On January 3, 1950 the station began broadcasting with the call letters 'KLON' and was owned by the Long Beach Unified School District. The station has been broadcasting jazz since 1981, when it was transferred to CSULB. The station changed its call sign to 'KKJZ' in July 2002. Prior to its Southern California location, the call letters KKJZ belonged to "Smooth Jazz 106.7" in Portland, Oregon. The station had been broadcasting with 6,500 watts ERP, but in December 2004 the station upgraded its transmitter to 30,000 watts as well as an HD Radiodigital signal. The station began broadcasting with 30,000 watts full-time on March 14, 2005. The owner of KKJZ's non-commercial broadcast license, the California State University, Long Beach Foundation, has contracted with Global Jazz, Inc., a for-profit company, to program and manage the station. This agreement became effective on April 21, 2007. Prior to that date the management and programming were performed by Pacific Public Radio, a non-profit organization created by the CSULB Foundation. Global Jazz is an affiliate of Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters, Inc., owned by Saul Levine. Levine is the owner of three radio stations in Southern California with non-jazz formats. One of his stations was converted from an all jazz format to the classical music station KMZT in 1990. That station is now country-formatted KKGO, which was its call sign when it was a jazz station. The assumption of station management by Global Jazz raised some questions among the station's staff and supporters. The University of Redlands radio station, KUOR, which had for the last six years operated as a relay for KKJZ's programming to a large Inland Empire audience, switched to broadcasting Southern California Public Radio, ending availability of KKJZ's programming to residents of Los Angeles' inland suburbs after reaching an agreement with SCPR that included nearly half-a-million dollars to upgrade and renovate the University of Redlands' studio and transmitter. The Arbitron ratings in 2008 indicated KKJZ had the most listeners of all jazz stations in the United States and the fifth-highest number of listeners of public radio in the country. On May 2, 2011, five time Grammy nominee pianist David Benoit made his debut as a morning host on the station.
Music events
Long Beach Blues Festival: Traditionally held on Saturday and Sunday of the Labor Day weekend. For most of the years it was held on the athletic field of the California State University, Long Beach campus. In 2008, the 29th festival was held at Rainbow Lagoon in downtown Long Beach.
