at www.abq.fm. It also broadcasts in an MP3 format.

History

On June 6, 1956, the station first signed on as KHAM. It originally was a daytimer on AM 1580, required to go off the air at sunset to avoid interfering with other stations.
It had a classic country format as KRLL from 1993-1995 and was the home of Radio Disney as KDZZ in the late 1990s, but for many years was an AM simulcast for Oldies station "Kool 102" KZKL-FM.
In 2000, the Federal Communications Commission authorized the station to move from AM 1580, a Canadian clear channel frequency where the Albuquerque station could not broadcast at night, to AM 1600, a regional frequency which would allow it to broadcast around the clock. The station switched to an all-news format as KIVA from 2000-2002 after the frequency switch. 1600 began an oldies format as KRKE in early 2005 after stunting with an all Elvis format for a couple of weeks at the end of 2004. The talk format for KIVA began on June 15, 2009 on 1550 AM. On August 28, 2012 KIVA swapped frequencies with KRKE moving KIVA to 1600, while KRKE switched from 1600 to 1550.
1600 had previously been "The mix of New Mexico" as KANM.
The station was assigned the call sign KNUS on 1988-11-05. On 1989-09-27, the station changed its call sign to KZKL, on 1993-11-01 to KRLL, on 1995-11-01 to KNOS, on 1996-06-14 to KZKL, on 1997-11-28 to KDZZ, on 1999-09-13 to KIVA, on 2002-10-22 to KANM, on 2005-04-01 to KRKE, and on 2012-08-28 to the current KIVA.

FM Broadcast

KIVA first began broadcasting on the FM band in June 2013 on K240BL 95.9 Albuquerque. The translator signal was upgraded to the maximum 250 watts from 47 watts in September 2014. In March 2017 KIVA began broadcasting on K229CL 93.7 which had previously aired 1240 KDSK until it moved to 92.9 which is owned by the same company. In April 2017 95.9 went silent.