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KLAC (570 AM broadcasting) is a commercial sports radio station licensed to Los Angeles, California, serving Greater Los Angeles. Owned by a joint venture between iHeartMedia, Inc. and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball club, KLAC serves as the Los Angeles affiliate for Fox Sports Radio; the flagship station for the Los Angeles Dodgers Radio Network, the Los Angeles Clippers, UCLA Bruins football and basketball; and the home of radio personalities Fred Roggin, Rodney Peete, Petros Papadakis and Matt "Money" Smith.
The KLAC studios are located in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, while the station transmitter resides in Los Angeles' Lincoln Heights neighborhood. Besides its main analog transmission, KLAC simulcasts over a HD Radio digital subchannel of KYSR, Is KFI switch a sign AM radio is really dead? Los Angeles Daily News - August 12, 2015 and streams online via iHeartRadio.
In 1946, Dorothy Schiff, publisher of the New York Post, bought the station and renamed it KLAC, for Los Angeles, California. During the 1940s, Douglas Adamson worked as a disc jockey on KLAC and was voted one of Billboard magazine's top ten DJs in America. Al Jarvis created his West Coast version of the Make Believe Ballroom; in a KLAC advertisement in the 1947 edition of Broadcasting Yearbook, Jarvis is described as "the dean of the nation's disc jockeys" and the show promised to give away "a new Mercury, diamond rings, etc." Broadcasting Yearbook 1947 page 83
KLAC added a TV station, KLAC-TV at channel 13, on September 17, 1948. Broadcasting Yearbook 1950 page 88 Both the radio and TV operations were housed in studios at 1000 North Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. Al Jarvis notably hosted a TV edition of the Make Believe Ballroom, and a young Betty White was part of his staff, Regis Philbin and Leonard Nimoy also worked behind the scenes at the station. KLAC-TV was sold to the Copley Press in 1953, with the callsign changed to the current KCOP-TV.
Also in 1948, KLAC-FM began experimenting with FM broadcasts. The station official signed on the air on March 7, 1961, as KLAC-FM. Broadcasting Yearbook 1963 page B-20 It mostly simulcast the AM station. In the late 1960s, it began airing its own programming, a vocal easy listening/MOR sound. In 1975, the station was sold to Karl Eller, later becoming KIIS-FM.
In the mid-1960s, KLAC switched to a talk radio format known as "Two-Way Radio." Hosts included Joe Pyne. In the 1970s, KLAC switched to an adult standards format, playing music from the 1940s and early 1950s, along with soft adult contemporary hits of the 1950s and 1960s. By early 1970, KLAC evolved to more of a full-service mainstream adult contemporary format focusing on popular adult hits from 1964 up to that time.
The original DJs included Deano Day, Gene Price, Harry Newman, Sammy Jackson and Jay Lawrence, joined the following year by Dick Haynes, Charlie O'Donnell and Larry Scott. L.A. veteran DJ Nancy Plum (KTNQ, KMPC) was heard in the last days of the country format.
In the fall of 1980, KLAC got some serious competition in the country music field, including a station on FM; KZLA-FM (93.9) and KMPC switched to country, followed in December 1980 by KHJ. (KHJ would return to oldies on April 1, 1983.) KZLA-AM-FM and KLAC competed through the 1980s. During this time, KLAC DJ Harry Newman could also be heard as the image voice for KCOP-TV, which had been co-owned with KLAC until the late 1950s. (KCOP later became a sister station to KTTV, which previously was co-owned with KLAC for 21 years.)
In late 1993, KLAC fired all its DJs and newscasters, including 31-year veteran Dean Sander, and dropped country for Westwood One's satellite-fed adult standards service, known as "Stardust." It played Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Nat King Cole, Neil Diamond, Peggy Lee, Petula Clark, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, The Carpenters, Elvis Presley, the Ames Brothers, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Dionne Warwick and Barry Manilow. The station concentrated on vocalists from the 1960s and 70s, with big band music no longer played. KLAC stayed with this format in some form until 2001.
On September 12, 2002, KLAC returned to an adult standards format, becoming the "Fabulous 570." In addition to many of the station's previous standards artists, the playlist also included Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Harry Connick Jr., Rod Stewart and Michael Bublé, contemporary artists whose music is influenced by the Big Band Era. During the standards/lounge music period, Brad "Martini" Chambers, Jim "Swingin' Jimmy D" Duncan, Daisy Torme (Mel Torme's daughter) and LA radio and TV vet Gary Owens were among the air talent.
In February 2006, KLAC phased out the use of the XTRA Sports nickname as part of a re-orientation to the Los Angeles market, and was simply referred to on air as "AM 570". The XTRA Sports name was later re-launched in San Diego on KLSD on November 12, 2007, with Lee Hamilton starting local programming. For a brief time, "AM 570" placed less emphasis on sports and more emphasis on male-oriented talk to compete with the now-defunct KNX-FM, then the local home of Adam Carolla and Tom Leykis, and previously Howard Stern's L.A. station. Local hosts on KLAC were instructed to not limit themselves to sports, but also include celebrities, relationships, politics and current events. In addition, non-sports hosts Erich "Mancow" Muller and Phil Hendrie were added to the lineup.
The switch also meant that former afternoon host and one-time San Diego Chargers radio voice Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton was moved to weekend duty. He also hosted a daily 5 p.m. sports update on KLAC for several months until landing a weekday show on San Diego–based KLSD. The KLAC call letters were initially only announced during station identification at the beginning of each hour, but would soon be used more often under the "AM 570 KLAC" brand, starting when the station celebrated its 30th anniversary as the Laker radio flagship. Some promotions spelled out the meaning of the call letters as "K-Los-Angeles-California".
Starting in late 2006, KLAC shifted its focus again to more sports content. Phil Hendrie voluntarily retired from his syndicated show to pursue an acting career (but would later revive the program on KTLK). Hendrie's time slot was filled by Joe McDonnell, who would last for two years at KLAC. Into The Night with Tony Bruno, which KLAC co-produced with DirecTV, replaced McDonnell in September 2008.
Mancow was replaced with Roggin and Simers2(Squared), hosted by KNBC sportscaster Fred Roggin, T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, and Simers' daughter, Tracy Simers. Roggin and Simers2 lasted 11 months before being replaced in September 2007 by Dan Patrick's syndicated morning show, also produced by The Content Factory. Former USC Trojans football running back and former KMPC afternoon host Petros Papadakis joined KLAC in January 2007, teaming up with sportscaster Matt "Money" Smith (then the host of the Lakers Radio Network's pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage) to host an afternoon drive program dubbed the Petros and Money Show.
On December 11, 2008, the Los Angeles Lakers announced that KLAC would no longer be the team's flagship station following the 2008–2009 season, with Laker games moving to KSPN, ESPN Radio's Los Angeles station. On September 23, 2011, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced that KLAC would become the flagship for the team's radio network beginning in the 2012 season.
Shemon and Washington's morning slot was replaced by Dan Patrick, while Chris Myers' FSR show and Hartman's KLAC show were combined into Myers and Hartman; Myers effectively replaced Mychal Thompson (who was expected to leave the station at the end of the Laker season), and Vic "The Brick" Jacobs was reassigned to delivering brief sports updates. Siciliano and Fernandez's early evening show was replaced by Petros and Money, who would be carried on Fox Sports Radio between 2009 and 2014. KLAC initially dropped Into The Night with Tony Bruno to clear JT The Brick's existing FSR show, while Ben Maller's overnight show, The Third Shift, was canceled and replaced by a clip show entitled Fox Sports Soup. JT The Brick's show replaced Fox Sports Soup later in the year as the network assumed production of Into The Night and rehired Maller for weekend duty.
Myers left "Myers and Hartman" in March 2010 to focus on his other duties with Fox Sports, replaced by Pat O'Brien as co-host of the resurrected Loose Cannons, alongside Hartman and Jacobs.
On March 15, 2015, KLAC announced that it would drop its branding connected with Fox Sports Radio, changing to "AM 570 LA Sports," with a greater emphasis on Dodgers coverage, including a weeknight "Dodgers Talk" show all year round. The "LA" in KLAC's logo is derived from the Dodgers' cap insignia. Nevertheless, KLAC continued to carry some of the Fox Sports lineup such as Dan Patrick's morning show and Jay Mohr's midday show. The change in ownership was consummated on August 5, 2016.
KLAC took over as the flagship station of the Los Angeles Clippers on March 16, 2016, following previous flagship KFWB's sale and conversion to foreign-language programming mid-season. In case of a scheduling conflict with the Dodgers, the Clippers would be heard on KEIB. The LA Clippers and iHeartMedia are joining forces to broadcast Clippers games live! KFI - March 16, 2016
In 2017, KLAC and its sister station KFI acquired the rights to the Los Angeles Chargers. The play by play would air on KFI, with team shows and special programming on KLAC. In 2020, Chargers play-by-play would move to KYSR, also a KLAC sister station; KLAC would simulcast select games and continue to feature the Chargers during its programming.
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