KFSH-FM

KFSH-FM
City of license La Mirada, California
Broadcast area Pasadena, California, Los Angeles, California
Branding The Fish
Slogan "Safe For The Whole Family"
Frequency 95.9 (MHz)
First air date 1960
Format Contemporary Christian Music
ERP 6,000 watts
HAAT 100 meters
Class A
Facility ID 2195
Callsign meaning K FiS H
Owner Salem Media Group
Webcast Listen Live
Website 95.9 The Fish

KFSH-FM is a radio station in the Los Angeles metropolitan area broadcasting on the FM dial at 95.9 mHz with a contemporary Christian music format full-time. It is owned by the Salem Media Group and is known as "The Fish". The branding is a direct reference to the ancient fish icon used by the Christian church from its birth during the Roman Empire to the present, and the icon itself is part of the station logo. The station has studios in Glendale, and its transmitter is based in Orange.

Station history

KEZY went on the air on 1190 (first with only 1,000 watts), with studios at the Disneyland Hotel. The first voice heard on KEZY when it signed on in 1959 was that of K-9 TV star, Lassie. Lassie's owner, Rudd Weatherwax was an investor in the station and the hotel. It was first known as K-EZY, or K-easy, likely due to an easy listening music type of format in Anaheim, California serving the Orange County listening area. Sometime around 1968-'69, KEZY moved to a larger complex for its studios and offices, located (coincidentally) at 1190 East Ball Road in Anaheim, near the intersection of Ball Road and East Street. It was around this time that KEZY turned to a top-40/pop/rock format, and became the station Orange County teens tuned to in the late-'60s and early-'70s.

KEZY-FM 95.9 and close-spaced with class-B KLOS, Los Angeles was a class-A FM licensed in Anaheim with transmitter in Villa Park. KEZY FM had a number of formats, including rock music and adult contemporary. From 1993 to 1996, it was the flagship station for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now Anaheim Ducks) National Hockey League team. In the mid 1990s KEZY advertised itself with the slogan "Hits of the 80's and 90's with no rap!" as an alternative to the rise in popularity of rap and hip-hop music during that decade. Air staff during this time included John Fox (previously at B-100, San Diego) and Liz Pennington in the morning, April Whitney - later, Carolyn Hogenrad middays, and music director Scott Free in the afternoons.

In 1999, the station went through the first of two ownership changes, first to Jacor Communications, which itself was purchased in 1999 by Clear Channel Communications, the largest U.S. radio broadcasting group. Jacor/CC changed the call letters to KXMX, completed the construction permit for a power increase, and branded the station with its corporate "Mix" format; Angel and Randy "Ranman" DeWitt, formerly of KHTS-FM Channel 933 in San Diego, were two of the first DJ's to appear on the rechristened station. The Mix briefly maintained a remote studio in the Block at Orange shopping center.

The Mix only lasted about a year. In 2000, as part of conditions set by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to approve its merger with AMFM Inc., Clear Channel sold KXMX to Salem Communications.

Salem changed the call letters to KFSH and introduced "The Fish" format of contemporary Christian music, which has since been replicated at other Salem radio stations nationwide. The studios were moved to the Salem Los Angeles broadcasting studios in Glendale, about ten miles north of downtown LA, in shared facilities with sister stations KXMX-AM, KKLA-FM, KRLA-AM and KTIE-AM.

KFSH announces the artist and title at the end of each song played on-air in discreet prerecorded clips of one to two seconds, reminiscent of the "when you play it, say it" practice advocated in the U.S. radio industry in the early 1990s. Now practiced at other Fish-formatted stations owned by Salem, this allows listeners to know the song currently played without breaks in the music sets. This feature has since been removed on KFSH.

KEZY AM's call letters are now KGBN and it is owned by the Korean church that had been the station's largest brokered time client for 15 years dating back to the early '90s.

The Ball Road studios, often referred to as "the dumpy little building on Ball Road" by morning DJ John Fox, were demolished in 2008 and the land absorbed into the neighboring Ganahl Lumber Yard. No trace remains at the south side of the intersection of Ball and East of the 40-year home of KEZY AM & FM.

Recent changes

As of November 2008 KFSH's city of license has changed from Anaheim to La Mirada, approximately five to six miles northwest, on the border between Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The station's 6,000-watt signal can be heard clearly in most of Orange County, its primary listening area for most of its history. The signal reached as far as Norwalk, Whittier and Long Beach in Los Angeles County to the west but was weak in the San Gabriel Valley to the north and the Riverside-San Bernardino area to the east, as well as primarily unlistenable from interference and poor signal to the north-west in the San Fernando Valley.

FishFest

Since 2002 KFSH has hosted a contemporary Christian music festival, FishFest,[1] currently held at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, California in early summer. The 2011 FishFest is the 10th anniversary edition and will be held June 25, 2011.

References

  1. ↑ "FishFest 2011", information page at KFSH website, ; retrieved 29 May 2011.

External links

Coordinates: 33°49′52″N 117°48′36″W / 33.831°N 117.810°W