KYGO-FM (98.5 MHz) is a commercial radio station in Denver, Colorado, United States. The Bonneville International country music station has an effective radiated power (ERP) of 100,000 watts. Its studios are located in Greenwood Village, and its transmitter is on Mestaa'ehehe Mountain near Morrison.
KYGO-FM is Colorado's secondary (LP-2) Emergency Alert System station. AM 850 KOA is the primary (LP-1) station.
The radio station broadcasts in the HD Radio format. The HD2 subchannel broadcasts classic country music as "KYGO Legendary Country." The HD3 subchannel formerly the Contemporary Christian format heard on KTLF in Colorado Springs. The HD3 subchannel has since been turned off.
Following the sale of the station to Jefferson-Pilot Broadcasting in 1974, the station took the KIMN-FM call sign. (The callsign KIMN currently resides at 100.3 FM in Denver, though that station is owned by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment.)
At first, KIMN-FM aired a softer album rock format while KIMN (950 AM, now KKSE) aired a Top 40 format. KIMN-FM later started playing Top 40 music, similar to its AM sister station. In the 1970s, there were a couple of country & western AM stations in Denver, though the music was not heard on FM, even though country was making inroads on FM stations in other cities.
On April 26, 1988, the station slightly changed its call letters to KYGO-FM. At the same time, AM 950 switched its call sign to KYGO, and began airing a classic country format, to be a companion to FM 98.5's more contemporary country direction.
In 2007, KYGO-FM was named "Country Music Station of the Year" in a top 25 market by Radio & Records magazine. Other nominees included WUSN Chicago, WYCD Detroit, KEEY-FM Minneapolis, WXTU Philadelphia, and KSON-FM San Diego.
However, on July 14, 2015, the Department of Justice ruled that Entercom was over ownership and total market revenue limits in the Denver market; as a result, Entercom decided to spin off KYGO, KOSI, KKFN and KEPN to Bonneville International in exchange for Bonneville's Los Angeles station KSWD (now KKLQ). Both Bonneville and Entercom began operating their new clusters via Time Brokerage Agreements on July 17, 2015. The transaction was consummated on November 24, 2015.
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