Harold Lampel and Dawkins Espy received the construction permit for KINK in 1958. Dawkins Espy was involuntarily removed from the license in 1961, at which time the KCAC calls were adopted; the station was sold to KCAC Broadcasting, Inc. in 1962. Construction of the facility began on July 19, 1962. KCAC's studios were located at 20 E. Broadway, in Phoenix. It was one of the few radio stations in Arizona that were African American-owned and -operated. Among its DJs were Jim Titus, who, while at KRIZ radio in 1958, had become Phoenix's first African-American radio announcer. KCAC's management decided to change to a Spanish-language format four years later, putting it in competition with KIFN, the original Spanish-language station in Phoenix, but the station was not a success. KCAC switched to a free-form format when William Edward Compton became its station manager in 1969. He served in that capacity and as a DJ until 1971. In an attempt to describe its free-form format in 1970, a guest columnist in the Arizona Republic described it thus:
Free-form programming as used by KCAC allows the individual announcer complete discretion. This allows some of the innovations in rock air time denied under Top 40 programming, as well as opening the door to other musical forms. A typical show on KCAC will include elements of jazz, blues, folk, classical, hillbilly, country, soul and, of course rock. The absence of prescheduled news programs allows occasional hour-and-a-half collages of uninterrupted music.
In November 1970, KCAC went bankrupt, and it was involuntarily assigned to a receiver. On August 14, 1971, the station went silent. When KCAC went bankrupt in 1971, Compton collaborated with KDKB co-owner Dwight Tindle to "invent" KDKB and its air sound. Several KCAC DJs made the move with Compton to KDKB—including Gary Kinsey and Hank Cookenboo.
The 1010 AM frequency was subsequently bought by Golden West Christian School and reemerged as KHCS, with religious programming, in January 1972. The station fell back into bankruptcy with Golden West in December 1973, and nearly two years into receivership, the station was finally sold to Harold S. Schwartz and Associates, owners and operators of religious stations. In June 1976, Schwartz put a new, all-solid-state transmitter into service—believed to be the first in the world. That August, KHCS relocated from Phoenix to Tolleson and increased its power to 1,000 watts; it also began broadcasting at night with 250 watts. KHCS became KXEG on April 13, 1978. KXEG was primarily a religious station, but it also carried overflow coverage of Arizona State University sports in the late 1980s and 1990s when KTAR had other sports events to carry as well as Grand Canyon University basketball.
As a talk station
KXEG became news-talk KXEM on July 11, 2001. On September 7, 2004, the station changed its call sign to the current KXXT, which was accompanied by a format change to Air Americaprogressive talk radio under the name 1010 Talk. In October 2005, owner James Crystal Enterprises sold three stations, including KXXT and KXEG, to Communicom, which mostly owned stations with religious formats. The format change occurred on February 1, 2006; Air America programs would move to KPHX 1480 AM by the end of March. In January 2011, after the assassination attempt against then-Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, KXXT national talk show host Steve Sanchez of The Steve Sanchez Show offered 30 minutes of airtime to Westboro Baptist Church in exchange for the Church agreeing not to protest at the funeral of 9-year-old Christina Green who was killed during the assassination attempt. In June 2014, Salem Communications, a national radio broadcaster focusing on Christian and conservative values programming, purchased KXXT in a bankruptcy auction for $575,000. Salem took full control of the station on October 1.
