| City of license | Los Angeles, California |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Greater Los Angeles |
| Branding | Radio Korea |
| Frequency | 1540 (kHz) |
| First air date | 1952 |
| Format | Korean programming |
| Power | 50,000 watts (day) 37,000 watts (night) |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 61647 |
| Callsign meaning | McMillan Petroleum Company (former owner) |
| Former callsigns | KPOL (1952-1981) KZLA (1981-1984) KSKQ (1984-1992) KXED (1992-1996) KXMG (1996-1997) KCTD (1997-2000) |
| Owner | P&Y Broadcasting Licensee, LLC |
| Website | radiokorea.com |
KMPC (1540 AM, "Radio Korea", 라디오코리아) is a radio station based in Los Angeles, California and is owned by P&Y Broadcasting Licensee, LLC. Radio Korea is a division of the Radio Korea Media Group. The station airs Korean-language programming. It broadcasts news, information, and entertainment for the largest Korean-American community in the United States, and the largest Korean community outside of Korea.
KMPC is one of three radio stations in the greater Los Angeles area that broadcast entirely in Korean; the others are KYPA and KFOX.
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KMPC began airing Radio Korea programming on May 1, 2007; before that, it was an owned-and-operated affiliate of Sporting News Radio as an all-sports station. However, some of the network's daily programming did not regularly air on the station.
The station covered San Diego Chargers football (one of two flagship stations for the Chargers Radio Network, the other being KIOZ in San Diego), and selected Westwood One sports programming not carried by CBS Radio's KFWB-AM and KLSX-FM. Among the broadcasts that KMPC carried from Westwood One: NCAA basketball, PGA Tour golf tournament updates (mostly those covered by CBS Sports television), The Masters Tournament, NFL football (including Monday Night Football on occasion), and more.
In 2006, KMPC lost the broadcast rights to USC basketball and football to rival KSPN-AM, and the station then acquired the local broadcast rights of the University of Notre Dame's football games from Westwood One. The station also stopped covering NASCAR races after having done so for several years.
The station's regular talk-show hosts included Tony Bruno, who began his morning show in April 2005 following the departure of Roger Lodge; long-time local sports talk host Dave Smith (whose show became part of Sporting News Radio in June 2006), and a late-afternoon show hosted by former USC football player Petros Papadakis.
Former Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Ross Porter filled in for Roggin on an early-June 2005 broadcast.
Roger Nadel, former GM of all-news KFWB in Los Angeles, was the station's VP/GM and Program Director.
In June 2006, former afternoon host and current KNBC-TV sports director Fred Roggin left KMPC and a new program, the Atlanta-based 2 Live Stews, took his place. Roggin's departure, a result of his increased commitments to KNBC and NBC Sports, triggered a shift in the station's daily programming lineup. Smith and Papadakis switched dayparts, accommodating the Los Angeles debut of the 2 Live Stews.
On September 5, 2006, KMPC's parent company, Sporting News Radio, was sold to American City Business Journals for an undisclosed price, The Sporting News magazine. KMPC, and WSNR in New York and WWZN in Boston, were briefly operated by Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. until the three stations were sold off separately.
In 2007, before the station's sale to Radio Korea, there were no local shows on the station. Bob Keisser of the Long Beach Press-Telegram said that KMPC is "on life support." (Page B2, December 29, 2006 issue).
On March 30, 2007, AllAccess.com, an online news service covering the radio and music industries, reported that Vulcan had decided to sell the station to P&Y Broadcasting, doing business as Radio Korea Media Group. Again, the price was not revealed.
The history of AM 1540 goes back to its days as KPOL. It aired a wide variety of formats until the early 1980s. KPOL also advertised on the 1959 television series Home Run Derby.
Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, this frequency broadcast in Spanish, first as KXEZ then as KXMG "Mega 1540." In 1997, One on One Sports Inc. of Northbrook, Illinois purchased the station and converted it to sports radio. It was part of the sale to Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures in 2001.
Prior to November 21, 1997 the call letters KMPC were assigned to AM 710, and it was at one time one of the top AM radio stations in Southern California. In the 1960s and 70s, it used the moniker "The Station of the Stars" and featured a number of notable DJs, including Dick Whittinghill, Robert W. Morgan, Bob Arbogast, Geoff Edwards, Ira Cook, Roger Carroll, Wink Martindale, Jim Lange, Gary Owens, Johnny Magnus, Kathy Gori, Sonny Melendrez and Vance Graham.
A powerhouse in local sports reporting, KMPC-710 broadcast Los Angeles Rams, California Angels, and UCLA football games. Some of the notable sports announcers were Fred Hessler, Don Wells, Bob Starr, Jim Healy, Kent Derdivanis, Dave Niehaus, Dick Enberg, and Joe Torre.
KMPC-710 was also noted for its extensive use of field reporters and news/traffic aircraft. It was also the first station to issue Sigalert traffic alerts.
At one time, KMPC was owned by the famous singing cowboy Gene Autry.
KMPC appeared fictionally in the Steven Spielberg movie 1941 (the dance contest broadcast) and in That Thing You Do (brief interview).
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