KALI (900 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 ...

licensed to

West Covina, California West Covina is a suburban city in Los Angeles County, California, located east of Downtown Los Angeles in the eastern San Gabriel Valley and is part of Greater Los Angeles. The population for the city was 106,098 at the 2010 census. West Covi ...

, with transmitter in Chino. The station is owned by Multicultural Broadcasting and broadcasts

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

and other ethnic programming. Historically, KALI was KGRB, a big-band music station that remained in operation through 1995.

History

KGRB

The station was put on the air by former

KTLA KTLA (channel 5) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of The CW. It is the largest directly owned property of the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and is the seco ...

contract engineer Robert Burdette and his wife Gloria on September 25, 1963 (with call letters standing for Gloria and Robert Burdette). The new AM radio station, a daytimer broadcasting with 250 watts, gained an FM sister when Burdette acquired KSGV from the San Gabriel Valley Broadcasting Company and rechristened it KBOB on January 1, 1967. The stations promoted themselves as "KGRB, KBOB, The Twin Voices of The (San Gabriel) Valley". Burdette, who had once been an engineer for

Tommy Dorsey Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. (November 19, 1905 – November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-toned trombo ...

and other big band artists, programmed a big band format for KGRB and the station featured a library including original

78 rpm A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near ...

recordings. KGRB was authorized to increase its power to 500 watts in 1975, though the higher power level did not take effect until 1977. KGRB and KBOB became only partial simulcast partners in 1977 when, to satisfy FCC regulations, KBOB programs began to originate for five hours a day from the University of La Verne campus. In 1994, after Burdette suffered a stroke, KGRB was put into a conservatorship. Steve Ray (who had worked at KCLU, KLIT, KMPC, and KRCI) was brought in to manage the stations. He made KGRB an NBC affiliate, renaming it "AM 90 NBC". Ray was in the process of acquiring the KNBC (AM) call letters when the format ended on December 28, 1995 when court conversatorship took over.

KRRA

The conservators leased KGRB and KBOB to El Dorado Broadcasting, and KGRB reemerged at the start of 1996 with 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 Mex ...

format as "El Ranchito"; a new KRRA callsign debuted on May 6. Later in 1996, El Dorado bought the combination outright, but they did not hold on to the cluster for long, selling KRTO (the renamed KBOB) to Cox Radio and then selling KRRA to Multicultural Broadcasting. On June 28, 1999, KRRA became KALI, call letters formerly associated with the 1430 AM frequency (which became KMRB).

KALI

In 2008, Multicultural was forced to place KALI in a trust, Transition Radio, when its owner, Arthur Liu, acquired KHIZ television. When Multicultural sold KYPA, it was able to reclaim the station from the trust.

References

External links

{{Multicultural Broadcasting ALI (AM) Radio stations established in 1963 1963 establishments in California Mandarin-language radio stations