KHRO (1150
AM) is a commercial
radio station
Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting 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 rad ...
in
El Paso, Texas
El Paso (; ; or ) is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The 2020 United States census, 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the List of ...
. This station is owned by
Entravision Communications
Entravision Communications Corporation is an American media company based in Santa Monica, California. Entravision primarily caters to the Spanish language in the United States, Spanish-speaking Hispanic and Latino Americans, Hispanic community ...
. Its studio facilities are located on North Mesa Street/Highway 20 in northwest El Paso. The
transmitter
In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter (often abbreviated as XMTR or TX in technical documents) is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna with the purpose of sig ...
is located east of downtown in Ascarate Park, near
Texas State Highway Loop 375. KHRO
simulcasts the
radio format
A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when Radio broadcasting, ...
heard on
sister station KINT-FM (93.9 FM).
History
The station first
signed on in June 1958 as KIZZ. It was owned by Coronado Broadcasters and was
affiliated with the
CBS Radio Network. The station originally was a
daytimer, powered at 1,000 watts, and required to
sign off at sunset to avoid interfering with other stations on
AM 1150. In the 1980s, it was given
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
(FCC) permission to broadcast around the clock, using 380 watts during nighttime hours. In the 1990s, the daytime power was boosted to 5,000 watts.
The station has gone through numerous formats over the years, including
oldies
Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music.
Since 2 ...
,
adult contemporary music
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, sou ...
,
talk and
Regional Mexican music.
Expanded Band assignment
On March 17, 1997, the FCC announced that 88 stations had been given permission to move to newly available "
Expanded Band" transmitting frequencies, from 1610 to 1700 kHz. The then-KSVE was authorized to move from 1150 kHz to 1650 kHz.
["FCC Public Notice: Mass Media Bureau Announces Revised AM Expanded Band Allotment Plan and Filing Window for Eligible Stations"](_blank)
(FCC DA 97-537), March 17, 1997.
The expanded band operation on 1650 kHz was assigned the call letters KBIV on September 4, 1998, which were changed to KHRO on February 25, 2005, and to
KSVE on September 23, 2008.
The FCC initially provided that both the original station and its expanded band counterpart could optionally operate simultaneously for up to five years, after which owners would have to turn in one of the two licenses, depending on whether they preferred the new assignment or elected to remain on the original frequency. However, this deadline has been extended multiple times, and both KHRO on 1150 kHz and KSVE on 1650 kHz have remained authorized.
One restriction is that the FCC has generally required paired original and expanded band stations to remain under common ownership.
"Re: WDDD (AM) Application for Consent to Assignment of AM Broadcast Station License"
(August 23, 2010 correspondence from Peter H. Doyle, Chief, FCC Audio Division, Media Bureau. Reference Number 1800B3-TSN)
References
External links
HRO
Radio stations established in 1958
1958 establishments in Texas
Regional Mexican radio stations in the United States
HRO
Entravision Communications stations
{{Texas-radio-station-stub