KDWN

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KDWN-AM 720 ("News, Traffic, and Weather for Vegas") is an AM radio station owned by Beasley Broadcast Group based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. Its frequency is 720 kHz and broadcasts full-time at 50,000 watts, directional. It can be heard throughout most of the Western United States, north into Canada and south into Mexico. KDWN is primarily a news-talk radio station featuring a libertarian-to-conservative outlook with syndicated talk show hosts such as Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Jerry Doyle, Mark Levin, Jim Bohannon, and Jay Severin, and also broadcasts paid radio shows for Las Vegas casinos and other groups. KDWN also is the station where famous late-night talk show host Art Bell first broadcast his show, Coast to Coast AM. As a word, it is pronunciated as "Kay Dawn".

Contents 1 History 2 Hosts 3 References 4 External links

[edit] History

KDWN-AM 720 first came on the air in April 1975. They began as a music oriented radio station playing mostly soft AC. KDWN was one of a string of AM stations that played music around that time in the mid 1970s. The music format lasted 4 years till around Christmas 1979.

In January 1980, KDWN-AM switched to talk radio. KDWN was the only talk station in town and one of the first responders of the 1980 MGM grand fire for which they won an award. [1] KDWN closed its newsroom in the early 1990s, according to a poster on the message board site Radio-Info. [2]KDWN was one of the very first talk stations to air Rush Limbaugh in 1988 but lost his show to rival KXNT in 1996.

KDWN was founded by A.J. Williams, who owned the station until his death in 2005. [3]. KDWN was unique in that, unlike most Las Vegas stations, it remained independent of large radio chains such as Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting. The continuity of ownership ensured a continuity of station sound. The station continued to rely on aging hosts who in some cases had been with the station since it started in the talk format. The station did well in the ratings as one of the first generation of talk stations, but began a slow decline in the early 1990s [4]. In some ways the station is a stylistic throwback to 1970s talk radio. Call screening was not used until recently [5], and the station has a disproportionate amount of locally originated talk for a market the size of Las Vegas. [6]. In March of 2006, Beasley Broadcasting announced plans to buy the station for $17 million. [7] A Las Vegas newspaper reported a rumor that KDWN would change to an all-sports format effective July 1, 2006, however, this has not happened. As reported on Wake Up, America on July 21, 2006 by Jim Dallas, audience blacklash against the change has resulted in no change to the current talk-radio format. KDWN AM 720 originally broadcasted on the 2nd floor of the Plaza Hotel on 1 Main St in downtown Las Vegas for many years. Since then, the new owners of the station have moved everybody to a new studio.^{[citation needed]}

In the Fall of 2006, the new owners of KDWN AM 720 switched an full-time news/talk format, featuring a locally-produced morning drive-time news show.

[edit] Hosts

Most notable local KDWN hosts prior to the new all-time news/talk format were Ted Bair (retired in February of 2005), Tru Hawkins (retired in September of 2006, moved to Texas), Jim Dallas (employment status pending current developments), Art Bell (no longer on station), Mark Edwards (current on KLAV 1230 AM from September 7, 2006 onward), Doug Basham (now syndicated [8]), Jim Austin, Lou Epton (moved to KKVV 1060 AM, then retired), Ken Stahl, Jack Daniels & Mike England, Ken Koester (retired in 2001, moved to northern California), Cheryl Godfrey, Mystic Mona, "Part-Time" Pete Moss (employment status pending current developments) and Hart Kirch.

[edit] References

Founder of KDWN 720 AM Talk radio Dies [9]

KDWN Program Schedule [10]

[edit] External links

• KDWN website