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KFYI (550 AM broadcasting) – branded News/Talk 550 KFYI – is a commercial talk radio radio station licensed to serve Phoenix, Arizona. Owned by iHeartMedia, KFYI serves the Phoenix metropolitan area as the market affiliate for Fox News Radio, The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, The Sean Hannity Show, the Glenn Beck Radio Program and Coast to Coast AM.
Established as KFCB in 1922 by Earl A. Nielsen after a year of experimental broadcasting, this station adopted the KOY call sign in 1929. Sold to interests controlled by the Prairie Farmer/WLS in 1936, KOY was the Phoenix outlet for CBS radio in the 1930s and 1940s as well as an early home for Steve Allen and Jack Williams, the latter a part of the station from 1929 until his election to Arizona Governor in 1966.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, KOY featured a popular adult contemporary format headlined by Bill Heywood, but declining ratings resulted in a 1988 flip to satellite-fed adult standards. As a result of mass consolidation, KOY's call letters and standards format were moved in 1999 to KOY, with assuming the KGME call sign and Sports radio format. Since 2000, this station has featured the KFYI calls and talk format—which had previously originated on KGME—after a second intellectual property swap.
Studios for KFYI are located near 48th and Van Buren streets, near Sky Harbor Airport, and the transmitter is located on South 36th Street near East Vineyard Road in Phoenix. In addition to a standard analog transmission, KFYI is simulcast over the second HD Radio subchannel of KYOT (95.5 FM) and streams online via iHeartRadio.
From 1912 to 1927, radio communication in the United States was regulated by the Department of Commerce, and originally there were no formal requirements for stations, most of which operated under Amateur and Experimental licenses, making broadcasts intended for the general public. In order to provide a common standard, the department issued a regulation effective December 1, 1921 requiring that broadcasting stations would now have to hold a Limited Commercial license that authorized operation on two designated broadcasting wavelengths: 360 meters (833 kHz) for "entertainment", and 485 meters (619 kHz) for "market and weather reports". The first two Phoenix broadcasting station authorizations were issued to Smith Hughes & Company for KDYW on May 15, 1922, Limited Commercial license, serial #380, issued May 15, 1922 to Smith Hughes & Company, Phoenix, Arizona, for operation on 360 meters for a period of three months. KDYW was deleted on April 4, 1924. and McArthur Brothers Mercantile Company for KFAD (now KTAR) on June 21, 1922, Limited Commercial license, serial #495, issued June 21, 1922 to McArthur Brothers Mercantile Company in Phoenix, Arizona, for operation on 360 meters for a period of three months. both for 360 meters.
On September 6, 1922, the Nielsen Radio Supply Company was granted a broadcasting license with the call letters KFCB, for operation on 360 meters. This call sign was issued randomly from an alphabetical roster of available call letters. Because at this time only the single entertainment broadcasting wavelength of 360 meters was available, stations in a given region were encouraged to devise time-sharing agreements. In April 1923, KFCB's time slots were 7 to 8 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. KDYW shut down in early 1924, leaving KFAD and KFCB as the only stations in the state capital. There were several frequency changes in the early years. KFCB was deleted in mid-1923 but quickly relicensed on 1280 kHz, which was changed to 1080 kHz later in the year. In 1924, KFCB was moved to 1260 kHz, which was followed by a reassignment to 1230 kHz on June 1, 1927, with 125 watts.
In the fall of 1927, Nielsen opened new studios at Pierce Street and Central Avenue; the $70,000 ($ in dollars) building also housed the company's sporting goods division and contained a basement with eight bowling lanes. On November 11, 1928, KFCB was initially assigned to a "local" frequency, 1310 kHz, as part of the Federal Radio Commission's implementation of General Order 40, a national radio reallocation. This was soon changed to a "regional" frequency, 1390 kHz.
In 1938, KOY applied to move from 1390 to 550 kHz, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 13, 1940, over the objections of KOAC in Corvallis, Oregon; the station made the move on April 7. A further power increase to 5,000 watts was initially granted in December 1941, but World War II postponed KOY's plans to make the change until 1948. Burridge Butler did not live to see the frequency change carried out; he died in April 1948, with ownership of KOY given to three company executives, per his will; one of these was program director John R. "Jack" Williams. Williams had already been a KOY veteran by this time, having been interviewed by founder Nielsen and hired on the same day in 1929, when Williams was a 20-year-old college student; he was appointed program director when the Butler ownership took over in 1936. Among Williams's hires was Steve Allen, who began his broadcasting career at KOY in 1942 before moving to Los Angeles. In a 1992 book, Allen called his years at KOY "pleasant ones and extremely educational".
KOY lost its CBS affiliation on January 1, 1950, to KKNT, which went on the air in 1947; Gene Autry was one of the principal owners of KOOL, and his deep ties to CBS and Columbia Records helped seal the deal. In exchange, KOY picked up the Mutual–Don Lee hookup previously held by KOOL.
In 1952, KOY filed for a television station on channel 10; in competition with a similar bid from KOOL, and wanting to spare years of comparative hearings, the two parties agreed to a time-sharing proposal. On October 24, 1953, KSAZ-TV signed on, sharing time and studio and transmitter facilities on channel 10. After five months, KOY sold its interest to KOOL, which took over full operation of the venture; two months later, KOY-TV was no more.
Jack Williams's popularity on the air was also evident. In addition to his duties as program director and announcer, he forged close political ties with others. From 1945 to 1948, he read the State of the State address for governor Sidney Preston Osborn, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, and in 1952, he was appointed to fill a term on the Phoenix City Council. His KOY career was considered the springboard to his political career, which included terms as Mayor of Phoenix and Governor of Arizona. Even while mayor, he continued to host his program on KOY and only stepped aside from his duties at the station in 1965, when he prepared his first gubernatorial campaign.
Also in 1973, KOY brought in a host who would have a long run on the station. A format change at KTAR had cost Bill Heywood, that station's morning man, his job. He moved to Las Vegas, but Edens wanted him for his station, which happened to have an opening in morning drive. Edens flew to Las Vegas and went to Heywood's house in a successful bid to lure him back to Phoenix. Heywood grew to be one of the market's most popular radio hosts, being honored in 1975 as "Grand International Air Personality", the top individual honor of the International Radio Programming Forum, and pulled as much as 13 percent of the morning audience. The station supplemented its middle-of-the road format, which evolved into adult contemporary, with Heywood and sports. In 1983 and 1984, KOY was the broadcast home of the Arizona Wranglers of the United States Football League, though it lost money carrying the nascent team's games.
Southern Broadcasting merged with Harte Hanks in 1978. Three years later, Edens was appointed president of the company's broadcast division, which was renamed Harte-Hanks Radio and relocated its corporate headquarters from Winston-Salem to Phoenix. When Harte-Hanks went private in a leveraged buyout in 1984, the company sought to shed its radio properties, and Edens purchased all nine of its stations—including KOY and the sister FM (then called KQYT)—for $40 million, forming Edens Broadcasting.
In a cost-cutting move, in November 1988, Edens fired 12 employees and dropped KOY's music-and-talk format for the satellite-delivered AM Only format of adult standards music; Edens felt that what would have been the natural evolution of KOY, to a talk format competing with KTAR and KGME, would have taken too long, and that the move would allow the company to focus on KOY-FM. Gary Edens later cited that moment as the death of the "legendary KOY". Sundance Broadcasting acquired the Edens Phoenix stations in 1993, creating a four-station cluster with KOY, 95.5 (which was relaunched as "rhythm and rock" KYOT), KALV-FM, and KOY. Radio deregulation in 1996 brought more acquisitions in short order: Sundance sold its Phoenix cluster and five other stations in Milwaukee and Boise to Colfax Communications for $95 million, and before that deal had even closed, Colfax sold those four and KOOL-FM to Chancellor Media, plus seven stations in other cities, for $365 million.
Former Congressman J. D. Hayworth hosted a weekday show in the late 2000s on KFYI. He resigned from KFYI in 2010 to pursue an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate against Senator John McCain.
On March 8, 2006, KFYI made news when fill-in host Brian James suggested that the United States National Guard and Border Patrol should shoot to kill people illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. He also said on the air that he would be "happy to sit there with my high-powered rifle and my night scope" and kill people as they cross the border. Those remarks prompted Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard and U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton to complain to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), calling the remarks "irresponsible and dangerous".
Because Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, syndicated programs air on a one-hour recorded delay from mid-March to early November, so they can be heard in the same time slots on KFYI year-round. This practice has been utilized by KFYI since the mid-1990s (when it was at 910).
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