KTUC
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| City of license | Tucson, Arizona |
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| Slogan | "Tucson's All Time Favorites" |
| Frequency | 1400 (kHz) (also on HD Radio) |
| First air date | July 10, 1926 |
| Format | Oldies/Adult Standards |
| Power | 1,000 watts |
| Class | C |
| Callsign meaning | KTUCson |
| Owner | Cumulus Media |
| Sister stations | KCUB, KHYT, KIIM, KSZR |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | http://www.ktucam.com |
KTUC (1400 AM) is a commercial radio station located in Tucson, Arizona. The station is under ownership of Cumulus Media. KTUC airs a combined adult standards and oldies music format.
History
KTUC is one of the oldest stations in Tucson. It went on the air in 1925.
In the early 1970s it used the slogan 'Formula 1400', which referred to its practice of airing 35 minutes of news programming and 25 minutes of music programming to round out the hour. The hour started with the news programming then went to the music programming.
In the late 1970s the station segued to a news/talk format, airing news all day and syndicated talk shows at night. It was an affiliate of the Arizona Broadcasting System and picked up newscasts from KTAR in Phoenix on a phone line. By 1977, it was airing a 20-minute newsreel format, with CBS, ABC and Mutual radio newscasts leading each piece of the pie—ABC and Mutual were both tape-delayed. Larry King broadcasts aired overnight, although those broadcasts were replaced by Enterprise Radio (a progenitor of ESPN Radio) by 1979.
Tucson Toros baseball games were carried live, although the studio recreated road games in 1980.
It was named the AP Broadcast News Station of The Year in 1980. That year, its news staff broke the story about chemical contamination in the underground aquifers of southern Tucson, news items that ended up in a major political controversy and subsequent cleanup. It also won investigative awards for breaking and following up on the story of a factory that painted glow-in-the-dark watch dials and instrument panels using tritium, a radioactive isotope that was found in school lunches prepared in a commissary across the street.
Throughout the entire period from the 70s until the Arizona Diamondbacks came into existence, KTUC was the exclusive Tucson affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers radio network syndicated from KABC radio in Los Angeles. The station also carried California Angels broadcasts picked up from KMPC in Los Angeles, and would tape delay the Angels games when the Dodgers were on the air. In the days before cable television, when baseball games could be seen once a week on NBC, the Dodgers radio broadcasts developed a huge following in Tucson. Sports were always huge at KTUC, and its 1970s sports director Rory Markas (now deceased) went to the 2002 World Series as voice of the Angels. General manager Tom Maples vowed he could sell ads for a play-by-play of two kids playing basketball with peach hoops.
In the late 1980s, the station was the Tucson affiliate of the Arizona State University Sun Devils radio network (the Sun Devils are the Phoenix-area based Pac-10 arch-rival of the locally-based Arizona Wildcats of the University of Arizona; the station reversed affiliations and beginning in the 1990s, was the affiliate of the Wildcats' radio network), and the same station was also the Tucson affiliate of the Phoenix Suns radio network.
In the early 1990s, KTUC went through several new owners (including today's Cumulus Media) and went to an adult standards format. Currently, the station airs a combination of rock oldies and adult standards.
References
- 1992 Broadcasting Yearbook, page A-21
External links
- KTUC official website
- Query the FCC's AM station database for KTUC
- Radio-Locator Information on KTUC
- Query Nielsen Audio's AM station database for KTUC
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Coordinates: 32°15′11″N 110°57′44″W / 32.25306°N 110.96222°W